On January 29, 1963 RCA Victor released "One Broken Heart For Sale" / "They Remind Me Too Much Of You". On February 16th "One Broken Heart For Sale" entered Billboard's "Hot 100" at number 59 and climbed to number 11 within its nine weeks stay. "They Remind Me Too Much Of You" was listed on the chart for four weeks and made it to number 53. The RIAA honored the US sales in 1992 with a Gold Award. In Great Britain, Ireland, Norway and Belgium "One Broken Heart For Sale" became a top10-hit, globally the record sold 1.4 million units. In the present that would translate to 210 million paid streams. To Elvis, the Colonel and RCA these figures must have been shocking. For the first time since 1956 a Presley single with new songs had failed to reach the top 10 and compared to the previously released "Return To Sender" / "Where Do You Come From" the sales had dropped by two thrids!

The single is not available on the streaming platforms, but the songs can be found on the album "It Happened At The World's Fair" (1963). In 2016 the complete Presley catalogue was restored and remastered by Vic Anesini for a boxed set of 60 compact discs called "The Album Collection". Sony Music Entertainment provides the streaming platforms with the same versions of the individual tracks, albeit in 24 bit/90 khz flac. That means, if the platform of your choice supports high resolution audio, you can enjoy the songs in the same quality Sony used to scan and master them. On Spotify, which has a market share of approximately 30% and is the only platform that publishes streaming figures, "One Broken Heart For Sale" accumulates 1.3 million streams, "They Remind Me Too Much Of You" doesn't even reach the million mark. So "One Broken Heart For Sale" just reaches 1.2% (!) of the streams of the previously released "Return To Sender".

The artwork for both sides of the sleeve was the same. It displayed a conservatively styled Elvis, smiling nicely for the camera. RCA advertised a special "It Happened At The World's Fair" album, because Colonel Parker had planned a de luxe release a' la "Elvis' Christmas Album". However, when the sales of the single turned out to be so low, the idea was scrapped.

With a running time of 1:34 minutes the song is very short, so it's somewhat strange that RCA didn't use the movie version which included another verse. "One Broken Heart For Sale" was recorded on September 22, 1962 and take 5 was chosen for release. In the song, written by Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott, the singer pours out his heart and offers it for sale. Even though the lyrics are sad, the melody is happy and stays with you. It's quite similar to "Return To Sender" (also written by Blackwell and Scott), but I like it very much. In fact, this is one of my favorite movie tunes. RCA Victor also included it on the boxed set "Worldwide 50 Gold Award Hits - Volume 1" (1970).

Elvis recorded this beautiful ballad on the same day, take nine was chosen to be the master. Later RCA Victor also released it on "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2" (1971) and via their own budget label CAMDEN on "Elvis Sings Hits From His Movies - Volume 1" (1972). For Don Robertson, the writer of "They Remind Me Too Much Of You", it turned out to be a stroke of luck to have been booked as a pianist for these sessions. Because suddenly someone realized that the song was that similar to "Chapel In The Moonlight", that there might have been a copyright issue. Robertson could save his song from being skipped by making some adjustments. However, now it sounded very much like "Anything That's Part Of You". But because this one had also been written by Don, there was no danger of being sued. To me this is a great song which certainly wouldn't have been out of place on a regular studio album of the king.