On November 3, 1964 RCA Victor released "Blue Christmas" / "Wooden Heart". Billboard listed it on their "Christmas Chart" for four weeks where it peaked at number one. This might sound impressive, but in total the single sold no more than 200,000 units which can be translated to 37.5 million streams. In the present "Blue Christmas" is one of the most requested Elvis tunes on Spotify, clocking in at half a billion streams! The 19 million streams of "Wooden Heart" seem like a joke compared to this figure, but in relation to the average Presley tunes the number is quite solid.

The cover was designed with a promo photo for "Roustabout" and, well, a wooden heart. Of course "Elvis' Christmas Album" (1957) and the soundtrack to "G.I. Blues" (1960) were mentioned. The sleeve claims that both songs had been released on a 45 by popular request, but I guess RCA Victor simply wanted some airplay on the radio to boost the sales of these records.

Today this single is not available on the streaming platforms, because the tracks are part of the aforementioned albums.

The rock'n'roll king put this one on tape within three takes on September 5, 1957. The song was written by Bill Hayes and Jay Johnson, the first recorded version was done by Doye O'Dell. It finally got popular by cover versions of Ernest Tubb, Hogo Winterhalter & His Orchestra and Russ Morgan & His Orchestra.

In 1827 Friedrich Silcher adapted the German folk song "Muss I Denn, Muss I Denn Zum Staedtele Hinaus", 133 years later Fred Wise, Ben Weisman, Kay Twomey and Bert Kaempfert turned it into "Wooden Heart". Elvis recorded it on April 28, 1960 within four takes. Strangely though the writers didn't use the original German lyrics, but created new ones. They give the impression to have been translated with a mediocre software (just like my homepage). In Europe, Asia and South Africa RCA Victor released "Wooden Heart" on a single and sold more than 2 million copies in Germany alone! However, in the US the label stuck to the release on the album and left the number one hit to Joe Dowell.