In October 1965 RCA Victor released "Puppet On A String" / "Wooden Heart". On November 13th the record entered the "Hot 100" as well as the "Easy Listening Chart". On the main chart it had a run of 10 weeks and peaked at number 14, on the hitparade for easy listening music "Puppet On A String" stayed for 12 weeks and became a number 3 hit. The RIAA honored the domestic sales with a Gold Award. Even though both songs were available for quite some time and the release was limited to the US, Canada and Australia, RCA was able to sell a million copies. Translated to the present the physical amount equals 150 million paid streams. Today "Puppet On A String" barely found a million listeners on Spotify. However, "Wooden Heart" remains quite popular, clocking in at a surprising 19 million streams.

The cover was made up with a flipped promo photo for "Viva Las Vegas". The back of the sleeve advertised the longplayers, the songs were taken from as well as the current "Harum Scarum" soundtrack album.

The single is not available on the streaming platforms, but "Puppet On A String" can be found on the album "Girl Happy" (1965) and "Wooden Heart" is featured on "G.I. Blues" (1960).

The ballad was written by Sid Tepper and Roy C. Bennet and recorded by Elvis on June 10, 1964 within 11 takes. The narrator is in love and completely under the spell of his beloved one. It's a good song, without doubt the best one on the "Girl Happy" soundtrack. In 1971 RCA Victor also released the track on the boxed set "The Other Sides - Worldwide Gold Award Hits Volume 2".

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. In 1964 the track was coupled (for whatever reason) with "Blue Christmas", a year later RCA used it again on this single.