abstract
| - %22Wooden Heart%22 (%22Muss i denn%22 lit. Must I then) is a song best known for its use in the 1960 Elvis Presley film G.I. Blues. The song was a hit single for Presley in the UK Singles Chart, making No. 1 for six weeks there in March and April 1961, but was not released on a single in the United States until November 1964, where it was the B-side to %22Blue Christmas%22. Presley performed the song live during his Dinner Show concert at the Hilton Hotel in Las Vegas in 1975, a recording available on the Elvis Presley live album Dinner At Eight.A cover version by Joe Dowell made it to number one in the US at the end of August 1961, knocking Bobby Lewis' %22Tossin' and Turnin'%22 off the number-one spot of the Billboard Hot 100 after seven weeks. Dowell's version also spent three weeks at number one on the Easy Listening chart.%22Wooden Heart%22, created by Fred Wise, Ben Weisman, Kay Twomey and German bandleader Bert Kaempfert, was based on a German folk song by Friedrich Silcher, Muss i denn, originating from the Rems Valley in Württemberg, southwest Germany. %22Wooden Heart%22 features several lines from the original folk song, written in the German Swabian dialect, spoken in Württemberg. Marlene Dietrich recorded a version of the song sometime before 1958, pre-dating Presley, in the original German language, which appears as a B-side on a 1959 version of her single %22Lili Marlene%22, released by Philips in association with Columbia Records. The Elvis Presley version was published by Gladys Music, Elvis Presley's publishing company. Bobby Vinton recorded his version in 1975 with those lines translated into Polish.The Elvis Presley version featured two parts in German, the first one is the first four lines of %22Muss i' denn zum Städtele hinaus%22, whereas the second part appears towards the end and is based on a translation of the English version (therefore not appearing in the original German folk lyrics). This part being %22Sei mir gut, sei mir gut, sei mir wie du wirklich sollst, wie du wirklich sollst...%22 This literally means %22Be good to me, Be good to me, Be to me how you really should, How you really should...%22
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