The song was published by Elvis Presley's company Gladys Music, Inc. In the
United States, it was released in November 1964 as the B-side to "
Blue Christmas". 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 on the
Smash Records label made it to number one in the US at the end of August 1961, knocking Bobby Lewis' "
Tossin' and Turnin'" off the number one spot on the
Billboard Hot 100 after seven weeks. Dowell's version also spent three weeks at number one on the Easy Listening chart. "Wooden Heart", written by
Fred Wise,
Ben Weisman,
Kay Twomey and German bandleader
Bert Kaempfert, 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 features two sections in German, the first being the first four lines: "". The second section is towards the end and is based on a translation of the English version (therefore not appearing in the original German folk lyrics): ("Be good to me, be good to me, be to me how you really should, how you really should..."). ==Chart history==