It's pretty amazing to me that my first hit record was an Elvis Presley record.

I didn't have a lot of communication with Elvis. You had to go through a barricade to get to Elvis. It was people hanging on every word, and I felt very uncomfortable a lot of times.

If it was just me and Elvis one on one, which only happened once or twice in the times that I did see him, it was a really comfortable. He was a cool guy. Easy laugh, nice guy.

There was a chance for me to write one song for the section where Elvis sat in his black leather outfit and sang the old hits. At eight oclock the next morning I had written Memories.

Don't Cry Daddy is a pretty sad song. He got to the end of it and it was just real quiet and Elvis says, I'm gonna cut that someday for my daddy. And, by God, he did. He lived up to his word.