Heartbreak Hotel told Durden, "Everybody in the world has someone who cares. Let's put a Heartbreak Hotel at the end of this lonely street". They were interrupted by the arrival of Glenn Reeves, a local performer who had previously worked with Axton. The duo asked Reeves to help with the song, but after hearing the title he remarked that it was "the silliest thing I've ever heard", and left them to finish it themselves. The song was written within an hour, and Durden recorded it onto Axton's tape recorder. Reeves returned, and after hearing the song he was asked to provide a
Heartbreak Hotel for the single. Sholes was attempting to recapture the Sun Records sound, but he was unaware that Sun founder Sam Phillips had used two tape recorders and a slight time delay to create it on previous Presley recordings. When Phillips first heard "Heartbreak Hotel", he remarked that it was a "morbid mess". Most others at RCA agreed, declaring "Heartbreak Hotel" a terrible choice of song, especially after hearing that the finished recording sounded nothing like Presley's Sun recordings. Internal memos from the time show that every one of RCA's executive corps disliked it so much that one of them insisted