A new Elvis Presley emerged from the Army. He returned to the U.S. in March of 1960 and was greeted not only by loyal fans, but by a fairly friendly press. Radio, TV, and newspaper reporters who had derided him in the ’50s calling him a “no-talent” or worse, were impressed by his role as a model soldier. Elvis rewarded his newfound allies in a number of ways. He appeared with Frank Sinatra, the man who had scathingly denounced rock ‘n’ roll as “a rancid-smelling aphrodisiac.” He began, with G.I. Blues and Flaming Star, a string of innocuous movies that he himself would make fun of in later years. And he moved away from rock ‘n’ roll in his records. The new, “improved” Elvis was suddenly acceptable to radio stations that wouldn’t touch his material even a year before. And it all started with “It’s Now or Never.”

     In case you’ve never noticed, “It’s Now or Never” is based on an Italian operatic theme called “0 Sole Mio.” That song was composed in 1901 by Eduardo di Capua. It was popularized in America by Mario Lanza, who sang it in Italian, and then popularized again in an English “translation” by Tony Martin. His version was called “There’s No Tomorrow”, and it hit #2 on the pop charts in 1949. So what was “Elvis the Pelvis” doing, singing like Mario Lanza? Actually, the King had always admired crooners like Dean Martin and operatic voices like Lanza’s. It’s just that no one ever talked about it before. Now that his image was undergoing a face-lift, the song became a symbolic gesture to his new adult audience. He didn’t just talk like a nice guy now; he sang like one, too.
 
     Elvis had decided to record the song while he was still stationed in Germany. He told his music publisher, Freddie Bienstock, who’d gone to visit him there, that he wanted new lyrics for it. Freddie returned to Hill and Range Publishing in New York with the news, and informed the only people he found in the office that day, Wally Gold and Aaron Schroeder. They asked why he didn’t just re-record the Tony Martin song; Bienstock replied that Elvis just didn’t like it -- it wasn’t his style. So Gold and Schroeder picked up the most coveted assignment in pop music by default.

WALLY GOLD: “Elvis was a plum. .All the writers, we all wrote our behinds off when a project [like that] was presented to us. This time we were lucky because we were the only ones sitting in the office. We jumped in a cab to go back to Aaron’s studio. We got the title in the cab, the melody was already written, and in half an hour we knocked off the lyric. We brought it back to Freddie the same day and he said, ‘Great! Terrific! Go do a demo.’ And we did.”

     This was a typical Elvis procedure. If a song was accepted by Bienstock, the writers would make a demo, and if Elvis liked it, he would record the song exactly as it was on the demo. For “It’s Now or Never,” Gold and Schroeder made an up-tempo, cha-cha flavored arrangement, sung by actor David Hess, who was using the name David Hill. Elvis loved it (it became his favorite of all his records), and recorded it in the same sessions for the “Elvis Is Back” LP, about two weeks after he got out of the Army. Schroeder had certainly been in the right place at the right time.

WALLY GOLD: “It was enormous. Number one in every market of the world, which made it, I believe, the number one single of his entire recording career. Worldwide it sold more than twenty million. For a few issues we were in the Guinness Book as the largest-selling single in the history of pop music. . . .Aaron wrote other hits, I wrote other hits, but a song we finished in twenty minutes to a half hour was the biggest song of our career!”