On Beating Elvis Presley

Terry Stafford's "Suspicion" a one-hit wonder

Somewhere in my stack of 45’s is a disc with a black label, the “Crusader” label, I learn this afternoon. I must have heard it on a jukebox somewhere. I remember in Brookline, the old Railroad Snack Bar had those little glass globes juke boxes in every booth where you’d get three plays for a quarter.

They had little tiny red and white billboards for each single - the A-side and the B-side - and there were little metal handles at the top of the globe so you could see multiple pages and the lists of jukebox songs.

After a while, the guy who ran the place, Charles Corey, who tossed nickels around like hubcaps, would collect these worn 45’s in a little box and sell them for 50 cents a piece, often stapling that little billboard title to the paper sleeve. That must have been where I got my 45 of Terry Stafford’s remarkable one-hit wonder, “Suspicion.”

I didn’t know a thing about the guy. I don’t remember hearing it on the radio but I might have. I just loved the song. I didn’t think it was Elvis Presley, like apparently a lot of people did. But it was just so catchy, his deep, resonant voice seemed to catch all the nooks and crannies of the song perfectly, the repeating horn line just draws you in like a snake charmer.

It was the kind of 45 you’d leave on the turntable and let it repeat which is what I did yesterday. Go ahead. Give it a listen now. And see if one is enough.

Terry Stafford’s one-hit wonder in 1964. He bumped Beatles’ Top Five, climbed to No. 3

I hadn’t heard the song in years when, scanning Elvis Radio (Channel 75 on Sirius XM) the other day, they played it again, sharing a little backstory about the song and its connection to Elvis.

Elvis actually recorded the Doc Pomus-Mort Shuman song first in March of 1962 and it’s a competent version. There’s some sort of cheesy strings, almost like a harp, introducing the verse and to me, it’s not a good decision. The strings cheapen the hurt, the obsession in the lyrics. It’s a dark, haunting song - or it could be.

We hear Elvis just sort of ease through the track, one of the four songs he recorded that day in Nashville, cuts that would wind up on his album “Pot Luck” released later that year. And he sang it as though it would fit on an album called “Pot Luck.”

For whatever reason, Stafford, a 21-year-old from Amarillo, Texas, decided to cut his own version of the song a couple years later and man, it was a smash! The kind of undeniable hit that was going to force its way onto the airwaves, no matter who cut it or when he released it.

On April 9, 1964, at the height of Beatlemania - the boys from England held the top five spots on the Billboard charts - Stafford’s “Suspicion” clocked in at Number 6. A week later, it rose all the way up to No. 3, cutting ahead of The Beatles! Who was this guy? Terry Stafford? Here he was on American Bandstand, lip-synching to the track, Dick Clark interviewing him. Where was this guy headed?

His follow-up song, “I’ll Touch A Star” got to No. 25 and after that, he pretty much was never heard from again. Not on the charts anyway. He later wrote a song “Amarillo By Morning” that was later covered by George Strait and became a hit. The guy died at 54 from liver failure.

Though he surely tried, he never was able to follow up “Suspicion” the way you might have - and he might have - thought. It remains one of the great mysteries of popular music, why for that one moment in a recording studio, he or she might have recorded dozens, maybe hundreds of songs, but that one cut, that one track has the inexplicable magic. Why? How does everything fall into place that one time.

Bob Dylan tried “Like A Rolling Stone” nearly 20 times before settling on Take Four, the only time the band made it through the entire song. Elvis Presley went through 30 takes of “Hound Dog” before settling on No. 31. How do they know when they’ve got it?

Of course, it seems like a slam to call someone’s smash hit a one-hit wonder. Maybe we should look closer at the last word in that phrase. There’s always room for that.

HERE’S ELVIS’S VERSION OF “SUSPICION” RECORDED IN 1962