On the night of March 11, 1975, inside RCA’s Studio C on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, Elvis Presley recorded “Susan When She Tried,” a country song written by Don Reid of the Statler Brothers. It was the middle night of the last session Elvis would ever hold in a professional recording studio. And the man who wrote the song was not in the room. He never met Elvis at all.
Don Reid said as much himself, long after the Statlers retired. When an interviewer mentioned Elvis’s love of gospel music and asked whether their paths had ever crossed, Reid answered in four short sentences.
“We never did. We had a lot of mutual friends. We actually never knew Elvis. He did record one of my songs at one point.”
The Invitation Don Reid Couldn’t Accept
There was a chance to change that. In The Music of the Statler Brothers: An Anthology, his 2020 book that walks through every song the group recorded, Reid wrote that Elvis heard “Susan When She Tried” and put it on his Today album, and that he was invited to the session the night Elvis recorded it. He wrote that he wasn’t able to go.
A Song Named for a Lawyer’s Wife
The song itself began with a small personal favor. In the same book, Don Reid recalled that the Statlers’ attorney at the time, Cal Thomas, asked him one evening to use his wife’s name the next time a song needed one. Her name was Susan.
The title came from Reid’s reading. He was a fan of crime novelist Ed McBain, who had published an 87th Precinct mystery called Sadie When She Died. Reid turned that into “Susan When She Tried,” a wry, up-tempo song about a man who got over a whole list of women but can’t shake the memory of one.
The Statler Brothers recorded it on May 23, 1973, and released it as a single in the fall of 1974. It reached No. 15 on Billboard’s country chart and appeared on their Mercury album Sons of the Motherland.
Three Nights on Sunset Boulevard
Elvis Presley turned 40 in January 1975. Hospital records later cited in court show he spent about two weeks at Baptist Memorial Hospital in Memphis that winter, from late January to mid-February. Less than a month after his release, he was back in Hollywood.
The session opened on Monday, March 10, with producer Felton Jarvis and engineer Rick Ruggieri at the controls. Elvis arrived with his girlfriend Sheila Ryan and his daughter, Lisa Marie. Behind him were James Burton, John Wilkinson and Charlie Hodge on guitar, Glen D. Hardin on piano, David Briggs on clavinet, Ronnie Tutt on drums and Duke Bardwell on bass, with Donnie Sumner, Sherrill Nielsen, Tim Baty and Tommy Hensley singing backup.
The second night ran from 9 p.m. to midnight on Tuesday, March 11. Along with “Susan When She Tried,” Elvis finished “T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” “Woman Without Love” and “Shake a Hand.”
Six Takes and a Quiet Fix
According to the session research of Ernst Jorgensen and Keith Flynn, based on the original tapes and paperwork, Elvis cut “Susan When She Tried” in six takes. The first broke down after about half a minute. The sixth became the master, a bright country shuffle carried by James Burton’s quick guitar picking.
The finished record was not quite what went down in the room. The ending was edited to cover a vocal mistake, and the track was faded early. On April 8, Duke Bardwell’s bass part was removed and replaced by Norbert Putnam, as it was on most of the album. Years later, collectors’ releases put the longer, unedited takes back into circulation.
Where the Song Landed
RCA released the album Today on May 7, 1975, with “Susan When She Tried” as the third song on side one. The lead single, “T-R-O-U-B-L-E,” came out on April 22 with “Mr. Songman” on the flip side.
The song Don Reid wrote as a favor to the Statlers’ lawyer had become part of the last album Elvis Presley would record in a professional studio. Elvis never worked in a commercial studio again. His final sessions, in 1976, were held at Graceland, with RCA’s recording equipment brought to him.