On this day in 1958, Elvis Presley‘s double-sided smash “I Got Stung”/”One Night” hits the #1 spot on the CKWX Sensational Sixty (“The ONLY survey of best-selling records in Vancouver”). Elvis recorded the songs in Nashville as he was getting ready to join the U.S. Army for a 17-month stay in Germany.

These were my final days at CKWX. I wanted to work in commercial television and KGW/Portland had offered me a weekly television show much like Dick Clark‘s “American Bandstand” show once a week. Jack Wasserman of The Vancouver Sun wrote, “When Red Robinson exits for his Portland TV job he becomes eligible for the U. S. draft, which is going to a lot of trouble for an interview with Elvis.”

By 1958 teenagers were buying 70 percent of all records. In one of my final Sun columns I said, “The question the record companies are asking is, will Elvis going overseas affect the music industry to the extent of eliminating rock’n’roll? The big record companies don’t seem to think so. They have geared the mechanism of the industry to produce rock’n’roll for at least another two years.”

“I Got Stung”/”One Night” stayed in the top spot until December 15 when novelty record “The Chipmunk Song” claimed the #1 position. Both songs appeared on 1959’s greatest hits album “50,000,000 Elvis Fans Can’t Be Wrong”.

Coming up: Elvis returns!