The story behind the song
JUST A LITTLE U.S. HISTORY. It’s pretty cool that a main line in Return To Sender actually references some history that most people have forgotten about. The phrase “No such number, no such zone” is talking about the old postal delivery zone system that the U.S. used to have. What’s wild is that just one year after the song came out, in 1963, the United States Post Office switched over to the ZIP code system we use today. Fast forward a bunch of years, and the song’s postal theme ended up coming back around in an interesting way when the U.S. Postal Service put out its famous 1993 Elvis commemorative stamp. That stamp became super popular and ended up selling 124 million copies to people who loved Elvis and collectors.
So basically, the song referenced an old postal system, that system got replaced pretty quickly, and then decades later the postal service honored Elvis with a stamp that became a huge deal.
Return to Sender was written by the famous songwriting duo Otis Blackwell and Winfield Scott. Blackwell had already become a key part of Elvis’s music, writing huge songs like Don’t Be Cruel and All Shook Up. Blackwell got Scott to start writing pop songs. Together, they came up with the song’s idea about a guy having relationship problems who keeps trying to mail a letter to his girlfriend, but the post office keeps rejecting it with stamps saying things like “address unknown” and “no such person”.
Elvis laid down this track on March 27, 1962, at Radio Recorders in Hollywood, California. The recording session went really smoothly, and Elvis nailed the final version in just two takes. The song has this upbeat, catchy rhythm that was driven by Boots Randolph’s awesome baritone saxophone work, plus the Jordanaires added some really clean backup vocals to round it out.
Return to Sender blew up and became a huge hit all around the world. The song climbed to number 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart. When it came to the Billboard Hot R&B Singles chart, it reached number 5 late in 1962. The track shot straight to number 1 on the UK Singles Chart, moving more than 750,000 copies and even winning the awesome UK Christmas number 1 spot in 1962. Plus, it dominated the charts in a bunch of other places like Australia, Canada, Ireland, Norway, and Sweden.
AT A GLANCE