Songwriter Bernie Wayne was inspired to begin writing "Blue Velvet" on a 1951 visit to Richmond, Virginia where he stayed at the Jefferson Hotel.
At a party at the hotel, Wayne continually caught sight of a female guest dressed in blue velvet with whom he would have a holiday romance.
")[3] Recorded in a July 17, 1951 session with the Percy Faith orchestra and released September 21, 1951, Bennett's version peaked at No.
"[9] The New York Times music journalist Stephen Holden would vaunt "Blue Velvet" as one of the four tracks which defined the first phase of Bennett's recording career: according to Holden "Blue Velvet" along with "Because of You" (1951), "Cold, Cold Heart" (1951), and "Stranger in Paradise" (1953), "stand as the gorgeous final flowering of the high-romantic style invented in the 1940s by Sinatra [with] arranger Axel Stordahl.
Pure and throbbing, ...Bennett's voice adds a semi-operatic heft to Sinatra's more intimate crooning style.
[11] A live version of "Blue Velvet" was featured on the 1962 concert album Tony Bennett at Carnegie Hall,[12] with the selection being included on The Good Life, a 1963 EP release in the UK.
[20] The first version of "Blue Velvet" to appear on the Billboard Hot 100 during the rock 'n' roll era was recorded and released by the Statues, a Nashville-based doo-wop trio consisting of Buzz Cason, Hugh Jarrett, and Richard Williams.
[21] In 1959 Cason and Williams, members of local rockabilly band the Casuals, had been invited by Jarrett, a former member of the Jordanaires and later a disc jockey at WLAC, to join him - along with veteran background singer and composer Marijohn Wilkin - to form a vocal chorale who would back artists recording in Nashville;[21][22] the three male members of the chorale were signed to Liberty Records by label founder Al Bennett, who had Snuff Garrett - in his apparent debut as a producer - record the trio in three sessions at the Bradley Studios at the end of November or the beginning of December 1959.
[23] Two sides from the Garrett sessions had a May 1960 single release credited to the Statues (the group name was a reference to the Statue of Liberty, as the group was signed to Liberty Records): the intended A-side was the Marijohn Wilkin original co-write (with Polly Harrison) "Keep the Hall Light Burning" but it was the flip: a remake of "Blue Velvet", which would not only become a Top Ten hit in Nashville but also rank on regional hit parades across the US rising as high as No.
[24] However, the Statues's version of "Blue Velvet" would only accrue enough focused national interest to rank on the Hot 100 for a period of three weeks in August 1960, with a peak of No.
[38] Vinton's recording failed to make the British charts when originally released, but the track's being heard in a televised ad campaign for Nivea cold cream effected a 1990 UK re-release[39] with "Blue Velvet" reaching No.
American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey released a cover of the song "Blue Velvet" in 2012.
Industry moguls Michelle Williams, Alexa Chung, Elizabeth Olsen, and Anna Wintour attended the party and were impressed by the performance.
[59] In the video, Del Rey is singing the song in a low-lit room before an audience of pallid people, playing an Americana lounge singer dressed in a pink mohair sweater,[60] She is then hypnotized.
[61] Compared to the David Lynch film of the same name,[63] it was directed by Johan Renck,[63] and composed in post-World War II Americana fashion and the notion of external beauty cloaking inner vulnerability.
"[61] Carl Williot, of Idolator, dubbed Del Rey's cover "beautifully languorous and dreary (though [it] is replete with her go-to swell of strings and grainy programmed beats).
"[64] Jenna Hally Rubenstein, writing for MTV, called the commercial and vocals "moody, totally broody," playfully adding, "What would a Lana Del Rey campaign be if it didn't make you feel a tad depressed?"
[62] People said the video was dramatic, intriguing, unique, and played off the moody, vintage Hollywood image of the retro-inspired starlet.
[citation needed] The 2016 album Upward Spiral by the Branford Marsalis Quartet with vocalist Kurt Elling features a remake of "Blue Velvet".
"[89] Songwriter Bernie Wayne would state that at the film's premiere, he was told by Lynch that when he was a high school student in 1963, Vinton's "Blue Velvet" had been his favorite song.