Songfacts®:

• Brenda Lee was just 14 years old when she belted this rockabilly tune about a boyfriend who whispers "sweet nothin's" in her ear.
  
  Written by Ronnie Self, who had his own rockabilly hit a year earlier with the raucous "Bop-A-Lena," the track begins with the hushed murmurings of Lee's purported beau, voiced by Louis Nunley of the Anita Kerr Singers. Nunley recalled the recording session, which was held at producer Owen Bradley's Quonset Hut studio in Nashville, to Lee's Little Miss Dynamite (2002) co-author Robert K. Oermann.
  
  "It was all done on the spot," he explained. "Brenda was at her microphone and we were at ours. I was the one standing closest to her, on the end. Since I was the closest, I was picked to come over to do the whispering into her microphone. I wasn't saying anything really. Just gibberish. Everyone was putting in their two cents' worth, acting silly."
• Self and Lee had the same manager, Dub Allbritten, a domineering man who had a tight grip on Lee's career but was instrumental in making her an international star. He tried to do the same for Self, but the young performer's erratic behavior and struggles with alcoholism thwarted his numerous attempts at a successful singing career. Self did find success as a songwriter and wrote a couple more hits for Lee, including "I'm Sorry" and "Everybody Loves Me But You." He died in 1981 at age 43.
• Elvis Presley was a big fan of this song. According to Priscilla Presley, who met Elvis while he was stationed in Germany during his military service in 1959, he was playing the record when she walked into the room to meet him for the first time. When Elvis returned home to the States the following year, he contacted Lee in Nashville to tell her how much he loved the song and asked her to autograph a copy for him.
  
  "He even sent a limousine over to pick it up at Dub's office. I couldn't believe it. The whole staff was excited," she remembered in Little Miss Dynamite.
• This was Lee's first major hit on both sides of the pond. It peaked at #4 in both the US (where it also went to #12 on the R&B chart) and the UK. Her growing popularity renewed interest in her festive tune "Rockin' Around The Christmas Tree," which sold poorly upon its 1958 release but gained enough traction by 1960 to enter the Hot 100, where it peaked at #14 (It finally reached #1 in 2023).
• Lee's vocals were adapted by producer David Z as background vocals for Prince's 1986 hit "Kiss." Her voice was also sampled by Kanye West for the Yeezus (2013) track "Bound 2," which in turn was reworked by the British duo Sigma for the 2014 song "Nobody to Love."
• Diana Ross recorded this for her 1981 Why Do Fools Fall In Love album.
• This was used in the movies An Education (2009), The Locusts (1997), and Traveller (1997).