Songfacts®:

• Joe Meek wrote the original version of this song, titled "Put a Ring on Her Finger," for an English musician named Eddie Silver. The song didn't do well in the charts, but it did reach the ears of Les Paul. Paul altered the title to "Put a Ring on My Finger" and, along with wife Mary Ford, released his own version in 1958. The song cracked the Top 50 in both the Billboard and Cash Box charts (Cash Box was a competitor of Billboard at the time).
  
  The royalties that resulted from this song helped Meek fund his later studio work - work that greatly influenced the evolution of music engineering and led to hits such as "Telstar" and "Have I the Right?"
  
  Meek was a wildly inventive but tragic character who ended his own life after killing his landlady, Violet Shenton. Still, his musical legacy was important enough that figures such as Jimmy Page recalled his importance. Multiple documentaries, a stage play, and a feature film have been made about Meek's life.