Elvis' Site Says King Still Holds No. 1 Title

You won't find Mariah Carey's name mentioned in the news announcement at the official website of Elvis Presley Enterprises, just some timely stats asserting that Presley should be credited for 18 No. 1 singles during his lifetime.

So has Carey merely tied the King, not slipped by him, on the list of all-time hit makers?

"They're wrong," Geoff Mayfield, the king of Billboard's hallowed pop charts, said Friday. Presley took 17 singles to No. 1.

The discrepancy stems from the double-sided hit "Don't Be Cruel/Hound Dog" and partly from the fact that the Hot 100 chart, which has long been the industry standard for such accolades, didn't exist in 1956 when that single came out. The pre-1958 numbers that appear in Joel Whitburn's series of pop music chart stats often reflect a combination of listings that predated the Hot 100.

Like the baseball-stat freaks who argue that Babe Ruth's home run record should still stand because the season was lengthened after his career ended, some Elvis fans, and the Elvis Presley Enterprises site, consider "Don't Be Cruel" and "Hound Dog" as two No. 1 hits. Whitburn's "Top Pop Singles, 1955-2006," drawn from Billboard's charts, lists it as a single entry, and Mayfield said it's the only example on which fans and Billboard experts differ.

But as far as Billboard is concerned, since both songs appeared on a single disc, it's one hit. Period.