It Hurts Me

In the U.S. release, "Joy Byers" was credited as the songwriter. In the UK, the song was credited to Joy Byers and Charlie Daniels. The song was published by Elvis Presley Music, Inc. in the U.S. and by Sea Lark Music, Ltd. in the UK. Record producer and songwriter Bob Johnston revealed that he had actually written the songs attributed to his wife Joy Byers, including "It Hurts Me".^[5][6]

Before Christmas in 1962, as Charlie Daniels was driving from El Paso, Texas, to the East Coast, he began forming the idea that would become the song. Afterwards Bob Johnston invited him to Nashville to co-write songs. They finished the song together. Daniels recalled: "We just went on, and we finished it up, and Bob did a demo on it, and the company that he was writing for at the time---Hill and Range was the parent company---handled Elvis Presley Music and Gladys Music, which was Elvis Presley's two companies."^[7]

Daniels explained: "Elvis came to town. He picked it up and held it for almost a year in what was called his portfolio. You know, they'd pick songs out for Elvis and when he'd go in to record, he'd review them, and if he liked it, he'd do it. So anyway, he recorded it, and it was by far the biggest thing that had ever happened to me in my life." Although he never met Presley, Daniels did meet his daughter, Lisa Marie, at an event in Memphis: "I just got to tell her, I said, 'You know your dad picked one of my songs. I was a big fan.'"

• Jorgensen, Ernst (1998). Elvis Presley: A life in music. The complete recording sessions. St. Martin's Press. ISBN 0-312-18572-3.