Who recorded it first
Unchained Melody
Not a Righteous Brothers original — Todd Duncan sang it first, for a 1955 prison film
The recording almost everyone meets first is The Righteous Brothers’ 1965 Philles single, and a great many people assume that is where the song begins. It is not. “Unchained Melody” was written by Alex North (music) and Hy Zaret (lyrics) as the theme for the Warner Bros. prison picture Unchained, and the first person to record it was the operatic baritone Todd Duncan, who cut it for that film’s soundtrack and also appeared on screen as a prisoner singing a shortened version. Duncan’s performance never became a hit record in its own right — within weeks the song was being carried up the charts by other singers entirely.
The record
Who recorded it first
Released Recorded for the soundtrack of the Warner Bros. prison film Unchained, released 19 January 1955. Duncan also performs an abbreviated version on screen as a prisoner. It was a film vocal rather than a commercial single.
Charted Did not chart. The 1955 hits belonged to other singers entirely — Les Baxter (US number one), Al Hibbler (US number three) and Roy Hamilton (US R&B number one, pop number six).
How to check this
The song’s Wikipedia article ↗ states that the version in the film’s soundtrack was sung by Todd Duncan, and dates the Righteous Brothers’ recording to 2 March 1965 with release on 17 July 1965.
Duncan’s own biography ↗ says outright that he was the first to record “Unchained Melody,” for the film’s soundtrack, and that he played a small role in the picture.
The Songwriters Hall of Fame profile ↗ independently credits North and Zaret as writers and Duncan as the soundtrack vocalist, and notes the 1990 Ghost revival of the 1965 record.
The film’s entry ↗ confirms the 19 January 1955 Warner Bros. release and Duncan’s on-screen performance of the theme.
Wikipedia: Unchained Melody — recordings and chart historyKnow more about the original — or think we’ve got it wrong? Add a source →
Fact-check
What people get wrong
The 1965 Righteous Brothers record is so completely identified with the song that the film it was written for has effectively vanished from the story.
The Righteous Brothers
Their recording, made in March 1965 and issued that July as a B-side, is assumed to be where the song starts — an assumption cemented when Ghost put it in front of a new audience in 1990.
Todd Duncan
The operatic baritone recorded the vocal for the soundtrack of the 1955 Warner Bros. film Unchained and sang a shortened version on screen. It was a film performance, not a hit single, and it did not chart.
Les Baxter, Al Hibbler, Roy Hamilton
Even the versions that made the song famous in its own year were covers of Duncan’s soundtrack recording. Baxter reached number one in the US, Hibbler number three, Hamilton number one R&B.
Alex North and Hy Zaret
North wrote the music as a film theme and Zaret the lyric. Neither man performed it, and the song was nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song.
First recorded by Todd Duncan for the 1955 film Unchained; the famous record is a 1965 cover.
Context
Why the cover swallowed the original
The original had no chance to become famous, because it was never really a record — it was a piece of a film. Todd Duncan sang it into the soundtrack of Unchained ↗, a modest Warner Bros. prison drama that opened in January 1955, and performed an abbreviated version on screen as an inmate accompanied by another prisoner on guitar. That is a beautiful way to introduce a song and a hopeless way to sell one. The hits of 1955 belonged to people who had never been near the picture: Les Baxter’s orchestral treatment went to number one in the US, Al Hibbler reached number three, Roy Hamilton topped the R&B chart.
So the song was already a much-covered standard by the time Bill Medley and Bobby Hatfield got to it, and even they did not think they were making history. Phil Spector regarded “Unchained Melody” as album material and put it on the flip side of “Hung on You.” Disc jockeys turned the single over anyway, and it reached number four in the US. Then the 1990 film Ghost put that same 1965 recording in front of a generation with no memory of Les Baxter, let alone Todd Duncan — it re-entered the US chart at number thirteen and went to number one in the UK. A record made to fill space on a B-side became, for most listeners alive today, the song itself.
The chronology, step by step
- Alex North composes the music as a theme for the prison film Unchained; Hy Zaret writes the lyric.
- Todd Duncan records the vocal for the film’s soundtrack — his Wikipedia biography dates the session to 1954 — and appears in the picture as a prisoner singing a shortened version.
- 19 January 1955: Unchained is released by Warner Bros. The song is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Song and loses to “Love Is a Many-Splendored Thing.”
- 1955: commercial versions take over. Les Baxter reaches number one in the US, Al Hibbler number three (and number two in the UK), Roy Hamilton number one on the R&B chart and number six pop.
- 2 March 1965: The Righteous Brothers record their version at Radio Recorders, Hollywood, with Bobby Hatfield singing lead alone.
- 17 July 1965: Philles issues it as the B-side of “Hung on You.” Radio flips the record; it peaks at number four in the US and number fourteen in the UK.
- 1990: Ghost revives the 1965 recording. It reaches number thirteen in the US and number one in the UK, and becomes the version most listeners assume is the original.
The first voice to sing it was a prisoner in a film nobody remembers.