Songfacts®:

• Buddy Knox wrote the original verses of this song in 1948 behind a haystack on his Texas family farm. The rockabilly singer got together with some college friends to record the tune several years later at the Clovis, New Mexico studio of Norman Petty. Just 1,500 copies of the record were pressed, but when a DJ in Amarillo began playing the tune in 1956, "Party Doll" soon became a regional hit.
  
  The record was picked up by Morris Levy's Roulette label in New York and given a national release. Following a memorable rendition by Buddy Knox and his group on the Ed Sullivan Show, the song topped radio play lists coast-to-coast and rose to the top of the Top 100 chart.
• Almost immediately after Roulette released "Party Doll," competing versions of the song were recorded and released by other record labels. The most successful was by singer Steve Lawrence, which became a pop hit reaching #5 on the Billboard Top 100.
• The drum sound on this was actually made by a cardboard box filled with cotton. The Crickets stickman Jerry Allison was inspired to also use a cardboard box instead of a drum for "Not Fade Away" after hearing this song.