Songfacts®:

• Mac Davis penned this song with Billy Strange. They wrote it for Elvis, a US television special featuring Elvis Presley, that aired on December 3, 1968 on the NBC television network. Davis recalled to Billboard magazine: "They had asked for a song about looking back over the years, and oddly enough, I had to write it in one night. I stayed up all night at Billy Strange's house in Los Angeles. He had a little office set up in his garage. I wrote it right there."
• In a Songfacts interview with Mac Davis, he explained how this one came together. "I went over to Billy's and he had an office in his garage," he said. "I went out there and sat there all night and wrote the song 'Memories.' We did a demo on it the next day, and they accepted it. They were actually going to sing part of the song in the first half of that segment, at the beginning of it, and another one like a bookend, but he ended up just sitting down at the edge of the stage. It was really nice, the way he did it.
  
  But that's how it came about. I just sat up all night and I was under pressure, and sometimes that works, when you're really under the gun. I'm glad it did, because it sealed a deal with him. He started looking at my songs and wanting to record more of my stuff, which was phenomenal."
• Davis went on to write "Don't Cry Daddy" and "In The Ghetto" for Elvis before launching a solo career. In 1972, he had a #1 hit with "Baby Don't Get Hooked on Me"; later in the decade, he turned to acting, starring in the 1979 movie North Dallas Forty.