A pop standard with a backbeat—Conway Twitty turns “Mona Lisa” from velvet torch song into a teenage heartbeat, and the smile in the lyric suddenly looks shy and alive.
What older ears remember first is the feel: a quick, two-and-a-half-minute glide where the vocal leans forward, guitars blink with a touch of slapback, and a melody you once knew in evening wear shows up in blue jeans. When Conway Twitty cut “Mona Lisa” in 1959—early in his rock-and-roll phase—he wasn’t trying to out-croon Nat King Cole; he was taking the tune for a spin down a livelier street. Produced by Jim Vienneau for MGM, and issued in the U.S. as single K-12804 with “Heavenly” on the flip, Twitty’s version kept the lyric’s courtly awe but traded the orchestra for a lean combo and a dancer’s tempo. You can hear the difference in the first bars: no hush, just a smile and a backbeat.
The chart trail tells you how widely that smile traveled. In America the single reached No. 29 on the Billboard Hot 100 (week of August 31, 1959), while in Britain it became a true hit—peaking at No. 5 and spending fourteen weeks on the Official Singles Chart that autumn. Overseas, it went even farther: No. 1 in Australia (two weeks in September 1959), No. 2 in Norway, and No. 3 in Belgium—proof that a rock-and-roll carriage could carry a pop standard across borders without spilling a drop of its charm.
There’s a tidy bit of backstory in how the record came to be a contender. Twitty had first parked “Mona Lisa” on his debut LP Conway Twitty Sings, not counting on it as a single. But once DJs began spinning his brisk take, the rival gears started turning: at Sun/Phillips International, Sam Phillips hustled Carl Mann into the studio to cut a competing rockabilly version. Mann’s disc reached No. 25 in the U.S., Twitty’s climbed to No. 29, and between them the 1950 Oscar-winning ballad—born in Hollywood and an early signature for Nat King Cole—was suddenly a 1959 jukebox favorite again. It’s one of those classic late-’50s stories: a standard gets a fresh coat of chrome, radio bites, and the country spends a summer choosing sides at the soda fountain.
Part of the pleasure, then and now, is how Twitty reads the lyric. Cole sang the mystery of the painted smile like an intimate confession under soft lights; Twitty sings it like a young man trying to sound braver than he feels. The words—Are you warm, are you real, Mona Lisa?—don’t change, but the posture does. A little echo on the voice, a guitar answering like a friend across the room, drums tapping the floorboards: the song becomes a shy proposal you can two-step to. That change of frame doesn’t cheapen the sentiment; it grounds it, the way a dance hall grounds a dream. And because the melody is bulletproof, the tune wears both coats well—ballad and backbeat—with equal grace. (For the detail-minded: most modern releases clock Twitty’s take around 2:24–2:26.)
The context inside Twitty’s own story matters, too. This was the same young singer who had just fired a shot heard round the world with “It’s Only Make Believe”; 1959 found him straddling rock & roll, teen balladry, and pop standards, long before he settled into his epochal country career. On Conway Twitty Sings you can hear that range—the Ray Charles cover, the show-tune chestnut, and this cinema-born classic all sharing sleeves with original material. “Mona Lisa” worked here as both homage and experiment: could a mid-century standard live inside the new beat without losing its dignity? The answer, judged by the charts and by the way older listeners still hum it, was yes.
As for meaning—what sits under the lacquer—Twitty’s version catches a different kind of longing than Cole’s. Cole gives you reverence; Twitty gives you nerve. The lyric’s question becomes a dare: can the untouchable girl behind the famous smile step down from the frame and meet him in the real world? It’s the sound of an era that believed in possibility, one 45 at a time—kids putting nickels in the jukebox, adults pretending not to tap their feet. For those of us who grew up with a radio glowing in the kitchen, that beat still holds a kind of mercy. It turns wistfulness into movement. It lets you carry a torch without burning your hands.
Spin it today and the record still breathes: Vienneau’s no-frills production, that crisp little guitar reply, Twitty’s slightly urgent phrasing—nothing fussy, everything present tense. You’re not in a concert hall; you’re in a room with scuffed floors and good company, where a great tune proves it can live nine lives. That’s the abiding charm of Conway Twitty’s “Mona Lisa.” It keeps the mystery, loses the museum rope, and invites you out on the floor—one more postcard from a moment when American music was figuring out, right in front of us, how old songs become new again.