Gary, Knowing your keen interest in all things Elvis :), I thought you might be interested in this bit of news ...
Elvis Lives! at Least on Top of UK Pop Charts
LONDON (Reuters) - The King has grabbed the British pop crown, and bested the Beatles to do it.
With a little help from a Dutch DJ and a dash of World Cup fever, Elvis Presley has soared to the top of the British charts 25 years after his death with a new version of an obscure tune that made little splash when it was first released.
Figures from the Official UK Charts Company showed on Sunday that a dance remix by the Amsterdam-based DJ and record producer JXL of Presley's "A Little Less Conversation," came straight into the charts at No. 1.
The result breaks a long-running tie between the U.S. music legend and the Beatles for the most No. 1 hits in the United Kingdom. Until Sunday, it had stood at 17 apiece.
The original version of the song, which Elvis sang in his 1968 film "Live a Little, Love a Lot," reached No. 69 on the U.S. singles charts in 1968 and failed to enter the chart at all in Britain.
The song has caught the public's ear recently because it features in an athletic shoe advertising campaign aired repeatedly in Britain during television coverage of the soccer World Cup. It also was on the soundtrack of the 2001 movie "Ocean's Eleven."
The record books may contain an asterisk since the JXL recording takes some liberties with the song -- there is a minute-long electronic introduction, dance loops and techno tracks.
"If you hear the first minute of the song, you would have no idea that it's Elvis. It sounds like a techno song," RCA general manager Richard Sanders said this week. "And when you hear his voice kick in, it's like, 'Oh, my, that's Elvis!"'
Sanders said it marks the first contemporary remix of Presley's music allowed by RCA, a unit of Bertelsmann AG's BMG. RCA owns rights to the original master recordings of Presley's entire catalog, a spokesman said in Los Angeles this week. |
