You and the swan will float upon a cloud of pink ice cream

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

08/09/63 : It Happened At The World's Fair - Elvis Presley

Obviously we weren't going to be able to get through the year without at least one visit with The King - this takes up him up to eighteen and two clear at the top ahead of The Rolling Stones. And I'm sure it will all be perfectly bearable but also completely inessential.

Well - this is peculiar. Half of it is rock'n'roll-ish, but it's more swing-y in a Sinatra kinda style than I was expecting - unexpected but not bad. And the other half is more like nursery rhymes with some particularly bad lyrics - unexpected but bad. I can't complain too much though because it's ten tracks which are done in 22 minutes, so you can't say it outstays its welcome - but it was surprisingly close to doing so.

We're at #14 in the charts this week on his nineteenth week of a twenty week run, with it having peaked at #4 on it's 3rd-7th and 13th-14th weeks - obviously he was still popular, but not everyone's top choice. The top five this week were The Beatles, The Shadows, The Searchers, the Cliff Richard best-of and West Side Story with the highest new entry being The Best Of Radio Luxembourg (#19) - amusingly one of the tracks on that is by Elaine & Derek, which aren't exactly the most rock'n'roll names but Derek (who was 13 at the time) went on to become much better known as - go on, guess. You won't, so I'm offering 20 points for this one...

Wikipedia tells us this is his sixth soundtrack album and they spent a whole two days recording it (and it shows). Apparently they originally planned to release this as a deluxe-priced, gatefold sleeve album but when they realised how little music they had, they thought better of it. "One Broken Heart For Sale" was Elvis's first single release not to make the top five in the US - but given it was only 1:35 long, I can understand that people weren't that impressed. Critically, it's not viewed as one of his best, but it still got to #4 in the US charts.

discogs.com tells us you're still going to have spend a fiver if you want an original copy of this, but if you want a Japanese original then that's going to set you back £60 - or if you fancy going completely mad, then you can head over to the US and pick up the special edition double 180gm vinyl reissue from 2022 which will cost you $350. Utter madness I tell you. We've met far too much Elvis from this time but the good news is that this was at least slightly different - but the bad news is that it wasn't different in a good way.

And Derek from the swinging brother-sister duo (who mostly recorded hymns and traditional Irish music) was none other than Derek Thompson, who would go on to become better known as Charlie Fairhead in Casualty - he was in 901 episodes across 30 years! Apparently he also appeared in many early productions in the National Theatre in the 70s and can also be seen in Harry's Game (now best known for the Clannad music), Yanks (the Richard Gere film) and Breaking Glass (starring Hazel O'Connor) - I imagine they're amusing to stumble across.

22/09/63 - Surprisingly bearable, for him