Elvis’s Viva lass Vegas
QUESTION Did Elvis ever perform duets? ELVIS PRESLEY never produced an album of duets, which was probably down to his controlling manager Colonel Tom Parker, whose aim was to squeeze every dime he could out of the singer.
However, Elvis often performed duets in his films. The Colonel had Elvis star in more than 30 films of ever- decreasing quality because he kept a higher percentage of the movie take than the star. While some of the 20-plus duets are great, most are rubbish.
One of Elvis’s better efforts was in 1964’s viva las vegas where he played a racing car driver. Waiting for a new engine for his hot rod, he takes a menial gig at a casino so he can woo Ann-Margret.
The two had great chemistry and a steamy off-stage affair. They performed three fine duets, though only The lady loves Me made the cut.
Elvis sings a solo version of the ballad Today, Tomorrow and Forever, though he and Ann-Margret had recorded a duet. The producers cut the best duet, a cracking version of you’re The Boss.
There’s also the arresting scene from 1958’s King Creole, regarded as Elvis’s best movie, where Kitty White rides through the town singing and selling crawfish. A T-shirted Elvis, leaning out of his window, offers up a counterpoint melody.
Film curiosities include Elvis’s performance of Aloha Oe with The Hawaii surfers in 1961’s Blue Hawaii and Earth Boy with the young Hong Kong-born sisters Ginny and Elizabeth Tiu in 1962’s Girls! Girls! Girls! He duetted with their younger sister vicky in 1963’s it Happened At The World’s Fair.
But nothing was more lamentable than yoga is As yoga Does with Elsa lanchester for 1967’s Easy Come, Easy Go.
Paul Jeffries, Exeter.
Elvis’s most famous duet took place after he’d returned from military service in West Germany and was invited to be a guest on Frank sinatra’s Tv show.
On March 26, 1960, The King joined The voice on stage at the Fontainebleau Hotel in Florida to film The Frank sinatra Timex show: Welcome Home Elvis special.
This was Presley’s first Tv appearance in three years and his first serious show since 1957, and he was nervous about how he would be received.
The superstars duetted on each other’s hits, Presley’s love Me Tender and sinatra’s Witchcraft. The Elvis fans made it quite clear he had been missed.
And thanks to modern technology, there was the very expensive production of a duet performed on Tv’s American idol in 2007. Elvis’s hologram and Celine Dion perform the stunning duet if i Can Dream in a one- off performance watched by 70 million viewers.
Elvis made another posthumous duet: love Me Tender on Barbra streisand’s 2014 Partners album.
Keith Lawrence, Pontefract, W. Yorks.
QUESTION Which railway stations are more than a mile from the town after which they are named? AT FivE miles, Corrour station in the scottish Highlands is furthest in a straight line from the place it is named after. However, Corrour lodge is not a town, but a luxury rural retreat 11 miles from a road, so can hardly be considered a community.
Dent station on the settle-Carlisle line is nearly five miles from Dent village by road and 400ft higher. local legend has it that soon after the railway was opened, a visitor asked a local why the station was so far from the village. They received the blunt reply: ‘Happen they wanted it near t’ railway line.’
llanbister road in Mid Wales is five miles from llanbister, but you could argue the station is not named after the village, but the road to it.
road was a title often given to a station by railway companies to acknowledge it was a long way from the place whose name it had borrowed.
Gatehouse of Fleet in Dumfries & Galloway was more than six miles from the town, but the station closed in 1965 along with the rest of the line from Dumfries to stranraer.
Bob Bell, Croydon, Surrey.
THE world record was held by Fraserburg road station on the main line from Cape Town to Johannesburg. When it was opened in 1879, it was named after a town 70 miles away. in 1950, it was renamed leeu- Gamka after the town that had grown up around it.
Roderick Moore, Liverpool.
SEVERAL park- and- ride railway stations have the suffix Parkway. This usually means they lie outside the town they serve.
The first was Bristol Parkway, which opened in 1972 and is seven miles from the city centre. Oxford Parkway, Bodmin Parkway, stratford-upon-Avon Parkway and Warwick Parkway are all a good bus ride from the town centre.
What remains a mystery is why the planners chose to call Didcot and Port Talbot stations parkways as they are not far from their respective towns.
Beth Jones, Thame, Oxon.
QUESTION What caused the great video games crash in the 1980s? FURTHER to the earlier answer, while there was, indeed, a great video games crash in the u.s. in the 1980s, our market was thriving, driven by homegrown micro computers.
sir Clive sinclair sold more than 500,000 ZX spectrum machines by late 1983, the supposed crash year, and his company sinclair research made millions.
Robert Frazer, Salford, Lancs.