Elvis is everywhere...(now with winner announcement!)

…includ­ing, appar­ently, your iPhone, if you want it. Last week Warner Digital began offer­ing King clas­sics Elvis On Tour, Viva Las Vegas, and Jailhouse Rock on On Demand and as down­loads from iTunes. And the delight­ful folks at Warner were kind enough to offer yours truly a free down­load of the immor­tal Elvis On Tour, which will play on any device that accepts, you know, video down­loads from iTunes.
 Rather than hog the item myself—particularly as I’m a little old-fashioned about watch­ing films on mobile devices, des­pite my desire to be not so much of a luddite—I thought I would offer it to my read­er­ship. Or, rather, to the lucky and inter­ested party in my read­er­ship who can answer these three mul­tiple choice ques­tions con­cern­ing the King and his oeuvre. Yes, this is a con­test. As it’s a con­test that involves answer­ing ques­tions, it won’t be played in the com­ments sec­tion. Rather, send your answers to me, under the sub­ject line “Elvis,” via e‑mail at the address glennkenny@mac.com. First per­son to send an e‑mail with the cor­rect answers will have a link for the free down­load sent to him or her. So. Are you ready? Get set…here goes.

QUESTION 1: Which of the below-named gui­tar­ists nev­er backed up the King?

a) Scotty Moore

b) James Burton

c) Richard Lloyd

QUESTION 2: He appeared in an Elvis film when he was a child act­or; he went on to play Elvis in a tele­vi­sion biop­ic. Who is he?

a) Rick Schroeder

b) Kurt Russell

c) Tony Dow

QUESTION 3: Whose cov­er ver­sion of “Heartbreak Hotel” adds the qual­i­fi­er “I nev­er will” to the line “Take a walk down Lonely Street?”

a) Willie Nelson’s

b) Alvin and the Chipmunks’

c) John Cale’s

Results to be announced tomor­row morning.

UPDATE: Ooops! Someone who did­n’t read the post thor­oughly left some answers—all correct—in the com­ments. I’ve deleted that, and—duh!— blocked com­ments. (You can tell I don’t do this sort of thing too often.) James K., if you still wanna play, send the answers to my e‑mail (glennkenny@mac.com) under the sub­ject head­ing “Elvis”!

FURTHER UPDATE: Well, we have a win­ner. Or, by my lights, we have two win­ners, which I’ll have to sort out with my Warner con­tact (gulp). Details will come tomor­row; in the mean­time, do not e‑mail answers. E‑mail to say hi, sure, but the con­test is done. Thanks!

FINAL UPDATE: Partly because of my own screwup (not clos­ing com­ments right off the bat), and partly because someone does­n’t read posts as thor­oughly as they ought (I won’t name names, but tsk, tsk), a state of affairs tran­spired in which, to my mind, there were two win­ners. Thankfully my pals at Warner decided to show mercy on this contest-running novice, and will award a free down­load of Elvis On Tour to both James Keepnews and the com­menter known as Chris O. I thank every­one who sent responses.

The answers? On ques­tion 1, it was c), the great gui­tar­ist Richard Lloyd, who had nev­er backed Elvis. Both Lloyd and his former Television part­ner Tom Verlaine will tell you plenty, though, about the great­ness of both Scotty Moore and James Burton, the first being Elvis’s earli­est gui­tar­ist and the lat­ter being the anchor of the TCB Band.

Question 2 every­body knows the answer to; of course the great Kurt Russell appeared with the King in It Happened At The World’s Fair and played the King in John Carpenter’s fab­ulous made-for-television Elvis.

Question 3 was kind of a trick ques­tion. First of all, I was a little sur­prised at how rel­at­ively few cov­ers of “Heartbreak Hotel” there have been. Which isn’t to say that when Elvis did a song, it did­n’t stay done, but that fact nev­er stopped any fools rush­ing in, par­tic­u­larly Nashville-based ones. And that’s not to say that Willie Nelson is a fool; his cov­er­’s a right nice one, and apt. As for the Alvin and the Chipmunks rendi­tion, it sounds just like Alvin and the Chipmunks. But the one in which the line “take a walk down Lonely Street” is fol­lowed by the boast “I nev­er will!” is in a rad­ic­al rein­ven­tion of the song by the then-maniacal John Cale. Except—and here’s the kind of trick part—Cale him­self recor­ded two ver­sions of his min­im­al­ist arrange­ment, and he only adds that line in one of them. It’s not on the stu­dio record­ing of the song that appears on 1975’s Slow Dazzle, his second LP for Island Records. It is, rather, on the live record­ing of the song released on the album June 1, 1974, a doc­u­ment of a con­cert held on that date at London’s Rainbow Theater fea­tur­ing turns by Cale, Brian Eno, Nico, and head­lined by Kevin Ayers (of whose dis­co­graphy that album is offi­cially a part). James and Chris were both aware of this; one respond­ent, con­vers­ant only with the Slow Dazzle record­ing, was not. So there you have it. 

Thanks to every­one who played. James and Chris, lemme know how those down­loads work out for you.