Holiday miracle time-- the "Welcome Home Elvis" soundtrack has been found!

...and it's in hi-fi, folks!

(Normally, this sort of story might go in the "Visual Arts" section, but I'm pretty sure that discovering a lost high-quality copy of a duet between the legends of two different musical generations rates a story here in the Music forum...)

56 years after its initial broadcast, and 41 years after ABC is said to have discarded the original master videotape, a high-quality source of the soundtrack for the Frank Sinatra-hosted 1960 Timex special has finally been located.

The special, officially titled "It's Nice to Go Traveling", was Sinatra's last for the network, and was conceived as a vehicle to welcome home Elvis Presley, who was returning from Germany, after his separation from the service. Reviews of the show were generally positive, and the highlight of the program was the once-in-a-lifetime pairing of the The Chairman of the Board and The King, as they performed a duet of each other's hits-- "Love Me Tender" and "Witchcraft."

Time, however was not so kind to the program-- prior to the wiping of the master tape, at least two different kinescopes were made; one of which demonstrated severe flagging problems across the top of the image, as a result of a mis-calibrated video playback machine. Over time, the negatives for those kinescope films also appeared to have been lost, and so for the past 40 years, the only surviving record of the broadcast has been a few very low-quality dupes of those films, many of which appear to have seen better days. It's debatable as to whether the audio or the video has suffered worse over the years.

While many of the video issues can be solved with a professional transfer of a print of the "good" kinescope, and the application of LiveFeed Video Imaging, the indifferent quality of the surviving audio has been a sticking point. And having now heard one, I can confidently state that this program is vastly helped by having a high-fidelity soundtrack source, which allows everyone to experience the nuances of each singer's vocalizations and Nelson Riddle's marvelous arrangements.

There was no soundtrack recording released at the time the program was broadcast, and indeed, the idea of coordinating a deal that included Col. Tom Parker, Frank Sinatra's Hobart Productions, Capitol Records and RCA Records seems mind-boggling. The upshot however, is that there have been no professional sources from which to extract a decent soundtrack to accompany a restored image.

However, the discovery of over 45 minutes of the program's soundtrack on a double-sided 12" acetate have now made a full restoration of the program possible. In addition to the video program itself, the soundtrack find also adds two new song masters to both Elvis' discography (his live-in-the-studio performance of "Fame & Fortune" and "Stuck on You") and Frank's holdings (his solo versions of "Witchcraft" and "Gone With the Wind") as well as the historic duet between the two singing legends. Presumably, once all of the details are worked out between the various corporate concerns, a separate CD version of the soundtrack would also be contemplated.

I'm thrilled that this recording has been finally been unearthed after over half a century-- there is no accompanying paperwork that indicates why the acetate was commissioned (particularly since none of John Cameron Swayze's Timex ads are included), but this is one of those things that you just learn to say "Why ask why?" about... it just is. And that's perfectly fine by me.

Happy Holidays to all fans of Frank & Elvis (and Nancy & Sammy & Peter Lawford, too!)

- Kevin

 

Well, I believe the Sinatra estate still controls Hobart Productions, so they likely own the show.. but I'm sure that some accommodation will need to made with Universal (for Capitol Records) and Sony (for RCA Records)-- they're the companies that now control each singer's recordings from that period. And of course, they'll need to come to come to an agreement with EPE for the use of Elvis' likeness... all in all, it's a project that's still got a lot of lawyers attached to it!

- Kevin

 

The Popsike page is quoting the auction in which the now-current Ebay seller obtained the item. It's the same disc.

And although I would agree that the current seller certainly made money on the deal, this is one of those odd pieces that not only has intrinsic value as an item, but also a (much higher) potential value with regard to its content.

A restored program? Two new Frank Sinatra recording masters? Two new Elvis recording masters? A duet master? DVD... CD...

$3,500.00 actually looks pretty cheap!

- Kevin

 

**That** is the $64.00 question...!

It's funny-- in reviewing the material **not**on the disc (the Timex commercials and a couple of numbers by the Tom Hanson Dancers), that's exactly the sort of thing that you'd delete if you were considering a commercial release.

45:30 is still a little long for a serious LP release, but this could represent someone's attempt to cull the material for a soundtrack LP.

Just thinking out loud...

- Kevin

 

Well-- first, I don't know that it did originate in the UK. At this point, that appears to be speculation. And it's clearly not an official **release**... being a transcription disc that was hand-cut, there's no way that it could be. It **may** be a possible work part for an unrealized project.

Someone can check the Radio Times listings, but I'm not certain that this program actually did contemporaneously air in the UK. However, they wouldn't have been able to directly air a copy of the US videotape in any event, since the UK's video standard at that time was 405-line, and our tape would have been 525-line NTSC.

- Kevin

 

In 1960 mono? Sinatra's own In the Wee Small Hours 1955 LP ran 54 minutes and Frank Sinatra Sings for Only the Lonely in 1958 ran about the same in its mono incarnation.