Last weekend Elvis Presley would have celebrated his 70th birthday, had he not been a fat bloated heart attack waiting to happen. In celebration (or as a ruthless money-making ploy) his record company are releasing all 18 of Elvis's number 1 singles at a rate of one a week, which is how the UK charts came to be topped by Jailhouse Rock on Sunday. This hip-swinging blast of rock is the title song from one of Elvis's better movies, was originally his second number 1 record and was composed by famous songwriters Leiber and Stoller. It has some slightly dodgy lyrics - "Number 47 said to number 3, you’re the cutest jailbird I ever did see" (just how many mixed US prisons do you know?) - but it would have made a perfect 1000th UK Number 1 single. Unfortunately it was only the 999th.
The return of Jailhouse Rock has broken several long standing chart records:
• Lengthiest chart-topping career: 47 years 6 months by Elvis Presley (from All Shook Up in July 1957 to Jailhouse Rock in January 2005)
• First record to be a number 1 hit twice (same version, same B-side): Elvis Presley with Jailhouse Rock (Queen's Bohemian Rhapsody and George Harrison's My Sweet Lord also hit number 1 twice but with different B sides)
• Most number 1 records: 19 by Elvis Presley (between 1977 and 2002 Elvis shared this particular record with The Beatles, who remain on 17)
• Most weeks at Number 1: 78 by Elvis Presley, again (comfortably ahead of The Beatles with 'only' 69)
• Lowest weekly sale for a number 1 record: Jailhouse Rock by Elvis Presley (which sold only 21262 copies last week, which is rubbish even given that it's the post-Christmas lull)
• First artist to enter the chart at number 1: Elvis Presley with Jailhouse Rock, back in 1958 that is (in the Fifties going in at number 1 was unheard of, now it's the only route to the summit) [seriously detailed number 1 related chart trivia here, and regular chart commentary here]
And so we turn to the race for the 1000th UK number one. Jailhouse Rock is a limited edition single so should slump from the summit on Sunday to be replaced by the magic millennial hit. There are plenty of 21st century newsingles out this week but no obvious chart-toppers, which leaves the way open for Elvis to replace himself at number 1 with the less than classic 'One Night'. You may not be able to hum it but it's already destined for the top, outselling its nearest challengers by a considerable margin. The widely-leaked midweekchart suggests that next week's top five will run as follows:
1 (new) Elvis Presley - One Night 2 (new) Manic Street Preachers - Empty Souls 3 (new) Killers - Somebody Told Me 4 (↓2) Steve Brookstein - Against All Odds 5 (↓4) Elvis Presley - Jailhouse Rock
Chig predicted this sorry state of affairs back in December, and warned us that Presley's posthumous domination might last right up until the end of April. But that's OK because by then the singles chart will have been reborn as a download-inclusive countdown and it's quite likely that nobody will give a damn about which act is on top any more. Which is a shame because the singles chart always used to say more about the zeitgeist of the nation than almost any other cultural phenomenon. diamond geezer will therefore be holding a wake for the single over the next few days by looking back over the centennial number 1s, leading up the the magic millennium on Sunday. It's the music that counts.
Number One number 67
