The King and I

I spent much of my early life in South Africa, brought up on a musical diet of Al Jolson, my father’s favourite, and Kenneth McKellar (a Scottish tenor), my mother’s, from the long-playing records (33 rpm) brought from Scotland.
I am not here to denigrate these great singers from an earlier era but, for a pre-teen boy, they were not quite doing it.
Then one night my father took us to the drive-in cinema near Durban to see a new film from the USA.

I sat open-mouthed, stunned, unbelieving, totally enraptured, as Elvis Presley slid down a pole and ‘The warden threw a party in the county jail’!

Yep, Jailhouse Rock.
The film that taught me there was a whole new and different world of music out there.
The film that showed me that a man could sing and dance and – no disrespect to the…