ELVIS IN LATIN AND SUMERIAN! This from the East Anglian Daily Times:

Blue Suede Shoes: a big hit in Latin!
02 March 2007 | 15:01

STEVEN RUSSELL

RONALD McDonald and Mickey Mouse eat your hearts out - neither of you is the world's most recognisable icon of all time. Author Charlie Connelly knows the truth, after a global odyssey of quirkiness showed Elvis Presley being honoured and celebrated in some strange and wonderful ways.

[...]

But his favourite - the blue whale in this sea of strangeness - is Dr Jukka Ammondt. This Finnish professor of literature and linguistics - a short man with long grey hair and little round glasses - makes no attempt to impersonate Elvis. He simply happens to sing the legend's songs . . . in Latin.

“When you hear of it, you think it's going to be a one-song gag, but I've got a couple of his CDs and they're really good!” enthuses Charlie.

“He also did a three-track EP in ancient Sumerian” - spoken in Southern Mesopotamia, today's southeastern Iraq, between about 4000BC and 2000BC - “though only one was an Elvis song: Blue Suede Shoes.

“When you hear it, it takes a while to recognise it because he's been very adherent to the original Sumerian. Although no-one had ever heard Sumerian music, they studied pictures of instruments from old tablets and what have you and worked out what it would have sounded like.

“This thing grinds along and suddenly you hear Dr Ammondt booming in in this low, guttural voice. It's only when it gets to a certain chord progression that you realise it's Blue Suede Shoes. But I really like it as a piece of music and it stands on its own.

“He did tell me that, obviously, the Sumer didn't have blue suede shoes, so he had to change the lyrics a little. When he translated it into Sumerian he had to say something like 'On my sandals of sky-blue leather please don't stand.' It doesn't scan quite as well as the original . . .

“If you made it up, no-one would believe you.”

[...]

Yeah, that just about sums it up.