I've always said it's the most surreal moment in TV history.

Frank Sinatra was welcoming Elvis home from two years in the army. This was 1960, and Sinatra had dedicated an hour-long show to everything 25-year-old Elvis had missed while he was overseas. They get to the surprise hit single of 1959, and add a dance number commemorating the chipmunk-vocals craze -- trying to explain to Elvis that the gimmick had been pursued by "every hep rodent in the forest."

To prove it, Sinatra's show didn't play a song by Alvin and the Chipmunks. "Out of the whole rat pack, there's only one group that really swings," Joey Bishop says solemnly. He starts to introduce a musical number by a competing act called The Nutty Squirrels, but "Unfortunately, they can't be with us tonight..."

So what happens next...?

Joey Bishop tells the audience that the Nutty Squirrels have "sent along this basket of nuts to take their place." (The audience laughs.) "Elvis, here's Tom Hansen's dancers and his waltzing mice -- and 'Uh-Oh!' May, 1959...!"

And then it begins.

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