1957

55. Frankie Vaughan – The Garden of Eden (1957)

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The Intro

Erstwhile easy listening joker Guy Mitchell may have won the war with Tommy Steele & the Steelmen, as his version of Singing the Blues returned to number 1 after Steele had toppled him, but it was short-lived. Only a week later, on 25 January, Scouse crooner Frankie Vaughan began a four-week stint at number 1 with The Garden of Eden, a swaggering, lusty little number, written by Dennise Haas Norwood.

Before

Frankie Vaughan was born Frank Ableson on 3 February 1928 in Liverpool, and took Vaughan as a surname because his Russian grandmother referred to him as her ‘number one grandson’, and she pronounced ‘one’ with a ‘v’. He became a singer at the Lancaster School of Art, but took to boxing during his time in the Royal Army Medical Corps during World War Two, and was also a prize-winning artist.

He returned to singing during the tail-end of the 1940s, and became known for wearing a top hat and carrying a cane. In 1955 he released what became his trademark tune, Give Me the Moonlight, featuring the rather confident lyric, ‘Give me the moonlight, give me the girls and leave the rest to me’. As sexual equality became an issue in the following decade, this song was subsequently dropped from setlists.

Vaughan’s cover of The Green Door (yep, the one that eventually became a number 1 for Shakin’ Stevens in 1981) had been narrowly kept from the Christmas number 1 spot by Johnnie Ray’s Just Walkin’ in the Rain in 1956, but a month later, he was on top.

Review

The Garden of Eden is more interesting than your average easy listening tune of the time, due to its lyrics that rather hint at infidelity. The singer is definitely being tempted by someone he’s not supposed to be with:

‘When you walk in the garden
In the garden of Eden
With a beautiful woman
And you know how you care
And the voice in the garden
In the Garden of Eden
Tells you she is forbidden
Can you leave her there’

It makes a change from sappy songs of undying devotion, at least. Not too bad musically, either. Vaughan really booms it out over an acoustic strum that turns into a full-blown swing number.

After

Ironically, Vaughan later claimed to have turned down temptation himself, in the form of Marilyn Monroe. He starred with her in the 1960 movie Let’s Make Love, and said she tried to seduce him, but he was married and turned down the offer. Vaughan often returned to the charts after The Garden of Eden, and found himself back at number 1 with Tower of Strength in 1961.

The Info

Written by

Dennise Haas Norwood

Producer

Johnny Franz

Weeks at number 1

4 (25 January-21 February)

Trivia

Births

9 February: Footballer Gordon Strachan

Meanwhile…

16 February: The Toddlers’ Truce was abandoned. This wasn’t a sign of children going to war – until that point, broadcasters agreed not to transmit for an hour once television for children had ended at 6pm, so that parents could put their children to bed. If the BBC tried this while my eldest daughter was being put to bed, there’d be practically no evening schedule at all…

54. Tommy Steele & The Steelmen – Singing the Blues (1957)

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The Intro

Guy Mitchell only enjoyed a week at the top of the charts with Singing the Blues before record buyers decided they preferred Tommy Steele’s version. This bizarre turn of events had happened before in December 1953, when Frankie Laine‘s version of Answer Me knocked David Whitfield‘s from the top.

Before

Steele was enjoying immense popularity at the time, and is considered by many to be Britain’s first rock’n’roll star.

Born Thomas William Hicks in Bermondsey, London on 17 December 1936, he had been a merchant seaman, and sang and played guitar and banjo in London coffee houses in his spare time.

He fell in love with rock’n’roll when a ship he worked on docked in Norfolk, Virginia in the US and he heard Buddy Holly on the radio. He and his group, The Steelmen scored their first hit with Rock with the Caveman in 1956, reaching number 13. It was a rip-off of Rock Around the Clock, but a pretty good one.

It was beginning to become common practise for British singers to record covers of songs that were going down well in the US, and release them over here before the imports became better known. Although his version of Singing the Blues hadn’t beaten Mitchell’s to the top spot, it had knocked it down after only a week.

Review

By this point, Elvis-mania had well and truly gripped the nation, and Tommy Steele decided to ape him for his version. Clearly this worked at the time, but his affectation is so obvious now as to sound laughable. His slurring of the opening line is way too over-the-top, and makes Pat Boone sound much more authentic at ripping the King off. Thankfully Steele settles down and things pick up when he drops the impression, but The Steelmen’s backing is almost identical to Mitchell’s, right down to the whistling, so inevitably you compare the two, and when you do, Steele is the loser. Mitchell was a veteran by this point, and sounds relaxed and at home with the material.

After

So, Steele had succeeded in beating Presley to a UK number 1 single, and won the initial battle with Mitchell, but was only in pole position for a week before everybody decided they’d actually preferred Mitchell’s version, which went back to the top for its second of three stints. Perhaps Steele should have laid off the Elvis impressions and stuck to sounding like Bill Haley & His Comets.

The Outro

Steele’s debut album, The Tommy Steele Story, became the first number 1 album by a UK act later that year. Also in 1957, he found himself competing against Mitchell once more, as they both covered Mervin Endley’s sequel, Knee Deep in the Blues. Neither version fared as well, though. He went solo in 1958, and continued with his music until the rise of The Beatles, before wisely concentrating on his film and theatre career, and still has an army of dedicated fans. He’s starred as the lead role in the musical Scrooge since 2009, and is also a successful sculptor.

The Info

Written by

Melvin Endsley

Producer

Hugh Mendl

Weeks at number 1

1 (11-17 January)

Meanwhile…

16 January: The Cavern Club, a place for jazz aficionados before later becoming home to The Beatles as they went stratospheric, opened its doors for the first time.

53. Guy Mitchell with Ray Conniff & His Orchestra – Singing the Blues (1957)

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The Intro

1957 began with happy-go-lucky crooner Guy Mitchell at the top for the third time, with his version of Singing the Blues.

Before

Previously recorded by country star Marty Robbins, it had been written by Mervin Endsley, a musician who had contracted polio at the age of three and had been in a wheelchair ever since. From the age of 11 he spent three years in the unfortunately-named Crippled Children’s Hospital in Memphis. While there he became a huge country music fan and taught himself the guitar. He had written Singing the Blues in 1954 and taken it to Nashville in the hope of getting a hit. And a hit is what he got, several times over.

Review

I wasn’t too flattering about Mitchell’s 1953 number 1s – She Wears Red Feathers and Look at That Girl – but Singing the Blues is a cut above both of them.

Produced once more by Mitch Miller, Mitchell is in his element here. The country element is hard to detect – this version of Singing the Blues sounds more like the older generation trying to harness rock’n’roll and put their own, safer, stamp on it. Unlike Kay Starr on (The) Rock and Roll Waltz, Mitchell and Miller pull it off. That’s largely down to the song itself, a winning tune set to effectively downbeat lyrics, rather than a naff novelty song with a new genre awkwardly shoved into it.

Mitchell, from the evidence I’ve heard, couldn’t sing a sad song if he tried, and he certainly doesn’t try here. Somehow though, it all gels, with Mitchell turning it into a cheeky come-on over a chirpy backing of whistling, ukulele and backing harmonies. He’s hoping to charm his ex into coming back.

After

And listeners kept coming back to Singing the Blues – his version made it to number 1 for two more week-long stints, making him one of only five acts to have the same number 1 on three separate occasions. The other artists are Frankie Laine with I Believe, Pharrell Williams with Happy, What Do You Mean? by Justin Bieber and Despacito (Remix) by Luis Fonsi and Daddy Yankee featuring Justin Bieber.

The Outro

At the same time as the Mitchell and Robbins versions were released, they found themselves competing with a third, by up-and-coming rock’n’roller Tommy Steele. More on that next time…

The Info

Written by

Melvin Endsley

Producer

Mitch Miller

Weeks at number 1

3 (4-10 January, 18-24 January & 1-7 February)

Trivia

Births

6 January: Astronaut Michael Foale
22 January: Journalist Francis Wheen
24 January: Comedian Adrian Edmondson

Meanwhile…

9 January: 1957 began with political change. Prime Minister Anthony Eden had struggled at the end of 1956 to recover from the debacle of Suez, and perhaps because of this he had suffered ill health. His doctors advised him to quit if he wanted to carry on living, and so he resigned.

10 January: With no formal process in place at the time, the Conservative Party decided Eden would be succeeded by then-Chancellor Harold Macmillan. The political situation was so rocky at the time that Macmillan told Queen Elizabeth II he could not promise the government would last longer than six weeks.