Interest in Dickie Valentine’s Christmas Alphabet understandably died down after the holidays, and the first new number 1 of the year was Rock Around the Clock, enjoying its second run at the top, before being usurped by a rather unique single.
Before
Sixteen Tons had originally been written and recorded by country singer-songwriter Merle Travis back in 1946. Travis’s songs often spoke of the hardships of workers in the US as he came from a mining family in Kentucky. His brother once wrote him a letter with the line ‘You load sixteen tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in debt’. His father was also fond of saying ‘I can’t afford to die. I owe my soul to the company store’. Back then, miners were paid with credit vouchers that they could use to buy goods at the company store. Travis had the beginnings of a very catchy chorus . He came up with a song whose humour is as black as the dirt in the miners’ fingernails, and Tennessee Ernie Ford was listening. 10 years later, his cover became his second UK number 1 single in less than a year.
Review
Sixteen Tons is so much better than Give Me Your Word. His previous number 1 was a mediocre ballad that could have recorded by anyone. It’s hard to think who could perform Sixteen Tons as well as Ford. The sparse arrangement features his deep, booming voice and finger-clicking to begin with, followed by a clarinet backing him up, Ford speaks not only for US workers, but any slave to the man. In the gloomy winter months of 1956, no doubt UK miners could find solace in such a song. The mining references may root the song firmly in the past, but anyone who finds themselves slaving away just to get by can identify. And it helps that it’s as catchy as hell.
After
Selling millions upon millions, Sixteen Tons became Ford’s signature song, and earned him his own TV show, which ran for five years.
Unfortunately, he and his first wife Betty had alcohol problems, and while he managed during his career peak, by the 70s his love of whiskey was taking its toll.
The Outro
Betty died in 1989 but even this couldn’t curtail his drinking, and he remarried less than four months later. Ford died of liver failure on 17 October 1991 – 36 years to the day of the first release of Sixteen Tons. However, he left behind the definitive version of a song that truly resonates.
The Info
Written by
Merle Travis
Producer
Lee Gillette
Weeks at number 1
2 (20 January-16 February)
Trivia
Births
31 January: Sex Pistols Singer John Lydon 2 January: Actor Philip Franks 13 February: New Order bassist Peter Hook
Deaths
31 January: Author AA Milne
Meanwhile…
24 January: Plans were announced for the building of thousands of new homes in the Barbican area of London, which had been devastated by Luftwaffe bombings in World War Two.
As winter 1955 dawned, Rock Around the Clock-mania had set in, and Bill Haley & His Comets were finally enjoying their stint at number 1. Although this was a seismic event in music, it would be wrong to think that from then on, the UK number 1s were constantly rock’n’roll numbers. Teenagers, as they had recently been named, still only represented a portion of the record-buying market. There were still a lot of older folk who were more than happy with the status quo, who liked nice crooners singing something warm and cosy, and especially with the dark nights drawing in, etc.
Before
Smooth singer Dickie Valentine had enjoyed a very successful year, with his collaboration with The Stargazers, Finger of Suspicion, topping the charts back in January, followed by three top 10 hits. He then topped and tailed 1955’s singles chart by cottoning on to an idea that would serve artists well for years to come – if you want a number 1 at Christmas time, why not do a song about Christmas time?
Christmas Alphabet had been written by Buddy Kaye and Jules Loman the previous year, and was performed by US singing trio The McGuire Sisters. Kaye liked his alphabet songs – he’d written ‘A’ You’re Adorable (The Alphabet Song) back in 1949 for Perry Como, although these days it’s probably best known as featuring in Angela Rippon’s guest spot on Morecambe & Wise’s Christmas special in 1976. Valentine’s version of Christmas Alphabet became the more famous version, and the oldies won out, knocking Haley from his lofty perch and making it the first explicitly-festive Christmas number 1.
Review
It’s based around a very simple idea. Valentine just lists seasonal stuff around each letter that makes up the word ‘Christmas’. He runs through it twice, to make sure it’s all sunk in, and that’s it, job done. Some of the rhyming is tenuous though…
‘S is for the Santa who makes every kid his pet, Be good and he’ll bring you everything in your Christmas alphabet!’
Erm, sorry, what? Santa makes every kid his pet? It’s news to me. Disturbing news, at that.
Although by this stage of my blog I’ve been longing for rock’n’roll to come along and shake things up, I have to confess that I don’t mind Christmas Alphabet. Reason being, I’m a sucker for a Christmas song. Especially older ones. Christmas is of course, a time for feeling all cosy and warm, if you’re lucky enough to have that option. 50s music is often perfect at encapsulating that. So I’m quite surprised, especially considering its historical importance, that Christmas Alphabet seems to have been forgotten about. You never hear it in shops, and it’s never on compilations. John Lewis are unlikely to get someone to make one of those annoying, wet, folky covers and stick it on an advert, either. It might be a slight little number, but it deserves to be remembered.
After
You could say the same about Valentine himself. Despite being adored at the time (he won New Musical Express’s best male vocalist category from 1953-57), he’s been largely forgotten.
The Outro
Valentine’s popularity waned in the next decade, despite two TV series (one with Peter Sellers) and he met a tragic end on 6 May 1971. Aged only 41, he was driving to a gig in Wales with bandmates at over 90mph in the early hours of the morning, when he lost control of the vehicle on a bend, killing the three of them.
The Info
Written by
Buddy Kaye & Jules Loman
Producer
Dick Rowe
Weeks at number 1
3 (16 December-5 January 1956)
Trivia
Births
23 December: Poet Carol Ann Duffy
Meanwhile…
20 December 1955: Cardiff becomes the official capital of Wales.
1 January 1956: Possession of heroin becomes fully criminalised.
4 January: As 1956 began, it became apparent that the Prime Minister Anthony Eden had plunged in the polls, which seemed surprising following the Conservatives’ solid victory in the election the previous year. Whether Labour had received a bounce off the back of electing their new leader, Hugh Gaitskell, remained to be seen.
Finally! After nearly 40 blogs, rock’n’roll has arrived. Although not the first song of the genre (nobody really knows if such a song actually exists, although Rocket 88 by Jackie Brenston and His Delta Cats is often credited as such), and not the best either, Rock Around the Clock is understandably credited as the tune that brought it to a wider audience, and influenced millions, including many youngsters who were taking note and went on to become star musicians themselves. Rock’n’roll was about feeling rather than form, about stripping away such soppy, sappy lyrics over flowery, string-packed instruments. There’s no wonder it helped bring about the dawn of the teenager. Why should young adults grow from children to instant adulthood? Why not have some fun first, before life gets too dull and dreary? Haley may have been way too old to be a teenager, but it didn’t matter. Rock Around the Clock represented the new young energy that would help sweep the country out of the post-war doldrums.
Before
Rock Around the Clock is believed to have been first written in 1952. Credited to Max C. Freedman and Jimmy De Knight (a pseudonym belonging to James E. Myers), it was first recorded by Sonny Day and His Knights, although apparently they’d always had Haley’s group in mind.
William John Clifton Haley was born in Highland, Michigan on 6 July 1925. When he was four he underwent an inner-ear mastoid operation which accidentally severed an optic nerve. This left him blind in his left eye for the rest of his life, and may explain why he grew a kiss curl over his right eye.
The Haley family moved to Bethel, Pennsylvania due to the effects of the Great Depression when he was seven. Both his parents were musicians (his mother originally came from Ulverston in Lancashire) and by the time he was 13, their son was singing and playing the guitar.
Two years later Haley left home to find fame. He spent the 40s in several bands, including The Down Homers and The Four Aces of Western Swing, and was even known as Silver Yodelling Bill Haley at one point.
By 1951 he was leading a country music act known as Bill Haley and the Saddlemen, but they changed their name to Bill Haley with Hayley’s Comets and adopted an early rock’n’roll sound after covering Rocket 88. They had their first hit with Crazy Man, Crazy, which is perhaps the first song of the genre to be shown on television, used on the soundtrack to a play starring James Dean. Soon after, they settled on Bill Haley & His Comets, and they were pianist Johnny Grande, steel guitarist Billy WIlliamson and bassist Marshall Lytle. Before long they had their first drummer, Earl Famous, who was soon replaced by Dick Richards.
In spring 1954 they began working with Milt Gabler, who had worked on several proto-rock’n’roll tracks previously. In their first session they recorded Rock Around the Clock as a last minute B-side to Thirteen Women And Only One Man In Town, a track about the survivors of a nuclear bomb.
Luckily for Haley and co, the son of a famous actor had become quite the fan of that B-side. 10-year-old Peter Ford was Glenn Ford’s son, and Glenn was due to co-star alongside Sidney Poitier in a film about teenage delinquents called Blackboard Jungle. He suggested to director Richard Brooks to stick the song over the opening credits. Swiftly capitalising on the attention, the song was re-released and spent two months at number 1 in the US. It was only a matter of time before their success was repeated in the UK, a nation starving for the return of the good times.
Review
I’m stating the obvious by saying it sounds quaint compared with the songs it later influenced, but there’s more raw energy packed into the opening of Rock Around the Clock than any UK number 1 up to that point. Haley’s voice commands you to take note and to have a good time, and the Comets ably assist, and so does guitarist Danny Cedrone, on loan from The Esquire Boys, who couldn’t think of a new solo and simply redid his performance on their earlier track Rock This Joint. It didn’t matter, it’s blistering and is easily the highlight of the song.
After
In a genre full of tragedy, Cedrone was one of the first victims. He never had chance to enjoy the group’s fame as a month after they had recorded Rock Around the Clock, he fell down some stairs and broke his neck, dying at the age of 33. By the time they became number 1, the Comets were a different group to the ones that recorded the song. In addition to Cedrone’s death, three other members left the group over money issues.
Before long, the younger acts they had helped influence suddenly made Bill Haley & His Comets look old and staid by comparison. They had become victims of the youth movement they helped usher in. Stardom lasted longer in Europe, where they enjoyed a few more years of being mobbed by fans. But rock’n’roll came and went many times over the years, with several revivals, and Rock Around the Clock was re-recorded several times and often reissued.
The Outro
Haley battled the booze during the 70s, and towards the end of his life he had a brain tumour. He died on 9 February 1981, aged 55 of ‘natural causes, most likely a heart attack’, according to his death certificate. But in a sense Rock Around the Clock‘s influence has made him immortal.
The Info
Written by
Max C Freedman & Jimmy De Knight
Producer
Milt Gabler
Weeks at number 1
5 (25 November-15 December 1955, 6-19 January 1956) *BEST-SELLING SINGLE OF THE DECADE*
Trivia
Births
30 November 1955: Singer Billy Idol 4 December: Conservative MP Philip Hammond 15 December: The Clash bassist Paul Simonon 6 January 1956: Presenter Angus Deayton/Archbishop of Canterbury Justin Welby 9 January: Actress Imelda Staunton 17 January: Singer Paul Young
Deaths
25 November: Ecologist Sir Arthur Tansley
Meanwhile…
2 December: The Barnes rail crash in Barnes, South London, left 13 dead and 35 injured.
7 December: Long-running Labour leader Clement Attlee resigned. For all the positive changes he helped bring about after the war, it was time for him to pass on the torch if the party was to usurp new Tory Prime Minister Anthony Eden. One week later, Hugh Gaitskell, a right-wing politician by many Labour members’ standards, defeated Nye Bevan and was named as the new leader.
Compared to the charts in the previous two years, the number 1s of 1955 have been quite diverse, and weird at times. We’ve had standard, dreary early 50s music, ballads, novelty songs, mambo and country music. But when are we going to get to some rock’n’roll? The genre that changed everything, that shook up pop forever?
Before
We’re nearly there, actually. Earlier that year, a film called Blackboard Jungle had been released. It featured rock’n’roll as its soundtrack, and by November, the music that featured in the opening credits, a former B-side for Bill Haley & His Comets called Rock Around the Clock, had been gathering momentum. At the same time, Rock Island Line by skiffle singer Lonnie Donegan was also released. A revolution had begun.
First though, a song from a musical. I’m about as much of a fan of musicals as I am country, bar a few exceptions. Well, who doesn’t love Grease?
Hernando’s Hideaway, by the Johnston Brothers, knocked Jimmy Young from the top on 11 November. It featured in The Pajama Game, a Broadway show by Richard Adler and Jerry Ross, that had moved to the West End earlier that year and was originally performed by Carol Haney.
The Johnston Brothers were a male vocal group formed in 1949 and led by the wonderfully named Johnny Johnston. The other members were Alan Dean, Eddie Lester and Denny Vaughan. Like the Walker Brothers, they weren’t actually related. Johnston had been a singer and arranger with the BBC and had previously been a member of The Keynotes. The Johnston Brothers signed with Decca Records in 1953 and soon had their first top 10 hit with Oh Happy Day.
With The Pajama Game sparking so much interest, several versions of Hernando’s Hideaway were available, but it was the brothers’ version that ruled the roost on these shores, beating off Johnnie Ray and Archie Bleyer.
Review
Set to a very famous tango tune (is this tune stolen from a tango standard, or is this how it became famous?), the song concerns a dodgy-sounding Spanish dive where lovers can meet in private. Featuring atmospheric castanets and shouts of ‘Ole!’, the Johnston Brothers, at least, don’t attempt comedy Spanish accents, and let’s face it, back then, nobody would have minded if they had. I’m sure it works fine in the context of a musical, but a UK number 1? Not in my eyes, or ears, but maybe I’m getting impatient for what is to come.
After
The Johnston Brothers had a few more singles before calling it a day, with Johnny Johnston moving into writing advertising jingles. Johnny Johnston Jingles Ltd (again, great name) came up with, among others, the famous ‘Beanz Meanz Heinz’ jingle.
The Outro
Hernando’s Hideaway is still the nickname for the smoking room in the House of Commons.
The Info
Written by
Richard Adler & Jerry Ross
Producer
Hugh Mendl
Weeks at number 1
2 (11 November-24 November)
Trivia
Births
17 November: Go West singer Peter Cox/Architect Amanda Levete 24 November: Cricketer Ian Botham
Births
Meanwhile…
20 November: The Milton rail crash left 11 dead and 157 injured when a speeding train derailed near Didcot.
As well as the mambo craze of 1955, Britain was also in love with cowboys and country and western music. Slim Whitman’s Rose Marie held the top spot for 11 weeks, and the first ‘official’ country song to hit number 1 happened earlier that year – Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Give Me your Word (although, as I said here, it’s not really a country song, and you could argue that Frankie Laine’s Hey Joeshould earn that honour).
Before
That summer had seen the release of Western movie The Man from Laramie, starring James Stewart in the title role, as a stranger who causes ructions by working for the rival of a cattle baron. Lester Lee and Ned Washington had written the theme, and Al Martino performed the US version. He only just scraped into the top 20 in the US, but Jimmy Young, riding high off his previous number 1 with Unchained Melody, became the first homegrown artist to have two consecutive number 1s in the UK.
Review
Young makes a better job of The Man from Laramie, than he did Unchained Melody. It’s a jolly, rickety old number, and I suppose it’s kind of catchy, but having said all this, I have no desire to ever hear it again.
Basically, it’s Young telling us all the ways in which the Man from Laramie is brilliant. His voice is better suited to this than his previous chart-topper, but he’s still bellowing, and the worst bit is the cringeworthy way he changes his voice to sing smarmily:
‘He had a flair for ladies Now the ladies loved his air of mystery’
After
The fact Young is so fondly remembered for his career as a DJ rather than his music suggests he was right to switch careers. He became a disc jockey that year on Housewive’s Choice, but sensing the music climate was changing following Elvis’s success, he decided to go full-time, working for Radio Luxembourg and the BBC.
The Outro
In 1967 he was one of the original band of DJs on the fledgling Radio 1. Considered too ‘square’ by some of the station’s bosses, he proved them wrong and his morning show proved very popular. He switched to Radio 2 for the lunchtime show in 1973, and stayed with the station, becoming a national institution, loved for his charm and relaxed style. He was just as nice in person as on the air, by all accounts, and was mourned by millions when he died peacefully in his sleep on 7 November 2016, aged 95.
Influential country-western singer, guitarist and yodeller Slim Whitman’s Rose Marie enjoyed a massive 11-week-long reign in 1955. It stood as the longest-running continuous number 1 until Bryan Adams spent 16 weeks at the top in 1991 with (Everything I Do) I Do It For You.
Before
Born Otis Dewey Whitman Jr in Tampa, Florida on 20 January 1923, Slim grew up loving the country songs of yodelling Jimmie Rodgers. During World War Two he entertained fellow soldiers with his singing. Whitman was so entertaining, his captain blocked a transfer to another ship. This proved to be a massive stroke of luck, as everybody on that ship was killed when it sank. He taught himself to play the guitar with his left hand, despite being right-handed, after losing a finger in an accident. This later had an effect on a young Paul McCartney, who was left-handed and decided to retune his guitar just as Whitman had. George Harrison was also taking note, and once said the first person he ever saw with a guitar was Whitman. The instrument was beginning to become fashionable, thanks in part to Slim.
Elvis’s future manager, ‘Colonel’ Tom Parker, had heard Whitman on the radio and took him under his wing, and his first single came out in 1948. A young Elvis Presley even supported him.
Whitman was very popular by 1955, and even more famous in the UK than the US. He avoided standard country fare about drinking and having no money, and became known for his more romantic material. His yodelling became his trademark, and it may sound surprising but even Michael Jackson listed him as one of his 10 favourite vocal performers.
Rose Marie had been released as a single in 1954. It was taken from the 1924 opera of the same name, with music by Rudolf Friml and Herbert Stothart, and the lyrics by Otto Harbach and Oscar Hammerstein II. Eventually it toppled Alma Cogan’s Dreamboat, and it reigned supreme from July to October.
Review
At first I was baffled by the success of Rose Marie. As I explained when reviewing Tennessee Ernie Ford’s Give Me Your Word, I’m not a country fan. I found myself more amused by Whitman’s voice than anything. I’m not averse to a bit of yodelling either (see Focus or Mr Trololo), but I just could not see the appeal. Unlike most of the other songs so far though, I went back to it a few times, and it has grown on me. Lew Chudd’s production is haunting, and the lyrics pack more depth into them than the usual hits of the time (of course, it was written 30 years earlier, so that might explain why). It’s a love song, but Whitman is powerless against his emotions:
‘Oh Rose Marie, I love you I´m always dreaming of you No matter what I do, I can’t forget you Sometimes I wish that I never met you’
Nonetheless, Whitman has given up. He belongs to her now.
‘Of all the queens that ever lived, I choose you To rule me, my Rose Marie’
So, yes, fair play to Whitman. But… 11 weeks at number 1? A world record for 36 years? Really? Having said that, when you’ve the likes of Jimmy Young as your competition, perhaps it’s understandable.
After
Whitman made history in 1956 when he became the first ever country star to perform at the London Palladium. He continued to have hits on these shores, including I’ll Take You Home Again Kathleen in 1957.
His star began to wane as the 60s began, with mainly minor hits in the US country charts. Though he continued to record, Angeline (1984) was his last album for 18 years. He relied on royalties from compilations until he began work on his final album Twilight on the Trail which finally saw release in 2010.
The Outro
In 2013 Whitman died of heart failure on 19 June, aged 90.
The Info
Written by
Rudolf Friml, Herbert Stothart, Otto Harbach & Oscar Hammerstein II
Producer
Lew Chudd
Weeks at number 1
11 (29 July-13 October)
Trivia
Births
14 August: Actress Gillian Taylforth 1 September: The Jam bassist Bruce Foxton 3 September: Sex Pistols guitarist Steve Jones 16 September: Children’s television presenter Janet Ellis 20 September: Actor David Haig 2 October: Human League singer Phil Oakey 9 October: Athlete Steve Ovett
Deaths
16 September: Conservative MP Leo Amery
Meanwhile…
27 August: The Guinness Book of Records was first published.
4 September: BBC newsreaders were seen on television reading reports for the first time. The two in question were Richard Baker and Kenneth Kendall, who became celebrities themselves in time.
14 September: Airfix produced their first scale model aircraft kit.
22 September: ITV began, in London only. The first advert shown is for Gibbs’ SR toothpaste.
26 September: Clarence Birdseye started selling fish fingers in the UK.
Alma Angela Cohen, better known as Alma Cogan, or ‘The Girl with the Giggle in Her voice’, scored her first and only number one with the poppy Dreamboat, written by Jack Hoffman.
Before
Born 19 May 1932 in Whitechapel, East London of Russian-Romanian Jewish descent, Cogan had been a star for a few years by this point. When she was 14, she had been recommended for a variety show by ‘Forces Sweetheart’ Vera Lynn. Two years later, formidable band leader Ted Heath told her to come back and try and work with him when she was older. He later said it was one of the biggest mistakes of his life. She became a BBC radio regular, and earned her nickname after bursting into laughter while recording If I Had a Golden Umbrella in 1953. With her sweet timbre, she was compared to Doris Day, particularly on her first hit, Bell Bottom Blues, in 1954. She charted 18 times in the 50s, but Dreamboat was her biggest tune.
Review
Clocking in at under two minutes, Dreamboat is an average piece of 50s pop. It’s a bit too cutesy-wutesy and cheesy for its own good, but must have been fun at the time. The lyrics are confusing. It’s a nautical-themed love song (!), in which she seems to be singing about one person, and how devoted she is to him, how wonderful he is etc. But the first lines are:
‘You dreamboats, you lovable dreamboats The kisses you gave me set my dreams afloat’ Make your mind up, Alma. The strangest lyric is: ‘I would sail the seven seas with you Even if you told me to go and paddle my own canoe’
This creates the image of Alma Cogan paddling frantically behind her dreamboat. Or has she got several on the go? Anyway, by the time you’ve pondered all this, this harmless bit of fluff is over. And that was fine with pop fans of the day.
After
Cogan won the New Musical Express‘s Outstanding British Female Singer award four times between 1956 and 1960. Her star waned as the new decade dawned, but she branched out and remained popular due to her starring role as Nancy in the musical Oliver!, plus regular appearances on television and radio. Her dwindling chart action didn’t prevent Cogan from throwing hip showbiz parties at her widowed mother’s flat in Kensington. Regularly seen attending were the likes of Princess Margaret, Cary Grant, Audrey Hepburn, Bruce Forsyth and Roger Moore.
She also become closely linked to The Beatles. The teenage John Lennon would playfully tease her, and according to Lennon’s ex-wife Cynthia, they had a romance after meeting on Ready Steady Go! in 1964, but it was kept out of the public eye. Allegedly, Paul McCartney first played the melody of Yesterday on her piano. So it seems a shame the Fab Four couldn’t work their magic and help Cogan’s music career. In 1966, she collapsed several times while on tour, citing stomach problems.
The Outro
Tragically, Alma Cogan died of ovarian cancer on 24 October. She was only 34.
The Info
Written by
Jack Hoffman
Producer
Wally Ridley
Weeks at number 1
2 (15-28 July)
Trivia
Deaths
18 July: Footballer Billy McCandless
Meanwhile…
17 July, racing driver Stirling Moss, dubbed ‘the greatest driver never to win the World Championship’, became the first English winner of the British Grand Prix at Aintree.
Summer 1955 brought a heatwave to many parts of the country, particularly Yorkshire, and the UK enjoyed a modern record of low unemployment (barely 1% of the workforce). It was also the summer of Unchained Melody.
Before
Written for a little-known prison movie called Unchained, also released that year, the music came from Alex North, and lyrics were by Hy Zaret. The film centred on a prisoner deciding whether to go on the run or finish his sentence and live in peace with his family. Zaret only agreed to write the lyrics if he could leave out the film’s name, which might have helped with its longevity, ultimately. Todd Duncan sang the original vocals in the movie.
The song is now a standard, and one of the most covered in history, with well over a thousand recorded versions in various languages. In the summer of 1955 alone, four versions existed in the chart at one time – by Al Hibbler, Les Baxter, Liberace and future Radio 2 DJ, Sir Jimmy Young.
Leslie Ronald Young was born 21 September 1921 in Cinderford, Gloucestershire. He suffered greatly with illness as a child, nearly dying from bronchitis, double pneumonia and pleurisy. But he would later excel at sport, and turned down a place with Wigan’s rugby league team.
Young worked as an electrician and physical training instructor for the RAF before becoming a singer in 1950. His cover of Nat ‘King’ Cole’s Too Young was a big sheet music seller in 1951, and he signed with Decca Records a year later. But it was 1955 that proved his most successful year in music, with two number 1s to his name.
Review
By all accounts Young was a radio legend and a thoroughly nice person to boot. However, his version of Unchained Melody is a strange mess. It makes Robson and Jerome sound like the Righteous Brothers. Whilst I admit I’m not much of a personal fan of crooners and opera-style singers like Al Martino and David Whitfield, I can appreciate the slickness of the production of their hits and their ability to sing. Young’s Unchained Melody sounds amateurish by comparison, with strings and guitar backing that seems ill-matched and uneven, and poor Young is either putting no effort in or bellowing, as if the producer is prodding him every now and then to display some passion.
After
In spite of all this, record buyers loved it for some reason, and he enjoyed three weeks at the top. Unchained Melody would return to number one three more times, courtesy of The Righteous Brothers in 1990, Robson & Jerome in 1995 and Gareth Gates in 2002.
The Info
Written by
Alex North & Hy Zaret
Producer
Dick Rowe
Weeks at number 1
3 (24 June-14 July)
Trivia
Births
26 June: The Clash guitarist Mick Jones
Deaths
13 July: Criminal Ruth Ellis
Meanwhile…
30 June: Gloster Meteor jet fighter crashed on takeoff in Kent, killing all crew members and two fruit-pickers. Later that day, two Hawker Sea Hawk jets crash into the North Sea in two separate incidents, leaving one pilot dead. 13 July: Ruth Ellis became the last woman to be hanged in the UK before the death penalty was abolished. She had shot dead her lover, racing driver David Blakely on Easter Sunday (10 April).
Tony Bennett’s Stranger in Paradise was toppled from number 1 by Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, but it wasn’t Pérez ‘Prez’ Prado’s version of Louiguy’s mambo tune, which had topped the charts only a few weeks previously. This was a cover by popular British trumpeter Eddie Calvert, the ‘Man with the Golden Trumpet’.
Before
Calvert was a big star at the time, and had been number one the year previous withOh Mein Papa. He was also one of the writers of Vera Lynn’s only chart-topper, My Son, My Son, also in 1954. Back then it was perfectly normal for several versions of the same song to be in the charts at the same time. See David Whitfield and Frankie Laine‘s Answer Me, for instance, which were even both number 1 at the same time for one week.
There’s no denying Eddie Calvert’s ability on his version, but it’s inferior to Prado’s. It’s missing the authenticity of the King of Mambo, and seems a little too mannered. It reminds me of the Strictly Come Dancing band’s covers of songs. The passion has been sucked out. But at the same time, Calvert actually goes off script more than Billy Regis does on Prado’s version, and does some nice little improvised playing in the song’s latter half, so it’s a decent cover. It’s certainly aged better than Oh Mein Papa.
After
Calvert, like many other 50s stars we’ve already seen, suffered when rock’n’roll and later The Beatles changed the musical landscape. He left the country in 1968, angry at the amount of tax he was paying under Harold Wilson’s Labour government, and moved to Johannesburg. There he remained until he died on 7 August 1978 of a heart attack, aged only 56.
The Info
Written by
Louiguy
Producer
Norrie Paramor
Weeks at number 1
4 (27 May-24 June)
Trivia
Births
30 May: The Clash drummer Topper Headon 4 June: Author Val McDermid 8 June: World Wide Web inventor Tim Berners-Lee 13 June: Footballer Alan Hansen 14 June: Comedian Paul O’Grady
Deaths
14 June: Radium therapist Jacob Moritz Blumberg
Meanwhile…
27 May: As predicted by the polls, the Conservatives won the General Election, with their new leader Anthony Eden back in power with a majority of 31 seats, up 17 from Winston Churchill’s success four years previous. Labour’s infighting between the left and right (sound familiar?) had caused them substantial losses. Their leader, Clement Atlee, who had achieved so much after World War Two, was unlikely to make it to a sixth election in a row.
One of many versions in the chart that year of Robert Wright and George Forrest’s song from the 1953 musical Kismet, which had only just arrived in the UK, Stranger in Paradise marked the start of slick crooner Tony Bennett’s international success.
Before
Anthony Dominick Benedetto, born 3 August 1926 in Queens, New York to Italian immigrants, grew up loving music. Among his favourite trad pop and jazz stars were Al Jolson, Bing Crosby and Louis Armstrong. His uncle Dick was a tap dancer, and Benedetto loved the idea of joining him in showbusiness. At the age of 10, he sang at the opening of the Triborough Bridge, and as a young teen he worked as a singing waiter in various New York restaurants. But towards the end of World War Two he was drafted into the US army.
He later described his time in the front line as a ‘front-row seat in hell’. Returning to his previous career after the war, singer Pearl Bailey invited him to be her warm-up in 1949. She had invited Bob Hope to watch, and he was so impressed he took the young hopeful on the road with him. And that was the start of Tony Bennett, one of our last living original swingers.
Bennett’s first hit came with Because of You in 1951, a US chart-topper for 10 weeks. It was followed by versions of Cold, Cold Heart and Blue Velvet. Such was Bennett’s popularity among women, when he first married in 1952, 2,000 female fans gathered outside the ceremony in black as part of a mock mourning. With his star on the rise, it made perfect sense for the producers of Kismet to get him to record Stranger in Paradise as a way of promoting their musical during a newspaper strike.
Review
Tony Bennett’s voice is the best thing about this song. It’s yet another smooth ballad, smothered with the usual arrangement, but he sings his heart out and it’s plain to see why he became so famous. However, the lyrics are also noteworthy. It’s another love song, but we’re a step above the usual fare from these times. For example:
‘I saw her face And I ascended Out of the common place Into the rarest Somewhere in space I hang suspended Until I know There’s a chance that she cares’
After
Despite being his only UK chart-topper, the best was yet to come for Bennett, but he faced several peaks and troughs. He survived the rock’n’roll boom that soon followed, and hit big again in 1962 with his version of I Left My Heart in San Fransisco. Even Sinatra said he was the best singer in the world, but the boom of The Beatles saw Bennett feeling out of place once more, and he faced trying times until he nearly died of a cocaine overdose in 1979.
In the 90s though, he enjoyed a big revival. The illness and eventual death of Sinatra in 1998 perhaps made the world realise the easy listening stars of the past should be enjoyed while they were still around. Bennett was all over television at the time. His natural charm shone when telling tall tales of his career, and that voice was still golden.
Always a supporter of civil rights, and with opinions on the Iraq War and apartheid that have later proven him to be on the right side of history, he’s that rare commodity in music, namely a nice guy and one hell of a talent. He’s now 93 and still recording and performing, and long may he do so.
Tony Bennett is also the earliest UK number 1 act that I have ever seen live. Performing at a very muddy and wet Glastonbury Festival on Sunday 28 June, 1998, my friends and I sat on bin bags near our tents up on the hill by the Pyramid Stage. We probably began watching him with a sense of ironic detachment, as it certainly wasn’t the sort of music we were into. However, he won us over. Though it’s nearly 20 years ago, I remember we danced, we smiled, and the sun even shone for one of the few times that entire weekend. One of the better ‘legend’ slots in the festival’s history.
The Outro
Bennet died following a seven-year fight with Alzheimer’s disease on 21 July 2023, aged 96.
26 May: As soon as he replaced Winston Churchill, Anthony Eden sought to establish his presence in Number 10 by immediately announcing a General Election for this day. For the first time in an election, television proved to take a prominent role in campaigning for Eden’s Conservatives and Clement Atlee’s Labour. As the polls closed, all the signs pointed toward Eden having made a very shrewd move.
