Eurovision Song Contest - Every UK Number 1

The Intro

Somehow, Bridge over Troubled Water was replaced at number 1 after three weeks, by… this. The Eurovision Song Contest winner of 1970, Irish 19-year-old warbler Dana’s ultra-twee All Kinds of Everything is an early contender for worst number 1 of the 70s.

Before

Rosemary Brown, born 30 August 1951, was born in Islington, North London. Her working-class parents had relocated from Derry, Northern Ireland after World War Two due to high unemployment, but when she was five the Browns were advised to return to Derry due to the effects of smog in the city on some of her siblings (she was one of seven).

Both young Brown’s parents were musical, and she proved it ran in the family when she won an all-ages talent contest aged only six. She learned to play the piano, violin, guitar sang and became a ballet dancer too.

As a young teen in 1965 she won another talent contest, and this time the prize was to record a demo. When Brown finished her O-levels, Rex Records got to hear it and signed Brown up. Debut single Sixteen, released in November 1967, failed to ignite interest. Around this time, and now undertaking her A-levels, she took the stage name ‘Dana’ – her school nickname.

In 1969 her label suggested she take part in the Irish National Song Contest, as the winner would represent Ireland in the Eurovision Song Contest. She came second with Look Around (her fourth single).

The following year the Irish National Song Contest producer Tom McGrath suggested Dana try again. This time the winner would represent just the Republic of Ireland at that year’s Eurovision. He thought the young singer would be a great match for All Kinds of Everything, a ballad by Derry Lindsay and Jackie Smith, two 28-year-old amateur songwriters working as printmakers for a Dublin newspaper.

Dana won the contest and on 21 March she became the last performer at Eurovision, held in Amsterdam. She beat Mary Hopkin representing the UK by seven votes. This was the first of a record seven wins by the Republic of Ireland, and was only the second English language song to win the competition (Sandie Shaw’s Puppet on a String was the first in 1967, and Lulu’s Boom Bang-a-Bang had shared first place in 1969). It’s worth noting the political significance of this win, having a girl from Northern Ireland representing the republic and not the UK, just as The Troubles were rumbling.

The single version of All Kinds of Everything had been released the week before the show, arranged by Phil Coulter, who had co-written Puppet on a String and Congratulations. It began to climb the charts.

https://youtu.be/8xmnd3uiK_Y

Review

If this kind of dreck can win Eurovision, there’s no wonder it has such a reputation for the naff. The best thing I can say about it is that it didn’t make me want to hurt myself the way Puppet on a String did. All Kinds of Everything is all kinds of terrible. The production (Ray Horricks also produced both Anthony Newley’s chart-toppers) is lightweight and makes an already sickly song even worse, and the lyrics are something else. Dana’s got someone constantly on her mind and the song is simply a list of things that remind her of him. So let’s take a look at those things, shall we?

In the first verse she sings (in a serviceable but sickly manner) of ‘Snowdrops and daffodils, butterflies and bees’. Predictable, but sweet I suppose. But then she moves on to ‘Sailboats and fishermen, things of the sea’. Fishermen? Ok, that’s unusual. And how vague is ‘things of the sea’? Either she can’t be arsed to go into detail, or hasn’t got the imagination to do so. In the second verse we get ‘things of the sky’, including seagulls and wind… I daresay my eight-year-old could be more imaginative than this. Lindsay and Smith clearly should have stuck to their day jobs. Tacky, dated and dull, All Kinds of Everything is one of the worst songs I’ve reviewed yet.

After

Dana’s debut album was released in June, named after her number 1, and featuring a new version of that track. I’m not going to find it and compare, I’m not putting myself through that. Her fortunes soon became mixed, with her follow-up single I Will Follow You ironically not following her previous one to anywhere near the same success. Who Put the Lights Out reached the top 20 in 1971, though.

Despite still doing well in Ireland, it was 1975 before Dana was back on Top of the Pops with Please Tell Him That I Said Hello. Her second biggest UK success happened that December with the seasonal It’s Gonna Be a Cold Cold Christmas reaching number four in Christmas week. In 1976 she scored a top 20 hit with the disco-influenced Fairytale, but after that her fame dwindled until she took a new direction as the 80s began.

In 1979 Pope John Paul II visited Ireland, which inspired Dana to sing about her faith. She topped the Irish charts with Totus Tuus, and it opened the door to a career recording Catholic music and prayer albums, and spent most of the 80s doing this, appearing in Pantones or appearing on light entertainment shows.

Dana’s religious dedication made her popular in the US, and she presented a TV show there in 1991, called Say Yes. In 1997 the Christian Community Centre in Ireland suggested she ran for Irish presidency, and after scoffing at the idea initially, she ran as an independent under the name Dana Rosemary Scallon, and came third.

Scallon won a seat in the European Parliament in 1999, and proved herself to have values as outdated as her music – vehemently pro-life, anti-divorce, anti-same-sex marriages, and anti-EU. So actually, in a way she was ahead of her time, and could probably become supreme leader of the universe with the way the world is in 2020. All kinds of prejudice reminds me of Dana, you could say.

Scanlon lost her seat in 2004 and returned to light entertainment, launched a religious music label, released her second autobiography and became a TV talent show judge. In 2011 she ran for presidency again and came sixth. 2019 saw Dana, now 68, release her first album in years, My Time.

The Outro

Sadly, All Kinds of Everything sets the scene in a way, as there was lots more dreary MOR to come in the 70s.

The Info

Written by

Derry Lindsay & Jackie Smith

Producer

Ray Horricks

Weeks at number 1

2 (18 April-1 May)

Trivia

Births

27 April: Actress Kylie Travis

Deaths

20 April: Academic Thomas Iorwerth Ellis

Meanwhile…

18 April: British Leyland announced its longest-running model, the Morris Minor, which had been in production since 1948, would be discontinued at the start of 1971.

29 April: Chelsea defeated Leeds United 2-1 in the FA Cup final replay at Old Trafford, gaining them the trophy for the first time.
On the same day, last year’s winners Manchester City won the European Cup Winners’ Cup by defeating Polish team Górnik Zabrze 2-1 in Vienna, Austria.

The Intro

Here’s one we all know. (How Much is) That Doggie in the Window? is known to most as a timeless nursery rhyme rather than a chart-topper. It is about as far removed from a modern number 1 as it’s possible to get, but children of every generation since have grown up with it and loved it, including my own daughters.

Before

(How Much is) That Doggie in the Window? was written by Bob Merrill, author of the tacky She Wears Red Feathers, number 1 by Guy Mitchell a month previously. Loosely based on a folk song called Carnival of Venice, an earlier version, The Doggie in the Window, sung by one of the most famous singers of the 50s, Patti Page, is still the most well-known, and hit number 1 on the Billboard charts in the US, selling millions. But it didn’t make it to number one in the UK. Enter Lita Roza.

Roza, born Lilian Patricia Lita Roza on 14 March 1926, hailed from Liverpool. She credited her passion for music to her father, an accordionist and pianist. He was of Filipino ancestry, which is where Roza’s sultry looks originated too.

Her desire to make it in show business was with her as a child. Aged 12 she became a dancer, at 15 she was working with a comedian, and she first became a singer a year later. Roza signed up with The Harry Roy Orchestra in London but by the time she was 18 she had quit and moved to America with her new husband. The marriage was short-lived and shortly after World War Two she returned to the UK.

Roza became a singer with The Ted Heath Jazz Band and juggled this with a burgeoning solo career. She regularly topped polls in Melody Maker and the New Musical Express for best female singer.

A creditable artist, she didn’t want to record a novelty record, but her A&R, Dick Rowe, nagged her until she relented. However, she insisted on singing it in only one take, and refused to ever perform it live. Roza claimed in a 2004 interview that she kept her word, and so she began a long tradition of artists who hate the song they become best known for. Nonetheless, it immortalised her as the first UK solo act to become number 1.

Review

Listening to her cover alongside Patti Page’s (not something I can see myself doing more than once), I prefer Roza’s, as she sings with much less affectation than Page. Despite overfamiliarity (in a strange way, as how often have I heard it as an adult?), I can’t help but like this.

After

She remained popular until rock’n’roll took off, when she moved into TV work, and also appeared in the Eurovision Song Contest heats from 1957, 1959 and 1960.

However, Roza clearly had some affection or appreciation of (How Much is) That Doggie in the Window? as when she died she left £300,000 in her will to charities. £190,000 of this went to dog-related charities: Battersea Dogs and Cats Home, The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association and The Cinnamon Trust.

The Outro

She passed away on 14 August 2008, aged 82.

The Info

Written by

Bob Merrill

Producer

Dick Rowe

Weeks at number 1

1 (17-23 April)

Trivia

Births

20 April: Novelist Sebastian Faulks