Frankie Vaughan

483. Shakin’ Stevens – Green Door (1981)

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The Intro

Ghost Town had spent three weeks at number 1, soundtracking the country’s dissent over rising unemployment. What did it take to reunite the country? It took the Royal Wedding of Prince Charles II and Lady Diana Spencer, and the retro rock’n’roll of Shakin’ Stevens, who was at the peak of his fame with Green Door.

Before

Shaky-mania was a very real thing back then. Grandparents and parents loved the Welsh pop star, who had filled in the sizeable gap left by the death of Elvis Presley, boys thought he was cool, and girls swooned.

Stevens’ cover of This Ole House had topped the hit parade in the spring, and so it was a case of striking while the iron was hot. Work began on his fourth album, the imaginatively titled Shaky. Adopting the ‘if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it’ methodology, it featured a mix of self-penned Stevens numbers and covers of 50s rock’n’roll tunes. The first fruits of Shaky to see the light of day was the original track You Drive Me Crazy, which was a strong track and rushed out hot on the heels of This Ole House. It was brand new, but could easily have been mistaken for a 50s or 60s hit. It very nearly became Shaky’s second number 1, but it was kept off the top spot by Stand and Deliver!, by the UK’s other hottest pop star of 1981.

Perhaps sensing that Stevens could repeat the success of his last number 1 by releasing a song the old folks would remember from their youth, Philips Records released his cover of Green Door.

Green Door had been written by US orchestra leader Bob ‘Hutch’ Davie, with lyrics by Marvin J Moore, in 1956. The original version was recorded by Jim Lowe, a singer-songwriter and radio presenter. The green door in question refers to the entrance to a private club, that Lowe is desperate to enter. He can hear laughter, an old piano which is being played ‘hot’, and can see smoke coming through the keyhole. Lowe’s recording, which became number 1 in the US and eight in the UK, is an interesting production, on which Davie played piano, that he sped up to give it a honky tonk sound.

In the UK, Lowe’s version was eclipsed by Frankie Vaughan’s, which reached number two. Vaughan, known as ‘Mr Moonlight’, was hugely popular in the UK, and in time he would have two number 1s. However, Lowe’s version is the superior one.

Review

I don’t know if it’s age or nostalgia, but here I am bigging up Shaky, whose version of Green Door is better than Lowe’s and Laine’s. It is very similar to the latter, but where normally I’d prefer an authentic primitive 50s production over a glossy 80s take, that isn’t the case here.

Producer Stuart Colman gives it sheen but also some oomph. It’s catchy as hell and to be fair, the country must have been ready for a party after all the civil unrest that had been going down that summer. And yet, it’s only a few months since I reviewed This Ole House, and I marked that down considerably, despite both singles being very, very similar. Perhaps Stevens caught me on a good day, this time.

Or perhaps it was the silliness of the video that made me warm to Green Door. Shaky’s videos are always good for an easy laugh, and this is no exception. Just like This Ole House, the director is taking things very literally (possibly the same director?). Stevens jumps around in front of some, yes, green doors in much the same way he jumped off the old house (yes, really). There are repeated shots of an eye looking through a keyhole, a piano… you get the message. Then he finally gets inside the club and gets the chance to do some Elvis-style gyrations on the piano. It’s ridiculous, but in a good way, and I can totally see why he must have seemed so cool to me as a little lad.

After

After spending nearly all of August 1981 at the top of the singles chart, the parent album Shaky was released, and went on to be his most successful LP ever, also reaching number 1. It’s Raining, also from the album, peaked at 10, but he would soon be back at pole position.

The Outro

Green Door is obviously squeaky clean and upbeat. But it also took on a more sinister meaning for me, thanks to its reworking for a 1976 public information film, that continued to be shown well into the 80s. Looking at it now, it’s really not scary, but it did its job when I was a boy, as after seeing it I’d be too scared to answer the door to anyone. Cheers, Central Office of Information!

The Info

Written by

Bob Davie & Marvin J Moore

Producer

Stuart Colman

Weeks at number 1

4 (1-28 August)

Trivia

Births

8 August: S Club 7 singer Bradley McIntosh
11 August: Scottish singer-songwriter Sandi Thom
17 August: Conservative Party MP Johnny Mercer/Actor Chris New
20 August: Ben Barnes
27 August: Comedian Olivia Lee
28 August: Scottish Labour Party leader Kezia Dugdale

Deaths

5 August: Poet Molly Holden/Clarinettist Reginald Kell
9 August: Landowner Ralph Bankes
10 August: Civil servant Sir Alan Lascelles/Anglican clergyman James Parkes
12 August: Royal Navy captain Howard Bone
15 August: Lawyer Sir Humphrey Waldock
16 August: Cinematographer Denys Coop
18 August: Second World War pilot Athol Forbes
19 August: Actress Jessie Matthews
21 August: Journalist JRL Anderson
22 August: First World War nurse Mairi Chisholm
24 August: Physician Margery Blackie
26 August: Television producer Peter Eckersley
28 August: Record producer Guy Stevens

Meanwhile…

1 August: Kevin Lynch became the seventh IRA hunger striker to die.

2 August: Less than 24 hours later, Kevin Lynch became the eighth.

8 August: Thomas McElwee became the ninth.

9 August: Broadmoor Hospital is criticised when double murderer Alan Reeve became the second prisoner to escape there in three weeks. 

17 August: An inquiry opened for the Moss Side riots.

20 August: Michael Devine was the 10th IRA hunger striker to die in prison.
Also on this day, Minimum Lending Rate ceased to be set by the Bank of England.

25 August: Britain’s largest Enterprise Zone was launched in Tyneside.

27 August: 31-year-old Moira Stuart was appointed to be the first black newsreader on the BBC. 

335. Gary Glitter – I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!) (1973)

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The Intro

I’ve been dreading this ever since I started this blog. How to review the music of one of the, if not the first pop star to be effectively erased from modern times. Gary Glitter was one of the most popular glam rockers of the 70s, and through several comebacks in the 80s or 90s, was a national treasure (and yes, I thought he was great), until his ill-fated trip to PC World and the discovery of child pornography on his computer in 1997. He’s now rightly a figure of hate. At best, he’s ammunition for cheap jokes. His music is rarely heard anywhere, and made the headlines recently for its use in the Todd Haynes’ acclaimed Joker (2019). In the world of cancelled culture, musicians have mostly escaped unscathed. I’ve already reviewed number 1s by the likes of Jerry Lee Lewis and Chuck Berry. But Glitter is another matter.

Before

Paul Francis Gadd was born 8 May 1944 in Banbury, Oxfordshire. His mother, a cleaner, raised him with the help of her mother. He never knew his father. Gadd was a troublesome child, and he was 10 when he and his brother were taken into local authority care. He would frequently run away and head for London, and he became determined he would one day be a star there.

In 1960, aged 15, Gadd released his first record with Decca Records under the name Paul Raven, Alone in the Night. It got him nowhere, but he did well performing in nightclubs in and around Soho. A year later, Raven signed with Parlophone and worked with future Beatles producer George Martin. A further two singles, Walk On Boy and Tower of Strength (a number 1 for Frankie Vaughan that year) also tanked.

Fast-forward to 1964 and Raven was struggling, serving as the warm-up man on ITV’s Ready Steady Go!. He was also wearing a wig, as he had gone bald at 18. Raven starred in TV adverts and auditioned for films, and around this time he first met producer Mike Leander. In early 1965 he joined The Mike Leander Show Band, and soon was helping as a deputy on some of Leander’s production sessions. When the band split, Raven helped form Boston International and toured the UK and Germany. Several singles were also released, sometimes under the name Paul Monday, including a cover of Here Comes the Sun.

Raven must have felt fame would never be his, until he watched on from the sidelines as glam rock began to rise thanks to T. Rex. He searched for a new name. Working backward through the alphabet, he tried to find an alliterative name… Vicky Vomit, Terry Tinsel and Stanley Sparkle were among those considered, before he settled on Gary Glitter.

Glitter and Leander went into the studio and worked on a 15-minute jam session that was to finally catapult him into stardom. Splitting the jam into Rock and Roll, Parts 1 and 2 became Glitter’s first single release in 1972, reaching number two in the UK. With a stomping, deep beat, filthy guitar sound and echoey, double-tracked vocals to hide a poor singing voice, the trademark Glitter sound was there from the start. Rock and Roll, Part 1 paid tribute to the music of Glitter’s past, but Rock and Roll, Part 2 was most popular worldwide. It was instrumental, save for Glitter’s ‘Hey’. This was his only US hit and became used extensively in sport there, where it became known as ‘The Hey Song’. It was also the version in Joker, and in 1988, was reworked by Jimmy Cauty and Bill Drummond, aka, The KLF, aka in this instance The Timelords, as Doctorin’ the Tardis, where it shot to number 1 and gave Glitter his umpteenth comeback.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. With his flamboyant outfits, bouffant wigs and demented stare, Glitter became an instant glam icon, who loved to mythologise himself in a string of hit singles. After years of missing out, his simple, direct glam rock was a case of right place, right time. Debut album Glitter went top 10, and another track from it, I Didn’t Know I Loved You (Till I Saw You Rock and Roll) reached number four.

After the success of Rock and Roll, Parts 1 and 2, Glitter and Leander knew they would need a regular backing band for live shows. The Boston Showband became known as The Glittermen and soon after settled on The Glitter Band. The group consisted of John Rossall (trombone and musical director), Gerry Shephard (lead guitar and vocals), Pete Phipps (drums and keyboards), Tony Leonard (drums), John Springate (bass and vocals), and Harvey Ellison (saxophone).

In 1973, Glitter came ever closer to the top spot, with two singles from Touch Me, Do You Wanna Touch Me and Hello, Hello, I’m Back Again reaching number two. Rossall and Ellison took part in the sessions for Touch Me, but the rest of the instruments were once again Glitter and Leander. However, it seems more likely to have been purely Leander, as it was Glitter who claimed he helped, and who can believe a thing he says?).

I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!) became the first of three number 1s for Glitter, and, until he was uncovered as a paedophile, one of his most enduring anthems and giving him the nickname ‘the Leader’.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8hPoOOhXg-k

Review

So here I am listening to Gary Glitter songs in full for the first time in over 20 years. It’s a weird experience to say the least. When the Michael Jackson documentary Leaving Neverland was shown last year, I wondered if I could ever listen to his music again, but I have done, from time to time. When it came to listening to Glitter, I did it in an empty house, with earphones, with a sense of shame and a feeling of being complicit in something terrible.

And yet I had a strange feeling of nostalgia listening to I’m the Leader of the Gang (I Am!). I loved it as a boy, the slow ‘Come on! Come on!’ stomp building in speed and power, and I also liked Glitter, despite being scared by his manic staring. I like Leander’s production on Glitter’s hits and it’s a shame his work has also been wiped from public consciousness – I don’t know if it’s the associations Glitter’s discography now has, but there’s an uneasy, eerie feeling to these songs… I can’t put my finger on it, but it’s a unique, exciting sound.

The Outro

However, any sentiment I might have felt about this number 1 vanished after I heard Glitter laugh after singing ‘I’m the man who put the bang in gang!’. It disgusted me, brought me to my senses and also made me think I’ve found the reasons Glitter is reviled so much and his work will never be reappraised. Most of the lyrics at best sound seedy, at worst, boastful of his behaviour, like barely hidden clues, as if daring us to find him out. He’s never shown the remotest bit of remorse for his crimes. There’s footage of him on YouTube, leering and winking and mock-shushing people for hinting at his love of schoolchildren on This Is Your Life. He was a fake in his public and private life. A fat, bald pervert, pretending to be a children’s hero. His music would have to be incredible to make you forget all this and enjoy it at all. It isn’t.

The Info

Written by

Garry Glitter & Mike Leander

Producer

Mike Leander

Weeks at number 1

4 (28 July-24 August)

Trivia

Births

12 August: Terrorist Richard Reid
20 August: Northern Irish radio presenter Stephen Nolan

Deaths

29 July: Race car driver Roger Williamson
6 August: Actor James Beck
15 August: Motorcycle designer Edward Turner
17 August: Labour Party MP George Benson
18 August: Prime Minister of Northern Ireland Basil Brooke, 1st Viscount Brookeborough

Meanwhile…

30 July: 18 coalminers were killed in the Markham Colliery disaster near stately, Derbyshire when the brake mechanism on their cage failed.
Also that day, £20,000,000 was paid to victims of the Thalidomide scandal following a court case that had run for 11 years.

31 July: Militant protesters of Ian Paisley disrupted the first sitting of the Northern Ireland Assembly.

8 August: Stoke City and England goalkeeper Gordon Banks announced his retirement from football. He had lost sight in one eye in a car crash in October 1972.

20 August: Len Shipman, president of the Football League, called for the government to bring back the birch to deal with the rise of football hooligans.

21 August: The coroner in the inquest into Bloody Sunday accused the British army of ‘sheer unadulterated murder’ following the jury’s open verdict.

79. Jane Morgan – The Day the Rains Came (1959)

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The Intro

The new year began with no change at the top for some time, as Conway Twitty’s It’s Only Make Believe kept its grip at number 1. This finally changed on 23 January when US singer Jane Morgan toppled him with her version of The Day the Rains Came.

Before

This was a cover of a French song, Le Jour où la Pluie Viendra, written by lyricist Pierre Delanoë and singer and composer Gilbert Bécaud. The duo were responsible for some of France’s biggest hits of the time, but this was their first to be translated into English and become well-known. The lyrics to The Day the Rains Came were by Carl Sigman, who had a formidable reputation for adapting music from overseas and turning them into UK hits (see Answer Me and It’s All in the Game, number 1s in 1953 and 1958 respectively).

Morgan was a beautiful bilingual singer who performed in English and French, and was the perfect performer for this new version. She even threw in the French version on the B-side.

She was born Florence Catherine Currier on 3 May 1942 in Newton, Massachusetts. Born into a talented musical family, at the age of five she was taking piano lessons and singing. Her mother taught her Italian and French. As she grew older she was accepted into New York’s prestigious Juilliard School of Music, and intended to become an opera singer. To pay her way she began singing in nightclubs. Orchestra leader Art Mooney hired her, and came up with her stage name Jane Morgan from two of his other singers, Janie Ford and Marian Morgan.

Morgan’s knowledge of French came in handy when bandleader Bernard Hilda hired her to perform two shows a night at his new club near the Eiffel Tower in 1948. She began with US songs but quickly took to performing French songs as her language skills improved, and soon the audiences were flocking to her gigs. By 1949 she had her own television show in France, and later she moved between Europe, Canada and back to her own country, in the hope of becoming more famous, but agents feared her skills were too specialised.

Eventually she was signed to the fledgling Kapp Records and released her debut album, appropriately named The American Girl from Paris. Her cover of Fascination was released in 1957 and remained in the charts for over six months, and it became her signature song.

Review

The Day the Rains Came was one of those throwbacks to the pop sound of several years previous. My initial thoughts were of how similar it sounds to previous number 1, The Garden of Eden, by Frankie Vaughan, which sounded old-fashioned when it hit the top in 1957. This isn’t a criticism, as that was a serviceable enough tune and so is this.

Usually in love songs, rain is used as a metaphor for loss, but Sigman’s lyrics take a different approach, comparing the beauty of rainfall bringing plants to life with the wonder of a developing romance:

‘The day that the rains came down
Buds were born, love was born
As the young buds will grow
So our young love will grow
Love, sweet love’

Morgan’s vocals are decent enough – she hits all the right notes, but ultimately there’s nothing about the song, lyrics or performance to lift this above average.

After

January has often historically been a quiet month for new number 1s after the madness of Christmas – it seems The Day the Rains Came may be an early example of this phenomenon. Nonetheless it brightened up that last week of the first month of 1959, in which the most dense fog to hit the country in seven years caused havoc.

The Outro

Morgan carried on releasing music into the 70s, and appeared on numerous TV shows over the years. She has also performed for five US presidents –  John F Kennedy, Richard Nixon, Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter, and George W. Bush. Unlike many stars of the era she is still alive, and received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 2011. She celebrated her 100th birthday in 2024.

The Info

Written by

Pierre Delanoë & Gilbert Bécaud/Carl Sigman (English lyrics)

Producer

Vic Schoen

Weeks at number 1

1 (23-29 January)

65. Harry Belafonte – Mary’s Boy Child (1957)

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The Intro

Each year before 1957 had brought hints of the progression in music and popular culture that rock’n’roll brought about, but these were often few and far between, with the charts still dominated by fluffy, overwrought, orchestrated love songs, often performed by a revolving door of crooners.

Before

1957 had changed all that. By and large, rock’n’roll ruled, with Guy Mitchell and Frankie Vaughan the only crooners to hit the top spot, and even then, Mitchell was aping the new sound. It was also entirely male-dominated. Female singers didn’t get a look in. As winter and Christmas loomed though, record buyers once more turned to something cosier.

Mary’s Boy Child had been written by Jester Hairston a US songwriter, actor and leading expert on Negro spirituals. Originally called He Pone and Chocolate Tea (pone was a type of corn bread), in this form it had nothing to do with Christmas and was a calypso song for a friend’s birthday party. Later, famous film composer Walter Schumann asked Hairston to write a Christmas tune for his choir. Remembering the birthday song, he simply rewrote the lyrics and made them festive-themed, similar to how Slade rewrote a psychedelic song and transformed it into Merry Xmas Everybody. (Incidentally, Mary’s Boy Child was the last explicitly festive Christmas number 1 until Slade in 1973). Harry Belafonte had heard the choir performing the new version and asked if he could cover it.

Belafonte, born Harold George Bellanfanti Jr, was born on 1 March 1927 in Harlem, New York, to parents of Jamaican and Dutch descent. He served in the navy during World War Two, and returned to New York afterwards to work as a janitor’s assistant. A tenant gave him two tickets to the American Negro Theatre, where he instantly fell in love with the stage, and also befriended Sidney Poitier. They were both so poor, they would buy a single ticket for local plays, then trade places between acts, so one could inform the other of what had taken place.

To help pay for his acting classes, Belafonte became a singer. At his very first show, he was backed by the Charlie Parker Band, which included Miles Davis as well as Parker. He began recording in 1949, and his breakthrough came in 1956 with the album Calypso, the first LP in the world to sell over a million copies in a year, and the first to sell that many ever in the UK. Introducing the wider world to calypso music, it featured the hits Banana Boat Song (‘Day-O’) and and Jump in the Line (both of which are great and I got to know them thanks to the 1988 film Beetlejuice).

Review

https://youtu.be/dHY7tRfASVg

This is the first Christmas number 1 to get to the same chart position later when covered by another act, namely Boney M in 1978. How does it compare? Well I don’t get the love for Boney M at all, and I particularly don’t like their cover of Mary’s Boy Child, so it’s no competition really.

Belafonte is in fine voice as always, though it’s a shame he didn’t opt for a livelier approach to the song. He’s singing in a calypso rhythm but the music doesn’t really match. Despite this, I’d easily take it over a naff disco-lite version with an extra bit tacked on the end for no reason.

After

Record-buyers in 1957 loved the religious imagery and cosy string backing, keeping it at number 1 for seven weeks from November, well into January 1958.

In 1959 Belafonte became the first African American to win an Emmy. A young Bob Dylan played harmonica on his 1962 album Midnight Special. As the 60s progressed he became dissatisfied with his film work and the music hits were drying up. By that point he was known as a prominent civil rights activist, and provided great financial help to Martin Luther King. He helped organise marches and bailed King and several other protestors out of jail. Much more personally rewarding than his other careers, I should guess.

The Outro

Later, Belafonte organised the 1985 charity single and number 1 We Are the World, became a UNICEF ambassador, and a staunch critic of apartheid and US foreign policy. He died of congestive heart failure on 25 April 2023, aged 96.

The Info

Written by

Jester Hairston

Producer

Rene Farron

Weeks at number 1

7 (22 November 1957-9 January 1958)

Trivia

Births

20 December: Singer Billy Bragg 

Deaths

13 December: Writer Michael Sadleir
17 December: Writer Dorothy L. Sayers
21 December: Composer Eric Coates

Meanwhile..

4 December: At the Lewisham by-pass, in dense fog, an electric train stopped at a signal under a bridge. A steam train crashed into it, causing the bridge to collapse onto the latter. The rail crash left 90 dead.

Christmas Day: Queen Elizabeth II marked the 25th anniversary of the first Christmas broadcast on the radio with the start of a new tradition. For the first time, the speech also featured on television. The Queen made reference to this change, and put older viewers minds at ease by remarking that the age of change was sometimes bewildering, but everyone would be okay if we hung on to ageless ideals and values. However, during the speech some viewers experienced confusion when they overheard an American voice say ‘Joe, I’m gonna grab a quick coffee…’ Apparently, at this time, sunspots often caused freak radio conditions, resulting in US police radio transmissions interfering in UK television broadcasts. I’d imagine that was very bewildering.

56. Tab Hunter with Billy Vaughn’s Orchestra & Chorus – Young Love (1957)

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The Intro

The irrepressible Guy Mitchell’s Singing the Blues knocked Frankie Vaughan’s The Garden of Eden back off the top and enjoyed one final week at number 1, before clean-cut Hollywood actor Tab Hunter (how ’50s movie star’ is that name?) sent it back down the charts for good with the earnest pop ballad Young Love.

Before

Born Arthur Andrew Kelm on 11 July 1931 in Manhattan, New York City, his father was abusive, and their parents divorced while he was still young. As Arthur Gelien, he became interested in figure skating.

At 15 he was sacked from the Coast Guard for lying about his age. He met actor Dick Clayton, who suggested his teen idol looks would stand him in good stead should he choose to become an actor. His agent Henry Wilson decided Tab Hunter would be a better name. Sorry to keep bringing it up, but where I come from, a tab hunter is someone who keeps cadging cigarettes…

Anyway, he spent the first half of the 50s getting noticed in a series of film roles, before hitting the big time in World War Two drama Battle Cry (1955). For several years, Hunter was Warner Bros’ most popular male star.

Young Love had been written by Ric Cartey and Carole Joyner. Cartey himself released the original version in late 1956 but got nowhere. Country star Sonny James fared better and made it a big hit, but Tab Hunter went even further. One of the top-selling singles of 1957 in both the UK and US, Warner Bros. were so impressed, they formed Warner Bros. Records as a way of preventing Hunter from releasing his freshly recorded album on a rival label. These days, Warner Bros. Records is one of only three remaining huge music conglomerates.

Review

It’s a very safe, innocent tune, and an early attempt at getting young girls to buy records. Having noticed how rock’n’roll had impacted on teenagers, record companies were beginning to wake up to the younger market. Getting a good-looking film star to perform such a song was the perfect move.

It has a certain charm – more than some of the dross similar acts like the Osmonds churned out in the 70s (in fact Donny Osmond’s inferior cover reached number 1 in 1973), and most 90s teen ballads too. Hunter sounds like a young Morrissey at times. Perhaps an early influence on the miserable racist?

After

Hunter’s film career continued to shine, but tailed off during the 70s. As I was born in 1979, I have to confess I hadn’t heard of him until now. However, while researching, I was delighted to discover that Hunter played geeky substitute teacher Mr Stewart in Grease 2 (1982). Slated by critics, and hated by many fans of the original, I have a certain fondness for the sequel, as do others I know. Listening again to his big cameo moment, the verses from Reproduction sound very similar to the verses from Young Love. Must have been deliberate.

The Outro

After decades of rumours, Hunter finally revealed he was gay in his 2005 autobiography. On 8 July 2018, he suffered a cardiac arrest and died, aged 86.

The Info

Written by

Ric Cartey & Carole Joyner

Producer

Billy Vaughn

Weeks at number 1

7 (22 February-11 April)

Trivia

Births

22 February: Actor Robert Bathurst

Deaths

7 March: Artist Wyndham Lewis
21 March: Linguist Charles Kay Ogden

Meanwhile…

6 March: Ghana became independent of the UK.

11 April: The government announced that Singapore would also breaking free of British rule.

1 April, BBC’s current affairs programme Panorama pioneered fake news when they transmitted their infamous April Fools Day hoax, with a feature on spaghetti trees in Switzerland, that you can see here. They have inspired many inferior copies ever since.

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…