Social History

43. The Dream Weavers – It’s Almost Tomorrow (1956)

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The Intro

From one of music’s most enduring stars to perhaps the first UK number 1-hit wonder. After a month at the top with Memories Are Made of This, Dean Martin relinquished the top spot to a group with a unique story.

Before

The Dream Weavers was primarily a vehicle for aspiring US songwriting duo Gene Adkinson and Wayne Buff. They were both at different high schools when they first met, before attending the University of Florida together. Other members of the then-unnamed group would come and go.

Taking part in a freshman talent show, they performed in front of thousands of students and won, earning themselves their own radio show. As they closed their first show in 1955, they performed It’s Almost Tomorrow, a song they wrote together in 1953, with Buff taking up lead vocal duties. Chuck Murdock, the announcer on their show, ran a contest to choose a name for the group. The winner announced felt their song was so dreamy, they should be called The Dream Weavers.

Review

I’m not sure ‘dreamy’ is the right word to describe It’s Almost Tomorrow. As the sun comes up, the singer is already mourning the loss of his loved one, and is preparing for their break-up. The lyrics show a depth beyond the writer’s years, and it’s set to a moving tune. It really works in the song’s favour that Buff isn’t an amazing singer. You don’t want smooth crooning on this song, you want to feel the singer’s vulnerability, and you can. In a way it’s old-fashioned, and sounds like it could have been made in the 40s, but at the same time, it sounds pretty fresh. A modern-day cover could work well, providing they sorted out the messy ending, and ditched the female backing vocals that date the sound.

After

The Dream Weavers couldn’t get a record company interested in the song, so they went and made a recording themselves. A very unusual move back then, but they were convinced the song could be a hit, and they were right. Decca were impressed and the group recorded the version that topped the UK charts. After a fortnight it was toppled by Kay Starr’s (The) Rock and Roll Waltz, but reigned again for a further week a fortnight later. Adkinson and Buff failed to come up with anything that good again, and faded into obscurity following Buff’s marriage to Mary Rude (who had been a backing singer) while the song was in the charts.

The Outro

It’s Almost Tomorrow is a forgotten but interesting entry in the story of number 1s. It broke the rules and proved a group could write and record their own material, years before this became the norm.

The Info

Written by

Gene Adkinson & Wade Buff

Producers

Gene Adkinson, Wade Buff & Milt Gabler

Weeks at number 1

3 (16-29 March, 6-12 April)

Trivia

Births

17 March: Footballer Frank McGarvey
20 March: Labour MP Catherine Ashton, Baroness Ashton of Upholland
23 March: Biologist Rosa Beddington/Conservative MP Andrew Mitchell/Biologist Jeremy Wade
9 April: Food writer Nigel Slater

Deaths

25 March: Actor Robert Newton

Meanwhile…

24 March: Devon Lock had a clear lead in the Grand National before shocking attendees by collapsing near the finish, making 100/7 outsider E.S.B. the surprise winner.

7 April: The young Manchester United team won the Football League First Division.

42. Dean Martin – Memories Are Made of This (1956)

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The Intro

It’s funny how each person’s opinion of legendary artists and their music can differ depending on their age and what stage the artist’s career was at when they first fell in love with them. David Bowie was any number of characters: Ziggy Stardust, The Thin White Duke… but to me he was also the grown-up version of the boy from Channel 4’s version of Raymond Briggs’ The Snowman, who had been so traumatised by flying around with a snowman, he had taken to dicking about empty buildings with a blouse-wearing Mick Jagger in the video to Dancing in the Street. It was around 15 years later before he became one of my favourite artists ever, and I’m still not over his death.

Before

Anyway, back to my point. To many, Dean Martin is a bona fide musical icon, and Memories Are Made of This is one of his most popular tracks. But my opinion is clouded by two things: the film The Cannonball Run (1980), and Bisto gravy. More on that later.

Dino Paul Crocetti was born 7 June 1917 in Steubenville, Ohio. He spoke only Italian for his first five years, and would be bullied for his broken English. When he was a teenager he took up drumming, and after dropping out of high school he tried his hand at bootlegging liquor, and by 15 he was a welterweight boxer known as Kid Crochet. A broken nose, scarred lip and several lost fights later, he became a blackjack croupier at an illegal casino.

While there he began singing with local bands, calling himself Dino Martini after opera singer Nino Martini. Influenced by crooners such as Perry Como, he developed his style with several groups, and in the early 40s it was bandleader Sammy Watkins who suggested he become known as Dean Martin.

As 1956 began, Dean Martin was coming to the end of his 10 years as one half of a showbiz duo with Jerry Lewis. He and the comedian had become hugely popular and were household names. However he was becoming disillusioned with the feeling he was playing second fiddle to Lewis. After all, his own music career was going from strength to strength. That’s Amore, Sway and Mambo Italiano had all been big hits in the previous few years, and Memories Are Made of This had recently topped the Billboard chart.

It had been written by Terry Gilkyson, Richard Dehr, and Frank Miller. According to Gilkyson’s daughter, this sweet little number in which a man looks back on his life and loves was simply her father paying tribute to meeting his wife and starting a family. Unusually, the writing trio decided to perform the backing vocals themselves. Calling themselves The Easy Riders, their doo-wop stylings feature throughout the otherwise sparse backing, and are an important ingredient of the song. Whether you like them or not is another matter…

Review

I can’t fault Martin’s performance of Memories Are Made of This. I’m a fan of his voice. I like the way he often sounds like he’s drunk (apparently Martin didn’t drink anywhere near as much as his reputation suggests). The Easy Riders, I can do without. I find the backing vocals irritating and distracting. They’re too catchy. I can understand the song’s popularity, but as mentioned earlier, the associations I have are problematic.

To me, Dean Martin will always be Jamie Blake, the tipsy, priest-impersonating bad guy from the comedy The Cannonball Run, who constantly ridiculed his sidekick, Morris Fenderbaum (Martin’s Rat Pack friend Sammy Davis Jr). When you read how much Davis Jr was picked on by the other Rat Pack members, their roles in the film now leave a sour taste. But I loved that film as a child. So much so, I confess I used to pretend to be Jamie Blake. Me and other kids down my street used to have pretend Cannonball Run-style races on bikes, go-karts and skateboards down my street as a child, and I’d often pretend to be Martin’s character. Strange? Absolutely.

After

Memories Are Made of This was Martin’s only UK number 1. Later that year he and Lewis officially split, and refused to speak to each other for 20 years. Martin became the bigger star, lending his star power to movies, music and television. As rock’n’roll became the main force in pop, he focussed on films, and had ambitions to be a serious actor, but such was his louche charm, he was usually cast in comedies, and won a Golden Globe nomination for his role in Who Was That Lady (1960). That same year he starred alongside his Rat Pack friends in Ocean’s 11.

His most famous song, Everybody Loves Somebody was released in 1964, and a year later he launched his NBC variety series The Dean Martin Show, which ran until 1974. Two years later, Martin and Lewis reconciled publicly on a live telethon by Lewis. They stayed friends, though would only perform once more, in 1989 for Martin’s 72nd birthday.

Although his reputation for drinking was exaggerated, he was a heavy smoker, and was diagnosed with lung cancer in 1993, four years after Davis had died from it. He rejected surgery and died on Christmas Day 1995.

Martin was a hugely charming star who touched the hearts of millions. On the day he died the lights of the Las Vegas Strip were dimmed in his honour. His crypt features the lyric ‘Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime’.

The Outro

This song was then used in a long-running advert for Bisto gravy in the mid-90s, and it ran for so long I got sick to death of it. So when I hear Memories Are Made of This, I can’t help but picture a drunken Dean Martin, in a priest outfit, pouring gravy while singing. Not the memories the writers had in mind.

The Info

Written by

Terry Gilkyson, Richard Dehr & Frank Miller

Producer

Lee Gillette

Weeks at number 1

4 (17 Feb-15 March)

Trivia

Births

19 February: The Beat singer-songwriter Dave Wakeling
25 February: Scottish footballer Davie Cooper
28 February: Businessman Terry Leahy
7 March: Author Andrea Levy
8 March: Gynaecologist Lesley Regan
11 March: Television sports presenter Helen Rollason
12 March: Iron Maiden bassist Steve Harris/Actress Lesley Manville

Meanwhile…

17 February: The Midlands becomes the first region outside of London to receive ITV when ATV Midlands starts broadcasting.

18 February: ITV weekend station ABC launches.

23 February: Eight employees are killed when a fire erupts at Keighley, West Yorkshire.

10 March: Fairey Aviation test pilot Peter Twiss sets a new airspeed record in the Fairey Delta 2. He also becomes the first person to exceed 1,000 mph.

14 March: A memorial to Karl Marx is unveiled at the new site of his grave in Highgate Cemetery in London.

41. Tennessee Ernie Ford with Orchestra conducted by Jack Fascinato – Sixteen Tons (1956)

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The Intro

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.

40. Dickie Valentine with Johnny Douglas & His Orchestra – Christmas Alphabet (1955)

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The Intro

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.

39. Bill Haley & His Comets – Rock Around the Clock (1955)

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The Intro

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.

38. The Johnston Brothers with Johnny Douglas & His Orchestra – Hernando’s Hideaway (1955)

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The Intro

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.

37. Jimmy Young with Bob Sharples & His Music – The Man from Laramie (1955)

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The Intro

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 Joe should 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.

The Info

Written by

Lester Lee & Ned Washington

Producer

Dick Rowe

Weeks at number 1

4 (14 October-10 November)

Trivia

Births

18 October: Presenter Timmy Mallett

Deaths

14 October: Songwriter Harry Parr-Davies

35. Alma Cogan with Vocal Group & Orchestra by Frank Cordell – Dreamboat (1955)

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The Intro

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.

34. Jimmy Young with Bob Sharples & His Music – Unchained Melody (1955)

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Singer-Jimmy-Young.jpg

The Intro

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).

33. Eddie Calvert – Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White (1955)

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The Intro

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 with Oh 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.

Review

https://youtu.be/o2Weai78FTc

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.