UK Charts

5. Perry Como with the Ramblers – Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes (1953)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

The first number 1 by an artist I was aware of before taking on this project, US easy listening singer Perry Como was one of the biggest stars of the 50s, and one of the names that really conjures up the era that predates rock’n’roll. After two world wars and economic depression, this is what the people needed. 

With his baritone croon, his cardigans (Bing Crosby once said Como was ‘the man who invented casual’, so we have him to thank for Alan Partridge) and the general aura of cosiness that he gave off, Como had nearly three decades of huge success from the 40s onwards. Had the UK charts existed earlier he’d have no doubt been number 1 before 1953. Not bad going for a man who began work as a barber as a 10-year-old.

Before

Como was born Pierino Ronald Como, the seventh of 10 children to Italian immigrant parents, in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania on 18 May 1912. His parents owned a second-hand organ, and as a toddler young Como would start learning the ropes of his first instrument. The older he got, the more instruments he would learn, and being a singer wasn’t top of his ambitions. He wanted to be the best barber in the neighbourhood. He had his own shop aged 14.

In 1932 Como made his first appearance on stage in Cleveland while attending a Freddy Carlone show. Carlone invited audience members to perform with him, and a terrified Como was pushed into it by his friends. He was immediately offered a job.

In 1936 he made his first recordings with Ted Weems’s orchestra, where he worked on the smooth singing style that would make his name. But Como had started a family, and missed his wife and young son, so he quit in 1942 to become a barber once more. The offers kept coming though, and in 1943 he signed with RCA Victor, the company he stayed with for the next 44 years. He gained the interest of Frank Sinatra, who sometimes asked him to fill in for him on theatre shows. Como rocketed to stardom.

Review

His first UK chart-topper, Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes shares similarities to Jo Stafford’s number 1, You Belong to Me. Her song featured a woman hoping that her partner would remember who he should be thinking of while he was away,  Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes is about an absent man asking his lover not to stray. I quite like that title, it’s more oblique than the other number 1s that preceded it.

The tune gallops along at a fair rate (well, by 50s standards) but ultimately, it hasn’t aged well. It was written by Winston L. Moore, who was better known as the disc jockey Slim Willet, and had been covered several times before Como, but predictably enough, his was the best known and most successful, staying at number one for five weeks. He would once again reach number 1 in 1958 with the much more memorable Magic Moments.

After

Amusingly, Willet co-wrote a response song with Tommy Hill, to be performed by his sister Goldie Hill, with the less cryptic title I Let the Stars Get in My Eyes, in which Hill basically sings that, oops, she did exactly what she was told not to do and fell for someone else. Charming.

The Info

Written by

Slim Willet

Producer

Eli Oberstein

Weeks at number 1

5 (6 February-12 March)

Trivia

Births

17 February: Comedian Norman Pace 

Meanwhile…

5 February: To the delight of children, and many adults, the government ended rationing on sweets. 

4. Eddie Fisher with Hugo Winterhalter’s Orchestra & Chorus – Outside of Heaven (1953)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

In a week hit by not one but two tragedies (see ‘Meanwhile…‘). Outside of Heaven was a suitably gloomy song to rule the singles chart. Sammy Gallop and Chester Conn had written this from the perspective of a spurned lover on the outside looking in at his lost love’s new life.

Before

Ironically, Outside of Heaven was recorded by a man who had no problem with women. Singer and actor Eddie Fisher, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 10 August 1928 to Russian-Jewish immigrants, was one of the biggest heart-throbs of the 50s, and is best know these days for his marriages to Debbie Reynolds and Elizabeth Taylor, to name two out of five. Carrie Fisher, the much-missed Star Wars star, was his daughter to Reynolds, but I’m getting ahead of myself here.

‘Sonny Boy’, as he was known to his family, won several amateur singing contests in his youth. Following his performance on radio (and later TV) show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, Fisher dropped out of high school to focus on his budding career.

In 1949 he signed with RCA Victor and became a nationwide success, but his success was curtailed when he was drafted into the US Army in 1951 and he served a year in Korea. From 1952-53 he was the official vocal soloist for the United States Army Band. During that time he would make occasional TV appearances, and must have still been recording, as he went to number 1 in the US in 1952 with Wish You Were Here, which became his first UK top 10 hit. Outside of Heaven was released three singles later.

Review

Unable to let go, the ex walks past her house, and is even around on her wedding day, suggesting he is at best a glutton for punishment, or at worse, indulging in a spot of stalking…

‘On your wedding day I stood in the crowd
I could hardly keep from crying out loud
There goes the kiss my lips have known’

Certainly interesting lyrically, but the tune is all too easily forgotten. It’s a very maudlin affair, which I’m sure did so well due to Fisher’s charisma and good looks. Yes, even in the 50s, appearance was often as important as talent. Hugo Winterhalter’s orchestra smothers the recording, but that was par for the course in the pop of the era.

After

1953 would prove to be one of Fisher’s most successful years, as in addition to two number 1s, he began hosting his own variety show in the US, Coke Time with Eddie Fisher. I’m assuming this was blatant sponsorship for a certain soft drink rather than an open confession to a drug habit.

The Info

Written by

Sammy Gallop & Chester Conn

Producer

Hugo Winterhalter

Weeks at number 1

1 (30 January-5 February)

Meanwhile…

31 January : The UK suffered two aquatic disasters. The car ferry MV Princess Victoria was sailing from Stranraer, Scotland, to Larne in Northern Ireland, when it sank in the Irish Sea, killing 133 people, including several high-ranking Northern Irish politicians. Also that night, the North Sea flood began, and hundreds of people on the east coast in England, Scotland and Belgium lost their lives.

3. Kay Starr – Comes A-Long A-Love (1953)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

US pop and jazz singer Kay Starr hit number 1 with Comes A-Long A-Love (how ’50s’ is that title?). Unlike the first two top-selling tracks, this tune, written by former Tin Pan Alley songwriting veteran Al Sherman, was a chirpy, breezy little number, in which Starr extols the virtues of love. If you’re in love, you’re always singing, bells are ringing… you get the idea.

Before

Starr had been born Katherine Laverne Starks on 22 July 1922 on a reservation in Dougherty, Oklahoma to a native American father and mixed Irish and native American mother. The Starks moved to Dallas when her father got a job installing water sprinklers. Her mother raised chickens, which little Stark would serenade. Pretty idyllic, I’m sure you’ll agree. Her aunt was so impressed by the seven-year-old’s voice, she arranged for her to sing on a local radio station.

Fast forward a few years and the Starks were living in Memphis, and their daughter was regularly performing on the radio there. Misspellings in her fanmail resulted in her taking on the highly appropriate stage name Kay Starr.

Starr was only 17 and still at high school when she made her first recordings with legendary bandleader Glenn Miller in 1939. However, her vocal range didn’t really fit, and the partnership didn’t last long.

After working with Wingy Manone and Charlie Barnet’s ensembles, Starr took the plunge and went solo in 1946, but in a crowded market of female singers like Peggy Lee, the young hopeful was often left with the poorest material to record. Nonetheless, she did have hits in America, most notably with Wheel of Fortune in 1952, which went to number 1 there. Comes-A-Long-A-Love was released later that year.

Review

Although lyrically basic by today’s standards, this song does have something going for it. It must do as I’ve only heard it twice and it’s been in my head for days. Not sure about the lyrics below though…

‘I don’t care how
Blue you’re feeling now
You sparkle yes you bubble
Look out you gotta whole lotta trouble’

Is Starr basically telling the subject of her song, “I don’t care how down you are at the moment, just go and fall in love, alright?”. It seems harsh advice.

Nonetheless, she sings Sherman’s tune with a certain panache. In her voice you can hear the stylings of the rock’n’roll singers that would be all over the charts in a few years.

After

Comes A-Long A-Love was only number 1 for one week, but Starr, who Billie Holliday once proclaimed to be ‘the only white woman who could sing the blues’, would reach pole position one more time.

The Outro

It’s also worth noting that this is the first number 1 to be produced by Mitch Miller, the conductor and A&R man who would be responsible for many more chart-toppers over the next few years.

The Info

Written by

Al Sherman

Producer

Mitch Miller

Weeks at number 1

1 (23-29 January)

Trivia

Births

29 January: Footballer Ronnie Moore

Deaths

29 January: Criminal Derek Bentley

Meanwhile…

28 January: Derek Bentley was controversially hanged for murder at Wandsworth Prison in London. Bentley issued the infamous and ambiguous phrase “Let him have it” to his friend and accomplice Christopher Craig, and a policeman was shot dead. Bentley, who had health and developmental issues, was pardoned for the crime 45 years later, and the tragic case helped bring about the eventual end of the death penalty in the UK.

2. Jo Stafford with Paul Weston & His Orchestra – You Belong to Me (1953)

/ robbarker1979 / 3 Comments

The Intro

US singer Jo Stafford’s cover of You Belong to Me featured in the very first UK singles chart on 14 November 1952. When Al Martino’s Here in My Heart finally lost its grip on the top slot, Stafford became the first female solo artist to be number 1 on 16 January 1953.

Before

Stafford, born 12 November 1917 in Coalinga, California, caught the music bug from a young age, thanks to her mother’s love of folk music and banjo playing. She began performing at the tender age of 12 and her mother had high hopes for her. For a while she had voice lessons and ambitions to be an opera singer, but the Great Depression put paid to that. While at high school she teamed up with her elder siblings and they were known, obviously enough, as the Stafford Sisters.

They had some success on radio and in film, and it was in 1938 that Stafford met the singing group the Pied Pipers and became their lead singer. The following year, bandleader Tommy Dorsey hired them to provide backing vocals for his orchestra, and they helped propel Frank Sinatra to stardom. Dorsey eventually shone the spotlight on Stafford and awarded her solo performances. In 1944, she left the group and became the first solo artist to sign with Capitol Records.

Like Martino, Stafford’s vocal range was operatic, but there was more to her than that. Among her contemporaries she was considered one of the most versatile vocalists of the 50s and had several hit duets with Frankie Laine.

She had earned the nickname ‘GI Jo’ during World War Two, performing for soldiers stationed in the US, and like Martino’s track, You Belong to Me clearly touched a nerve for those who had suffered through the war.

This romantic ballad was credited to Pee Wee King, Chilton Price and Redd Stewart, but Price wrote the first draft. Originally entitled Hurry Home to Me, he envisaged it as being from the viewpoint of a woman missing her soldier sweetheart during the war. King and Stewart made alterations and made it less specific, providing the song with more of a universal appeal. After all, the war was seven years in the past by this point.

Review

You Belong to Me holds up better than Here in My Heart, and I think the lyrics can be interpreted in more than one way…

‘See the pyramids along the Nile
Watch the sun rise on a tropic isle
But just remember, darling, all the while
You belong to me’

Sounds sweet and lovely at first, doesn’t it, but could these be the words of a worried, paranoid control freak? Could she be issuing a threat to her partner to behave himself while he’s away? Or am I alone in thinking this?!

After

Despite only topping the charts for one week, its appeal has stood the test of time – Bob Dylan and Tori Amos are among the notable artists to release cover versions.

As for Stafford, she continued to record with her husband Paul Weston (they had wed in 1952), the famous orchestra leader and producer on this track. In 1954, she became the second artist after Bing Crosby to sell 25 million records for Columbia. But by the end of the decade she and her husband were mostly performing comedy songs, which seems like a waste of a great voice to me.

Stafford was offered a contract to perform in Las Vegas in 1959, but she declined and went into semi-retirement soon after to concentrate on her family. In 1977 she and Weston released a cover of the Bee Gees’ Stayin’ Alive.

The Outro

Weston died in 1996, and Stafford passed away due to heart failure on 16 July 2008, aged 90.

The Info

Written by

Pee Wee King, Chilton Price & Redd Stewart

Producer

Paul Weston

Weeks at number 1

1 (16-22 January)

1. Al Martino – Here in My Heart (1952)

/ robbarker1979

The Intro

So, we begin. Going back, back, way back in time, before boy and girl bands, before dance, punk, psychedelia, The Beatles and rock’n’roll, to a smog-ridden UK on 14 November 1952.

Before

Winston Churchill’s Conservatives had been back in power a year, following Labour’s huge socialist changes to the country after World War Two under Clement Atlee, and Elizabeth II had ascended to the throne earlier that year (that’s right, she’s been Queen longer than the charts have existed). That March, Maurice Kinn and Percy Dickins bought the Musical Express and Accordion Weekly, transforming it into the New Musical Express (wish it had kept that name). Dickins had been following what Billboard were doing with their chart system in the US, and decided to follow suit, with the charmingly antiquated and inaccurate system of ringing around 20 record stores around the country to find out what vinyl 78s were selling the most. He compiled a top 12 (Why 12? Who knows?) and thus US singer and actor Al Martino made history.

Martino was born Jasper Cini in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 7 October 1927. His parents were Italian immigrants who ran a construction business, and he worked as a bricklayer along with his brothers. But the young Cini aspired to be a singer and would emulate heroes like Perry Como and Al Jolson. Key to his ambitions was family friend Mario Lanza, who had become popular and encouraged Cini to follow in his footsteps.

Cini served with the United States Navy during World War Two, and after the war was over, Lanza suggested he try singing in local nightclubs. He adopted the stage name Al Martino and moved to New York in 1948, recording for the Jubilee label.

In a sense, Martino was the singles chart’s original X Factor-style success story. In 1952, he won first place on the TV show Arthur Godfrey’s Talent Scouts, which earned him a recording contract to record this single.

After reaching number 1 in the US, Here in My Heart remained at number 1 for nine consecutive weeks in the fledgling UK top 12, making it the only chart-topper of 1952, and therefore, the first Christmas number 1, too. Only eight other tracks have lasted longer – Bryan Adams’s (Everything I Do) I Do It For You, Wet Wet Wet’s cover of Love is All Around, One Dance by Drake, David Whitfield’s Cara Mia, Rihanna’s Umbrella, I Will Always Love You by Whitney Houston, Ed Sheeran’s Shape of You and current number 1, Dance Monkey by Tones and I.

Review

https://youtu.be/LfXU-UZZ4p4

It’s hard to see the huge appeal of Here in my Heart now. All the tracks above have their critics (me amongst them), but you can see how they did well. Martino’s track is a maudlin, melancholy piece of pop-opera (popera?) in which he shows off his vocal range to a slushy string-laden backing. The tune is forgotten as soon as the track ends, but to a country still suffering trauma from a terrible war, it may have provided some succour to the UK in the early 50s.

After

Martino signed with Capitol Records soon after, and the Mafia took an interest in him too, buying out his management and ordering him to pay thousands to them as a ‘safeguard’. Martino did what he was told, but wisely decided to move to the UK afterwards.

The chart hits continued here until 1955, but he had little exposure in his home country. Fortunately a family friend intervened and Martino returned to the US in 1958, but it wasn’t easy to resume his career thanks to the impact of rock’n’roll. The Exciting Voice of Al Martino, his 1962 LP, helped turn his fortunes around.

The following year he scored another big single in the US with his version of I Love You Because, and in 1966 he had his final top 10 hit on these shores with Spanish Eyes.

Martino’s run-in with the Mafia took on a whole new meaning when he played Johnny Fontane in The Godfather (1972) and sang the theme tune, Speak Softly Love. He would return to the role in The Godfather Part III in 1990.

The Outro

The first ever UK number 1 singles star continued to record and perform into the 21st century. Al Martino died of a heart attack on 13 October 2009, aged 82.

The Info

Written by

Pat Genaro, Lou Levinson & Bill Borrelli

Producer

Voyle Gilmore

Weeks at number 1

9 (14 November 1952-15 January 1953)

Trivia

Births

3 December 1952: Comedian Mel Smith
10 December: TV presenter Clive Anderson
20 December: Actress Jenny Agutter
4 January 1953: Journalist and politician Jackie Ballard/Director and producer Richard Boden

Meanwhile…

25 November: Agatha Christie’s play The Mousetrap began its run at the New Ambassador Theatre in London.

4-9 December: The Great Smog of London enveloped the capital, causing approximately 4000 deaths.

12 December: The fondly remembered children’s TV show Flower Pot Men, chronicling the adventures of Bill and Ben, debuted on the BBC Television service.

25 December: Queen Elizabeth II  made her first ever Christmas speech to the Commonwealth, sat in the same chair as George V and George VI before her.