1953 #1s

‘Look at That Girl’, by Guy Mitchell – The UK Number 1s Blog Anniversary Special

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This week marks the 1st anniversary of The UK Number 1s Blog (** Trumpet Fanfare**)! In the past year we’ve covered the period from Nov. ’52 to Nov’ 61, with 129 chart-topping songs featured. We’ve survived pre-rock, rode the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, and are now well on our way towards the swinging sixties… Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, commented and enjoyed.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m going to take a short break from the usual countdown to repost seven songs that I have really enjoyed discovering over the past year. These aren’t necessarily the best songs to have topped the charts – there’ll be no Buddy Holly, Johnnie Ray, Connie Francis, Elvis or The Everly Brothers (follow the links if you want to read about them) – as I’ve been listening to, and loving, those artists for years. This week will be all about the forgotten gems, the hits I’d never heard before, the songs that have slipped through the cracks…

Song Number Three is by the artist that I’ve ‘discovered’ the most over the past year. I’d heard the name ‘Guy Mitchell’ before, but didn’t know any of his songs. His career was the 1950s – he was a regular in the Top 10 between 1952-’59, with four #1s along the way. ‘Look at That Girl’ was his 2nd, and I’ve picked it as I think it was the 1st ‘modern’ pop song (verse-chorus etc) to top the charts, and it was also the first to feature a guitar solo! Plus, he had a voice every bit as sexy and smooth as Elvis. Enjoy!

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Look at That Girl, by Guy Mitchell (his 2nd of four #1s)

6 weeks, from 11th September to 23rd October 1953

Ladies and Gentlemena, we are finally rocking and rolling. The invasion is here!

Not at first, mind. We begin on familiar territory. We’ve got the jaunty guitars from ‘Don’t Let the Stars…’ and Mitchell’s previous #1, ‘She Wears Red Feathers’ (compared to which this is ten times better!), and some trumpets (or clarinets, or bassoons, whatever…), and Mitchell’s voice still sounds like he thinks he should be singing a comedy number.

Look at that girl, she’s like a dream come true… Ah look at that girl, can blue eyes be so blue…? But this is no simple song of longing. No, Sir. It turns out the girl is already his. We think. With each word my heart just skips, oh if I could kiss those lips… He’s keeping it ambiguous. Maybe they’ve got a thing going. Maybe not.

And as the song goes on – we start to rock. And I don’t mean ROCK (tongue out, fist raised). I mean ‘rock’, like it’s 1953. There are hand-claps. Mm-hmm. And a guitar. Woo! And Mitchell has a little call and response with the backing singers, when they take the lead lyric Look at that girl… and he quips back I don’t believe it they’re making it up! And then there are the lyrics: the kissing, the holding her tight… Pass the smelling salts…

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It sounds to me as if a battle is taking place here, between traditional easy-listening and the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll movement. On the one hand you’ve got the usual twee backing singers and floaty trumpets, parping away at the end of each line; on the other you have the hand claps and the guitar solo. That’s right. Solo. In a symbolic move, the trumpets begin the solo and play it in tandem with the guitar for a couple of bars, before the guitar takes it over completely.

And having said that Mitchell sings the song with a slight giggle in his voice, after the 3rd or 4th listen it works. He’s having a good time. We’re having a good time. He’s a nice singer – he sounds like he could be belting it out if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. The song doesn’t require belting out (That’s something old Eddie Fisher could have learned to look out for…)

If you stick with this blog for long enough, you’ll soon see I’m a sucker for a straight-up, unpretentious pop song. A couple of verses, couple of choruses, a solo and a final verse. Maybe a key change. Then finish. The sort of song that sounds simple but is pretty darn hard to get right. (I say, having never even attempted to write a song in my life). This is one such song. And I like it. It’s my favourite so far.

‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes’, by Perry Como with The Ramblers – The UK Number 1s Blog Anniversary Special

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This week marks the 1st anniversary of The UK Number 1s Blog (** Trumpet Fanfare**)! In the past year we’ve covered the period from Nov. ’52 to Nov’ 61, with 129 chart-topping songs featured. We’ve survived pre-rock, rode the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, and are now well on our way towards the swinging sixties… Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, commented and enjoyed.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m going to take a short break from the usual countdown to repost seven songs that I have really enjoyed discovering over the past year. These aren’t necessarily the best songs to have topped the charts – there’ll be no Buddy Holly, Johnnie Ray, Connie Francis, Elvis or The Everly Brothers (follow the links if you want to read about them) – as I’ve been listening to, and loving, those artists for years. This week will be all about the forgotten gems, the hits I’d never heard before, the songs that have slipped through the cracks…

Next up is Perry Como, with ‘Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes’ – another song that surprised me with its upbeat tempo (and funky trumpet solo). And like Kay Starr, he was another artist with enough about him to make it out of the pre-rock age alive…

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Don’t Let the Stars Get in Your Eyes, by Perry Como with the Ramblers (Como’s 1st of two #1s)

5 weeks, from 6th February to 12th March 1953

One of my biggest chart bugbears, back when I started chart-watching, was one-week number ones. In the late ’90s and early ’00s it seemed like there were a never ending parade of songs waiting to shoot straight in at number one, only to be replaced by another brand new song a week later, as if record companies had worked it all out beforehand in some sort of dastardly pact. And I assumed that it never used to be that way, that ye olden charts were creaky, slow moving things where records languished at the top for weeks and months. Which is true to an extent – Al Martino had nine weeks, and wasn’t alone in having that length of stay, while later in 1953 we’ll reach the song which still holds the record for most weeks at number one…

But what we have here is a fourth new chart topper in as many weeks. It turns out that the record buying public of the pre-rock era were just as fickle as those in 1999! Perry Como, though, did halt the turnover and kept this jaunty little tune at the top for a month and a bit. That’s star quality shining through.

This track is a welcome relief after its overwrought predecessor. Perky guitars, a lively brass section, and tongue-twister lyrics: Love blooms at night in daylight it dies don’t let the stars get in your eyes or keep your heart from me for some day I’ll return and you know you’re the only one I’ll ever love delivered in just the one breath. This seems to have been a thing, a gimmick almost (at least it seems gimmicky to modern ears), as Kay Starr was at it in ‘Comes A-Long A-Love’. It’s not vocal gymnastics of the Mariah Carey kind; more lyrical gymnastics, if such a thing can exist.

We’ve also heard similar lyrics already in this countdown, in that Como is telling his sweetheart not to forget about them, or to stray, while away. The best bit of it all, though, is the trumpet solo. At least I think they’re trumpets; I really can’t tell one brass instrument from the other. Anyway, they put me in mind of the oompah band at a German Bierfest.

The one downside to the song is the backing singers, The Ramblers. They’re just a bit… barbershop, in that they are basically there to repeat verbatim the line that Como just sang. In case some one missed it? I don’t know. And their one bit of improvisation is to sing what sounds like pa-pa-papaya between lines. Are they imitating the trumpets? Is it just gibberish? Are they actually singing about papayas?

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Perry Como (American! Died aged 88! The run continues!) is the biggest name to top the chart so far. I’d say, at least. Both of the female chart toppers were new to me, Al Martino was known to me solely as the singer of the first ever UK #1, and Eddie Fisher had entered my consciousness due to his ladykilling (the romantic type of ladykilling, that is). Perry Como was a big star and I could have named his biggest hit (‘Magic Moments’, fact fans) without looking it up. And after looking up his discography it’s clear that if the the charts had begun earlier he would have racked up a load more hits – he was scoring US #1s throughout the ’40s. Now, in 2018, he’s no longer a household name, a Sinatra or Presley, I wouldn’t have thought. Very few of these stars from sixty-odd years ago are, I suppose.

‘Comes A-Long A-Love’, by Kay Starr – The UK Number 1s Blog Anniversary Special

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This week marks the 1st anniversary of The UK Number 1s Blog (** Trumpet Fanfare**)! In the past year we’ve covered the period from Nov. ’52 to Nov’ 61, with 129 chart-topping songs featured. We’ve survived pre-rock, rode the rock ‘n’ roll revolution, and are now well on our way towards the swinging sixties… Thanks to everyone who has read, followed, commented and enjoyed.

To celebrate this milestone, I’m going to take a short break from the usual countdown to repost seven songs that I have really enjoyed discovering over the past year. These aren’t necessarily the best songs to have topped the charts – there’ll be no Buddy Holly, Johnnie Ray, Connie Francis, Elvis or The Everly Brothers (follow the links if you want to read about them) – as I’ve been listening to, and loving, those artists for years. This week will be all about the forgotten gems, the hits I’d never heard before, the songs that have slipped through the cracks…

First up: only the 3rd song ever to top the UK charts, in January 1953, and the song that showed me that the pre-rock years weren’t just going to be a procession of melodramatic ballads and perfectly-pronounced pop. Miss Kay Starr, take it away…

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Comes A-Long A-Love, by Kay Starr (her 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 23rd to 30th January 1953

Snazzy! And jazzy! I really thought – and more fool me – that these pre-Rock ‘n’ Roll hits would be dull, twee, chaste… one step up the danceability chart from hymns, basically. How wrong I was. It wasn’t all bluebirds over the white cliffs of Dover.

Though bluebirds do feature in this song, they do so as a symbol of being in love and suddenly becoming aware of the world around you. Birds! Flowers! The sun! Comes A-Long A-Love suddenly though you never sang you’re always singing… Comes A-Long A-Love suddenly chimes you never heard begin a-ringing… The lyrical message being that falling in love will make you a better, livelier person.

Kay Starr’s voice is in complete contrast to the Jo Stafford record that went before. It’s husky, then sing-songy, she pauses where you least expect it and then rushes through tongue twister lines phrases like petty little things no longer phase you, which I’ll bet you can’t say five times fast. You might even say she’s flirting with the listener… And, yes, a quick search shows Ms. Starr was quite the little minx (that’s what they called them in those days). Those eyebrows! What didn’t they suggest! This song could be seen as a challenge – she’s daring you not to fall in love with her.

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But again, it’s another song that paints love in a positive light. Three number ones in and nobody’s had their heart broken… Even lonely old Al Martino was hopeful that his lover would say ‘yes’. That’s something I’m going to look out for: the first ever reference to heartbreak in a UK number one hit. And, again, Kay Starr enunciates so damn well. This isn’t an easy song to sing, but she makes it sound like she’s ad-libbing her way through it. I’ve got to hand it to these old-timers, before the days of auto-tune, because they really could sing. Gran was right all along…

Some bits do jar, slightly. Starr uses ‘Mister’, and ‘Brother’, in a way that you wouldn’t these days. And the aforementioned reference to being in love and seeing bluebirds is a bit of a Disneyfied image. It must have been easy for songwriters, at the birth of modern pop music – love is great, you see bluebirds, do-bee-do – before people discovered cynicism. So far, though, all three number ones have been recorded by American artists. Perhaps that explains the saccharine sentiments! As everyone knows, Americans are sickeningly positive. How brilliant would it be, then, if the first UK recorded #1 turned out to be a piece of proto-Morrissey miserabilism…

One final thing I’ve noticed, while looking up these first three UK chart toppers, is how long they all lived. Jo Stafford died in 2008, aged ninety. Al Martino died in 2009 at eighty-two. Kay Starr died in November 2016, having reached a grand old innings of ninety-four. That means two of them outlived Michael Jackson, who wouldn’t have his first number one hit for another twenty-eight years. They were made of sterner stuff in those days, mind.

15. ‘Answer Me’, by Frankie Laine

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Answer Me, by Frankie Laine (his 3rd of four #1s)

8 weeks, from 13th November 1953 to 8th January 1954 (including 1 week joint with David Whitfield, from 11th to 18th December 1953)

There’s something rather familiar about this record…

Having read the previous post, you know what this song is all about: heartbroken guy, on his knees, turning to the Lord as a last resort… all very melodramatic. This sticks very close to the structure of the David Whitfield version – it’s exactly the same length – but I must admit I like this version better. There’s just something about Laine’s voice: warm, beckoning, a voice I want to listen to, a voice I trust. Unlike Whitfield’s plummy whining.

Musically, this version is also a little less overwrought than its predecessor. The guitar strums that play us in are very reminiscent of ‘I Believe’, and the violins have been replaced by an organ and backing singers. It’s still pretty dull, don’t get me wrong, but it’s just that little bit more listenable. It’s got an American gloss, all glittery lapels and perfect teeth, that David Whitfield’s reserved, BBC World Service delivery was lacking. And the ending is still a bit much, though Laine holds it back until the final line rather than belting out the whole last chorus.

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We’re now a year into this countdown, believe it or not, and out of the past 37 weeks, Mr. Frankie Laine has been at number one for 28 of them. In many ways it is impossible to compare the charts of today with those of the early ’50s – in terms of how the data is collected, in terms of what data is included, in terms of how wide-ranging the chart data is – but if anyone does think that today’s streaming dominated charts are dull, slow-moving and dominated by the same handful of artists, I would suggest you tell them to thank their lucky stars they weren’t around in the autumn of 1953. Not only are the same artists dominating here; the same songs are, too.

In lieu of mentioning having anything new to say about the song, I thought I might give a little shout out here to the conductors. The ‘what’, you say? The conductors! Almost every chart-topping record by a solo act, as you may have noticed from the pictures I post at the start of every entry, has been conducted by someone and their orchestra.

So far, Monty Kelly has conducted the orchestra for ‘Here in My Heart’, Harold Mooney for ‘Comes A-Long A-Love’, Hugo Winterhalter did both Eddie Fisher’s chart-toppers, Mitch Miller was Guy Mitchell’s go-to guy for both of his, Johnny Douglas did the ‘accompaniment’ for ‘That Doggie in the Window’ (apparently it didn’t warrant a full-blown orchestra) while Stanley Black guided David Whitfield through ‘Answer Me’. Mr. Paul Weston, though, has been the most prolific so far: Jo Stafford’s ‘You Belong to Me’, as well as the Frankie Laine trio of ‘I Believe’, ‘Hey Joe’ and now ‘Answer Me’ coming under his baton. Only the Stargazers (presumably because they played their own instruments) and Perry Como haven’t had orchestral accompaniment. Mantovani got the credit as conductor for ‘Moulin Rouge’ because it was an instrumental.

If haven’t included these conductors in the titles of my blog posts it’s because, well, they aren’t included anywhere else. Most listings of UK Singles Chart #1s – Wikipedia and the Official Chart Company included – don’t mention them. And so I won’t either. I understand it from the point of view that the conductor is neither playing an instrument nor singing the song, and that if the conductor gets a credit then so should the violinist, the trombonist, the harpist etc. etc. But, at the same time, Paul Weston has been heavily involved in four number one singles so far – with more to come, presumably – totalling 30 weeks at the top. That would already be enough to make him joint 7th (with Justin Bieber) for most combined weeks at number one! It seems a little harsh that he is forever banished from the chart history books…

14. ‘Answer Me’, by David Whitfield

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Answer Me, by David Whitfield (his 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 6th to 13th November/ 1 week joint with Frankie Laine, from 11th to 18th December 1953 (2 weeks total)

This period, the immediate post-war years, 1945-55, is known musically as the ‘pre-rock era’. The time right before ‘Rock Around the Clock’, and Elvis, and teddy boys and pink ladies, created what we know as modern popular music.

Except I have a history degree, and one of the first things you learn in history class is that any labels that have been applied to certain periods of time, and the images that are conjured up when you think of, say, the ‘Tudors’ or the ‘fin de siècle’, are at best gross stereotypes and at worst just plain wrong.

And, having listened to thirteen of the biggest selling hits from this period, it’s clear that there’s no such thing as the ‘pre-rock’ sound. Rock was already here, in the playful hiccups of Kay Starr’s voice and the twangy guitar solo of ‘Hey Joe’. Plus, twenty years previously we had been right in the middle of the ‘Jazz Age’, and that was a pretty raucous time. No, rock was here. It had always been here, at least in spirit if not in sound. It just hadn’t broken through quite yet as ‘rock’. It was having what we might now call a soft landing. Every musical genre has one – nobody woke up one morning and invented heavy metal, or garage, or grime. They can all be traced back to something earlier.

But – big but – that’s not to say you’re going to find any traces of the nascent rock ‘n’ roll movement here, in the 14th UK #1. Because for every hit that was flirting with rockier elements, there was a hit like this. One step forwards, two steps back. This is pre-pre-pre rock. This is partying like it’s 1910.

David Whitfield’s ‘Answer Me’ is a proper record. And I don’t mean ‘proper’ as in substantial and fulfilling; I mean ‘proper’ as in how you should behave when the vicar comes for tea. It’s semi-operatic, it’s painfully earnest, and it’s incredibly old-fashioned.

It’s a song about heartbreak, first and foremost. The singer is asking the Lord for an answer: does his love still love him back? Answer me, Lord above, just what sin have I been guilty of?… She was mine yesterday… I believed love was here to stay… And so on. Whitfield’s voice is so clear, so technically correct, that it sounds slightly ridiculous. Here is a man at the end of his tether, laying himself at the mercy of God, begging for one more chance with the love of his life, and all the while enunciating like the Queen. Every ‘t’ pings off his teeth, every ‘r’ is rolled. It’s as if the lyrics were written down in the phonetic alphabet – If she thinks aT awll abowT me, please leT heR heaR my praiR – and that it was recorded for the benefit of foreign students.

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And, I know I’ve mocked the dramatic endings of some of the previous records, but this one really takes the biscuit. Whitfield’s voice completely changes with thirty seconds to go, growing fuller and throatier, but losing none of his cut-glass diction, as he steels himself for the big finish. Please answer me…. Oh….. Lord…..! It’s as if he’s responding to the American singers that have gone before, the Guy Mitchells and the Frankie Laines, with all their sloppy vowels and swallowed endings: “Sir, my heart may indeed be breaking, but that’s no reason to speak like a slob.”

If anything, the chart run of ‘Answer Me’ is much more interesting than the song itself. It had a week at the top, then dropped down for a whole month before returning. That’s a pretty long gap between stints at number one. When it did eventually climb back up, it did so in a manner that has only occurred a handful of times in chart history: it tied with another record for number one. And, for added intrigue, the song that it had this little tussle with was… a different version of ‘Answer Me’. This is all very 1950s. But more on all that in the next post…

To finish, I’d like to return to the idea of the ‘pre-rock era.’ I dug up this old article from ‘The Guardian’, which name checks some of the hits covered here. And it posits an interesting idea about why this time in music was dominated by very MOR, very laid-back, very jaunty hits about prayers being answered, and girls in red feathers and huly-huly skirts. Namely, that Britain had just seen the worst conflict in history, had lost loved ones, had survived the nightly threat of the Blitz, had suffered through ten years of rationing and rubble only to emerge at the other side into a world on the verge of nuclear Armageddon… and they just wanted some bloody escapism. It’s pretty obvious when you think about it.

Then, come 1955 or thereabouts, youngsters for whom the war was a distant, childhood dream, who wanted to escape the drab post-war depression, looked across the Atlantic… and the rest is history.

But not quite yet.

13. ‘Hey Joe!’, by Frankie Laine

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Hey Joe!, by Frankie Laine (his 2nd of four #1s)

2 weeks, from 23rd October to 6th November 1953

One thing you soon realise as you become a seasoned chart-watcher (OK, chart-geek), is that songs don’t do well on the charts just because they’re good. Being good often has no correlation to whether or not a song is a hit.

Of course, sure, there are plenty of songs that hit the top of the charts because they’re brilliant. We’ve already seen ‘I Believe’ – a stone-cold classic – and we’ll see many, many more as we meander down this long list of Number 1s.

There are also the catchy numbers: not always classics, but songs that hit the right vein at the right time (‘Look at That Girl’ being one such) and you can completely understand why they got to the top.

Then there are the novelty hits, the so-bad-they’re-good hits, the comeback hits, the posthumous hits… Songs hit the top for a hundred and one reasons.

But one of the most interesting reasons for a song hitting the top is what I am dubbing – for the very first time, right here – the ‘shadow hit’. Example: Frankie Laine has just spent 18 weeks at #1 with a monster hit. He releases ‘Hey Joe!’, a song nowhere near as powerful, nowhere near as epic, nowhere near as good, and within a fortnight it’s hit the top spot. Had he released ‘Hey Joe!’ first, would it have performed anywhere near as well…? I’m going to have to say ‘nope’.

Not for the first time, I’ll describe this record as a bit ‘musical theatre-y’. The ‘Joe’ of the title is the singer’s love rival, and the song is basically a two-minute long pea-cocking session, a listing of why the girl should ditch Joe and get with him. I can picture the two of them having a dance-off in a barn: Frankie Vs Joe, two parts ‘Oklahoma’, one part ‘West-Side Story’.

Hey Joe! She’s got skin that’s creamy-dreamy, eyes that look so lovey-dovey, lips as red as cherry berry wine… She’s a honey, she’s a sugar pie, I’m warnin’ you I’m gonna try, to steal her from you… Lyrically it’s a bit…rich. He and Joe, it turns out, were buddies. But no longer. Girls’ll do that to a guy.

It’s not terrible. It’s up-tempo, it’s jaunty (I don’t think I’ve ever written that word so often as since I started this blog), it’s diverting and doesn’t outstay its welcome. It’s very wordy – again – and there’s another guitar solo: a genuinely trippy fifteen seconds with an effects pedal that is at least twenty years ahead of it’s time. It is completely different to ‘I Believe’, and nobody could have accused Mr. Laine of resting on his laurels.

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Late 1953 was a period of utter chart domination for Frankie Laine. Having seen that he had three chart toppers in quick succession, I looked up the actual charts for this period and, in ‘Hey Joe!’s 2nd week at the top, Frankie also had brand new hit ‘Answer Me’ (more on that to follow soon) at #3, ‘Where the Winds Blow’ at #5 and the record-setting ‘I Believe’ still at #6 in its 31st week on the chart. A chart which only had 12 places! Very few artists can claim to have ever had four songs in the top six.

So, there we have it. Our first ‘shadow’ number one. More will follow, don’t you doubt it, scurrying along in the wake of bigger, better hits. As an interesting aside, some sources list this song as ‘Hey! Joe’ – the ‘Essential Frankie Laine’ album on Spotify being one. But the Official Charts Company, which I feel compelled to go along with due to years of loyalty, have done away with the exclamation mark. And I think that’s a bit of a shame. What song title isn’t enlivened by an exclamation mark?

12. ‘Look at That Girl’, by Guy Mitchell

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Look at That Girl, by Guy Mitchell (his 2nd of four #1s)

6 weeks, from 11th September to 23rd October 1953

I promise, sincerely, that there will be no mention of ‘fanny’ in this post. OK?

Anyway, ladies and gentlemen, we have something else to talk about here. We are finally rocking and rolling. The invasion is here.

Not at first, mind. We begin on familiar territory. We’ve got the jaunty guitars from ‘Don’t Let the Stars…’ and Mitchell’s previous #1, ‘She Wears Red Feathers’ (compared to which this is ten times better!), and some trumpets (or clarinets, or bassoons, whatever…), and Mitchell’s voice still sounds like he thinks he should be singing a comedy number.

Look at that girl, she’s like a dream come true… Ah look at that girl, can blue eyes be so blue…? But this is no simple song of longing. No, Sir. It turns out the girl is already his. We think. With each word my heart just skips, oh if I could kiss those lips… He’s keeping it ambiguous. Maybe they’ve got a thing going. Maybe not.

And as the song goes on – we start to rock. And I don’t mean ROCK (tongue out, fist raised). I mean ‘rock’, like it’s 1953. There are hand-claps. Mm-hmm. And a guitar. Woo! And Mitchell has a little call and response with the backing singers, when they take the lead lyric Look at that girl… and he quips back I don’t believe it they’re making it up! And then there are the lyrics: the kissing, the holding her tight… Pass the smelling salts…

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It sounds to me as if a battle is taking place here, between traditional easy-listening and the burgeoning rock ‘n’ roll movement. On the one hand you’ve got the usual twee backing singers and floaty trumpets, parping away at the end of each line; on the other you have the hand claps and the guitar solo. That’s right. Solo. In a symbolic move, the trumpets begin the solo and play it in tandem with the guitar for a couple of bars, before the guitar takes it over completely.

And having said that Mitchell sings the song with a slight giggle in his voice, after the 3rd or 4th listen it works. He’s having a good time. We’re having a good time. He’s a nice singer – he sounds like he could be belting it out if he wanted to, but he doesn’t. The song doesn’t require belting out (That’s something old Eddie Fisher could have learned to look out for…)

If you stick with this blog for long enough, you’ll soon see I’m a sucker for a straight-up, unpretentious pop song. A couple of verses, couple of choruses, a solo and a final verse. Maybe a key change. Then finish. The sort of song that sounds simple but is pretty darn hard to get right. (I say, having never even attempted to write a song in my life). This is one such song. And I like it. It’s my favourite so far.

11. The Song from ‘The Moulin Rouge’, by Mantovani and His Orchestra

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The Song from ‘The Moulin Rouge’, by Mantovani and His Orchestra (his 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 14th to 21st August 1953

Ooh la la.

I’m less annoyed that this song helped deny Frankie Laine his record of consecutive weeks at the top. Mainly because Eddie Fisher had already done the damage; but also because this isn’t terrible.

But ‘not terrible’ isn’t really selling it either… So, let’s try again. It’s nice enough. Its pretty mellow. It’s cute. A bit heavy on the accordion, but yeah. Oh, and its an instrumental. The first ever instrumental to top the UK charts, back when instrumentals were much more of a thing than they are now.

I should probably stop getting excited about a record being the ‘FIRST EVER _____!’ to top the charts, because we’re only eleven songs in and pretty much every one of them is the first ever something. But still. This is the first ever film score to hit the top too, The Moulin Rouge being a film about Pigalle’s famously raunchy red-windmilled nightclub, starring Zsa-Zsa Gabor. And it’s the first ever #1 by a non American or Brit, Mantovani being Italian.

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To the song. Well. If you’re writing a song about Paris, or France, what’s the first instrument that springs to mind? Mais oui. L’accordion. Trop cliché, non? Maybe it wasn’t a cliché in 1953. Maybe this song made it a cliché to soundtrack Paris with an accordion-led air.

There’s not much to it, really. It’s the same couple of refrains played over and over again, first by said accordion, then by violins. And as I was taking notes for this post, while listening to the track for the first time, I jotted down all that stuff about the movie, the soundtrack, the accordion, and ended it with the words ‘a bit dull.’

But now I’m on the 4th or 5th listen, I’m not so sure. It’s seeping into my brain through its repetitiveness, and actually its quite nice. Pleasant. I think the best word for it might be melancholic. It has a sense of longing for the past, of long-lost summer days beneath a sun-dappled beech tree. And I’m not just being facetious here – it really does conjure up that image in my mind. The song has a name, as you can perhaps see from the picture of the disc above: ‘Where Is Your Heart’, and there was a version with words doing the rounds. But that doesn’t really interest us here.

The song ends very sedately. Unlike the songs that have gone before it doesn’t build to a big, over the top finale. It simply melts away, and I respect that. I’m not sure what role the song played in a film about the world’s most famous strip club, though. It’s about as far removed from the can-can as you can get.

While I had never heard this song before, I had heard of Mantovani. And for a while I couldn’t quite remember how or why. But then it came to me. See, where I come from, Mantovani is rhyming slang for… well… fanny. Example sentence: “I’ve got some Tesco’s Finest aftershave on, I’ll definitely get some manto tonight!”

And what a legacy that is.

10. ‘I’m Walking Behind You’, by Eddie Fisher with Sally Sweetland

/ UK #1s blog / 9 Comments

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I’m Walking Behind You, by Eddie Fisher with Sally Sweetland (Fisher’s 2nd of two #1s/ Sweetland’s first and only #1)

1 week, from 26th June to 3rd July 1953

The first artist to top the UK singles charts twice.

I’m just annoyed that this is one of the songs that denied Frankie Laine his record. And it does seem a little odd that this one song, amongst all the other songs available, was the one that snatched a single week at the top, sandwiched between week after week after week of ‘I Believe’…

Anyway, before I head off down a swirling conspiracy theory tunnel, let’s just remind ourselves that this is what the record buying public do – they buy drivel and send it to number one. Drivel like this. This song is awful. Whereas I complained that Eddie Fisher’s first chart topper was dull and melodramatic (it’s quite a feat, I suppose, to be simultaneously dull and melodramatic), this is just plain creepy. The title doesn’t bode well, and the lyrics prove it to be true.

Picture the scene: (*sinister piano intro*) I’m walking behind you, on your wedding day… He is obsessed with his ex’s weddings, this guy. His previous chart topper had him lurking outside a church too. And I’ll hear you promise, to love and obey. But it’s OK, you see. He’s not stalking her; he’s merely giving her another option. If things go wrong, dear, and fate is unkind, look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind. She’ll be glad, I’m sure.

It would be unfair, though, to pin all responsibility for the creepy atmosphere here solely on Eddie Fisher. The backing vocals from Sally Sweetland are extraordinary. They float at a dog-whistle pitch far, far in the background. So far back that they echo. Backing vocals are traditionally, I had thought, recorded by someone stood behind, or next to, or at the very least somewhere in the vicinity of the lead singer. But it sounds as if Sweetland recorded her vocals from a warehouse down the street. It makes her sound as if she were an avenging angel, whispering down from the rafters into the ears of the spurned lover. Given the song’s subject matter, perhaps that was the intention.

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I guess I should mention here something which applies to all early the songs in this countdown. In the fifties the song was the thing, it seems, rather than the artist. The records that have topped the chart so far are, by and large, one of many versions of the same song. They’re just the most popular versions – the ones that made it to the top. For example, in 1953 alone, ‘I’m Walking Behind You’ was recorded by Frank Sinatra, Dorothy Squires, Jimmy Young and Eddie Fisher. ‘How Much is That Doggy…’ was recorded by Patti Page as well as Lita Roza. ‘Broken Wings’ was also recorded by Dickie Valentine and two chaps called Art and Dotty Todd. ‘Don’t Let the Stars…’ was recorded by no less than seven different acts before we count Perry Como’s chart topping version. Soon we’ll see an occasion where the two versions of the same song take turns at being number one.

So it’s unfair to paint Eddie Fisher as a creep with a habit of turning up at weddings uninvited. He just liked to record songs with lyrics about turning up at weddings uninvited. And I have to say that, while the sound and style of these early hits hasn’t sounded too dated to my modern ears (they mostly all follow the basic pop song formula: verse, bridge, chorus, solo, chorus…), the lyrics are really starting to grate. I wasn’t expecting any swears, or anything too sexy, but it’s all either been extremely saccharine, extremely melodramatic, borderline racist or just plain tame. Elvis needs to hurry along, and quick.

This is the last we’ll hear from Eddie Fisher in this countdown. And I have to admit the two songs I’ve heard so far haven’t inspired me to discover more of his back-catalogue. Except, as I was doing my ‘research’ for this post, I couldn’t help but notice his 1954 US #29 hit, simply entitled ‘Fanny’. Give it a listen, I assure you: it’s worth it.

But we can end this entry with a more heartwarming, and slightly more wholesome, piece of backstory. I had mentioned previously how all these early stars seemed to live well into their eighties and nineties. Well. Sally Sweetland, of the ethereal backing vocals, only went and lived up until 2015, to the grand old age of 103. Her husband had died a few years before that, and they had been together for seventy years! He had been the voice of Woody Woodpecker; and she had taught Family Guy creator Seth McFarlane how to sing. Well, there you go.

9. ‘I Believe’, by Frankie Laine

/ UK #1s blog / 20 Comments

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I Believe, by Frankie Laine (his 1st of four #1s)

9 weeks, from 24th April to 26th June/ 6 weeks, from 3rd July to 14th August/ 3 weeks, from 21st August to 11th September 1953 (18 weeks total)

Boom! Nine number ones in and we’ve hit the big time. We are walking with UK chart royalty here.

I wish I could more clearly recall the moment when I first became interested in the music charts. I have foggy memories here and there: vague snatches of mid-nineties Top 40 countdowns aged ten or eleven. I remember knowing that No Doubt were #1 with ‘Don’t Speak’, and that The Verve were there with ‘The Drugs Don’t Work’. Which places my first wave of enthusiasm firmly in 1997, aged eleven. What sparked it? I don’t know. Maybe something as simple as watching Top of the Pops.

But then I lost interest for a bit aged thirteen or fourteen – the age when you lose interest in everything – and didn’t return until I was sixteen. Then I remember very clearly listening to the Top 40 countdown in a minibus on the way home from a scout camp, on one of the weeks that Will Young’s ‘Evergreen’ was at the top. And that was that.

My interest grew subtly; from simply knowing who was in the charts, to listening to them every week, to writing down the Top 10, Top 20, Top 40. My uncle had done the same thing for years – and every so often he would let me look through huge ring-binders full of several decades’ worth of hand-written charts, and peek into the cupboard where he had a copy of every number one single since the ’60s on vinyl, cassette or CD. By 2002, though, he was losing interest (it was, I suppose, a bit weird for a man in his fifties to be buying Atomic Kitten cassingles) and so perhaps in some sense I took over from him. I’ve never thought about it like that… We never discussed it or anything. He doesn’t know I do this. And I’ve not matched his level of stamina for the task. I’ve missed huge chunks, missed years’ worth of charts. I’ve dabbled in recording the albums charts, recording iTunes number ones, Spotify number ones, rather than the traditional Top 40… And now I’m writing this.

Anyway, the reason for this huge diversion ahead of describing ‘I Believe’ by Frankie Lane is thus: back at the start of my second wave of interest in the charts I used to pore over the Guinness Book of UK Hit Singles, absorbing chart stats and memorising the #1 singles from any given year. And one of the first chart stats that anyone learns – even people who have nothing more than a passing interest – is that the longest ever run at number one is held by ‘(Everything I Do) I Do it for You’, by Bryan Adams, which resided imperiously at the top for sixteen weeks in 1991. This is basic knowledge – like knowing one Shakespeare quote, or that Pi is 3.14 something something something.

Except. Everything we think we know is wrong. Bryan Adams holds the record for most consecutive weeks at Number 1. This song has the most in total.

It begins with a single guitar strum… I believe for every drop of rain that falls, a flower grows… Like all songs that have gone on to become something more than just hit records, it’s a simple song. Deceptively simple. But Frankie Laine is in complete control of the lyrics and the tempo, each line growing upon the previous one. The song is just one big crescendo – no verses, no chorus, just a list of things of every day miracles that make the singer ‘believe’. Every time I hear a newborn baby cry, or touch a leaf, or see the sky… Then I know why… I believe… Two minutes long. Done.

The obvious conclusion to draw is that this is a hymn – that the things he lists are those that seal his faith in God. But I’m not sure. I think he just believes in life. Though I am a massive atheist. Still, perhaps part of the song’s mass appeal is that it doesn’t mention ‘God’ as such. It leaves it open for the listener to apply their own personal convictions upon the song.

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The biggest surprise for me upon Googling Frankie Laine is that he’s a pudgy white guy. His voice makes it sound for all the world like he’s black. I can’t explain it, and wouldn’t want to get into some weird, racial vocal-profiling discussion, but listen and I’m sure you’ll agree. 1953 was Laine’s year on the UK singles chart, and he’ll go on to score another couple of chart toppers before this year’s out.

Anyway. This was a song that I knew, or knew of, but had never really listened to. And it’s very good. It sounds like the sort of song that should have stayed at number one for weeks on end. So often the general public get it wrong, sending utter turds to the top and letting genuine classics languish below. But they got it right here. And if someone came along tomorrow and gave ‘I Believe’ a tropical house makeover, with a verse from Justin Bieber, it would probably work. Not that I’m suggesting anyone tries that anytime soon…

But it should be so much more famous. Its chart run was broken twice, on both occasions just for a single week, and because of that Bryan Adams has all the glory and has passed into chart folklore. And that’s just not fair. #justiceforfrankie.