Ballads

81. ‘As I Love You’, by Shirley Bassey

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And so – as happens every once in a while on this countdown – we meet a legend. A British legend, at least. And not ‘British Legend’ as in Robin Hood or Merlin or anything like that. No, no, no. I mean ‘British Living Legend’ – as in Barbara Windsor, or David Attenborough, or Sir Clifford of Richard. People so woven in to the very fabric of British life – of Saturday evenings on ITV and audiences with the Queen – that everybody upon everybody upon everybody knows them.

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As I Love You, by Shirley Bassey (her 1st of two #1s)

4 weeks, from 20th February – 20th March 1959

Dame Shirley Bassey is one of these people (she is a Dame after all), and the foundations of her ‘National Treasure’ status were laid right here: in the singles charts of the late 1950s, and in this polished and expertly sung record. It’s a very good song: a grown-up ballad of a pop song. But, and after that big old build up I feel a bit bad writing this… I’m not really feeling it.

It starts with a flourish, and then: I will love you, As I love you, All my life… Ev’ry moment spent with you, Makes me more content with you… She loves a guy. Loves him a lot! Ev’ry single, Touch and tingle, I adore… Ev’ry kiss from you to me, Always seems so new to me… Each one warmer, Than the one before… It’s a love song in the very purest sense – in that it’s a song about being utterly in love. Which is nice, I suppose. There’s certainly a real sparkle in her voice, with just the cutest whiff of a Welsh accent, and if the quality of her singing were being judged by a panel then she might just sweep the board. And the ending… My that ending. She gives it everything, and then some. AND MOOOORRRREEEE…. It’s another real throwback of a record, following hot on the heels of Jane Morgan’s – albeit somewhat jazzier – ‘The Day the Rains Came’.

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Why, then, am I struggling to like this song? Well, it wouldn’t be the first time I’ve failed to really ‘get’ one of the many old-time ballads that we’ve featured thus far. ‘Stranger in Paradise’, ‘Secret Love’ and ‘Three Coins in the Fountain’ were all records that somewhat passed me by, and that’s before we get to the God-awful Eddie Fisher and David Whitfield efforts. ‘As I Love You’ is nowhere near as terrifying as anything by either of those chaps, but I’ll have to file it under ‘Can appreciate; Can’t enjoy.’

The situation isn’t helped by the fact that I originally found a version of ‘As I Love You’ that was much jazzier, much snazzier, and sung at a much higher tempo. I was all prepared to write a post championing it as one of the best tracks so far – it really was that good. It sounded so modern that I was going to announce it as the first ‘1960s Number One’. But something nagged at me as I listened. Something sounded too good to be true… And it was. The version I had been listening to – click here for a listen, it’s good isn’t it? – was a re-recording from, I’m guessing, the late sixties / early seventies. Sigh.

But! We shouldn’t judge a record by what it is not. ‘As I Love You’ is the first chart topper by Dame Shirley of Bassey, the foremost British female voice of the past half-century, the yin to Sir Cliff’s yang (and note that she got to the top a good few months before Cliff ever did). She will only get one (one!) more chart-topper and I will perhaps shock you when I reveal that it is neither ‘Goldfinger’ (#21), nor ‘Big Spender’ (#21) nor ‘Diamonds Are Forever’ (#38!), but something else entirely. Stay tuned.

It is also the very first Welsh #1, meaning that we finally complete our ‘British Isles Chart-Toppers Map’ by adding Dame Shirley to hits from The Stargazers (England), Ruby Murray (Northern Ireland) and Lonnie Donegan (Scotland). So – this record is many things. And yet… It could have been, and later was, so much more!

78. ‘It’s Only Make Believe’, by Conway Twitty

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Before we begin writing anything about this record, let’s take a minute to appreciate the name of the man who recorded it… Mr. Conway Twitty. It’s a strange name – ‘Conway’ being quite rugged and windswept, and ‘Twitty’ being somewhat less so. It’s a name you don’t forget in a hurry; which I suppose is a good thing in show-business.

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It’s Only Make Believe, by Conway Twitty (his 1st and only #1)

5 weeks, from 19th December 1958 – 23rd January 1959

And note! I’ve finally – seventy-eight number ones in! – managed to locate some genuine cover art to stick at the top of my post. This, I am strongly led to believe, was the genuine cover that people would have seen in British record stores when they went to pick up their copies of ‘It’s Only Make Believe’.

To the song. A guitar strums… People see us everywhere… Another strum… They think you really care… Strum… But myself I can’t deceive… I know it’s only… Make… Believe… Conway loves a gal, but she ain’t lovin’ him back. Bizarrely enough, it sounds quite like the intro to ‘Runaround Sue’ – but that’s a story for another day.

My only prayer will be, Some day you’ll care for me, But it’s only Make… Believe… Is she using him to get back at an ex? Is she leading him on? Is she just a tease…? The reasons as to why they are leading this pretend-life remain tantalisingly out of reach. But Conway’s got it bad. His heart is a-achin’.

This is a rock ‘n’ roll ballad. We’ve toyed with the concept up to now. Was ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ the first? Or was it ‘Young Love’? Or was it neither? Because this is heart on your sleeve balladry. This is the real deal, and the starting point for all manner of Bon Jovi / Aerosmith-type fist clenching, air-punching soft-RAWK. Not that it actually sounds anything like a late ’80s power ballad; but mark my words – the seeds are being sown. The lyrics are super-overwrought: lots of my all, my everything, I’d give my life for you etc. etc. But Twitty sells it, just about, with some top-notch wailing. You really believe that his heart is cracking in twain as he sings.

This is also, I’m pretty confident in saying, our first slice of country rock at the top of the UK charts. We’ve had country before – a bit of Frankie Laine here, a little Slim Whitman there – but this is rock ‘n’ roll with a country twang. The Eagles, Dolly and Shania, even Tay-Tay before she went basic, stem from this kind of thing.

I know, I know… That’s a very bold statement. But it’s useful, as we reach the end of 1958, to take a step back and admire the bigger picture. We’re over two years into the ‘rock’ age and, as I’ve commented on several recent chart-toppers, there is more and more of a fusion going on. Songs like ‘The Story of My Life’, ‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’ and ‘It’s All in the Game’ topped the charts this year, and were all pop songs – hummable, easy listening numbers – with a distinct whiff of rock ‘n’ roll. The year started out with two utter classics – tracks one and two on Now That’s What I Call Rock N Roll: ‘Great Balls of Fire’ and ‘Jailhouse Rock’. Since then, though, the overriding theme of 1958 has been one of much ‘blander’ rock ‘n’ roll. And so ‘It’s Only Make Believe’, is in many ways the perfect track to round the year off – a rock song much more likely to appeal to mum, and gran, than the kids.

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The worst thing about this whole record is that Conway Twitty was not the singer’s real name. Boo! He was actually one Harold Jenkins, and apparently got his stage name after blindly opening a map and finding a town named Conway in Arkansas and one called Twitty in Texas. So far, so C&W. ‘It’s Only Make Believe’ was his only big success on the UK charts, so I make it three-in-a-row in the one-hit wonders stakes. He stumbled through the 1960s before becoming an absolute demon on the US Country Charts in the ’70s and ’80s, with hits like ‘Tight Fittin’ Jeans’ and ‘Red Neckin’ Love Makin’ Night’. Yee-haw! Best of all, he lived in a self-built multi-million dollar ‘country music entertainment complex’ called, wait for it… ‘Twitty City’. He died in 1993, aged but fifty-nine.

We’ll leave him here, caterwaulin’ us into 1959, the final year of the decade that gave us rock ‘n’ roll, Elvis, Buddy and Jerry Lee. Beyond that lie the 1960s, and nothing much of musical interest happened then. Did it?

71. ‘Who’s Sorry Now’, by Connie Francis

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Who’s Sorry Now, by Connie Francis (her 1st of two #1s)

6 weeks, from 16th May – 27th June 1958

I really didn’t mean to set it up like that at the end of the previous post, truly I didn’t. It simply occurred to me that we hadn’t had a female singer at the top of the charts for a long old time and then, lo and behold, here we are…

Not since the 19th October 1956 – just shy of seventeen months ago – have we had a feminine voice on a #1 record. Since then sixteen different male singers, or male groups, have come and gone with twenty different number one singles.

And the differences between ‘Who’s Sorry Now’, and the last female-led chart-topper – Anne Shelton’s ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ – paint a very telling picture of how the landscape of popular music has changed in recent months. Because, basically, rock ‘n’ roll has happened. Anne Shelton hit the top around the same time as ‘Que Sera Sera’ and Frankie Laine’s big-band show tune ‘A Woman in Love’. ‘Lay Down Your Arms’ was a bizarre, military marching fruit-loop of a song that harked back to World War II, Vera Lynn and all that. Since then we’ve had Elvis, and Lonnie Donegan, and Buddy and Jerry Lee. And now Connie Francis takes all that rock ‘n’ roll attitude, and gives it her own, feminine twist.

Who’s sorry now? Who’s sorry now? Whose heart is achin’ for breakin’ each vow…? Miss Francis had her heartbroken, but the man who hurt her now has his own romantic troubles… Who’s sad and blue? Who’s cryin’ too? Just like I cried, Over you… There’s a twang in her voice, a sassy hiccup, and it gives the distinct impression that she’s struggling to dredge up much sympathy for her ex.

Is this a rock ‘n’ roll ballad? The slower tempo and the backing singers suggest that it is. If so, I make it only the second one ever to top the charts – the first being The Dream Weavers’ ever-so-dreary ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ from two years back. (I thought about including ‘Young Love’ as a ballad; but that was just a soppy little pop song – ballads need a little bit of emosh about them).

And ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ certainly gives us emotion. It’s a song of two halves. During the first, Francis’s voice lilts and coos. For the second, she whips it up a notch or five. Right till the end! Just like a friend! I tried to warn you somehow… The drums start whippin’, cymbals crash, and her voice almost snaps… You had your way, Now you must pay… Then she delivers the final, crushing blow… I’m glad that you’re sorry now… It is a moment!

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This is part torch-song, part clap-back. If I were a sassy black drag-queen, I would have clicked my fingers and shouted ‘Preach’ as this track shuddered to a halt. Alas, I am not; but I love this song all the same. This is a big stepping stone in music, make no doubt about it: this is paving the way for Madonna, The Spice Girls, and any other female act with even a smidgen of attitude. This is Beyoncé’s ‘Lemonade’ repackaged for the late fifties. A lot of the female artists we’ve met previously on this countdown have been cute, and flirty, and fun to listen to – Kitty Kallen, Kay Starr, Winifred Atwell, I’m looking at you. But no girl has brought this level of spunk to the table. Alma Cogan and Rosemary Clooney were having a great time on records like ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Mambo Italiano’ but they were, ultimately, throwaway pop discs, with nothing like the bite of ‘Who’s Sorry Now’.

I love this song, and I love Connie Francis, and have done for a while. You can’t truly be into rock ‘n’ roll without having discovered Connie, Brenda Lee and the other female stars of the time. She was just twenty-one when this hit the top-spot, and in her pictures she sports a perfectly ‘fifties’ look: short curls an’ smokey eyes. But, on doing a little further research, I was surprised – nay, shocked! – to learn two things. One: that ‘Who’s Sorry Now’ was actually first recorded in 1923! And two: that Connie Francis was initially resistant to recording it. Luckily for all of us she did, and this version is completely different to the reedy-sounding 1923 version (which was an instrumental, for a start).

I shan’t wax too lyrical on Ms Francis just yet – we’ll be meeting her again before the year’s out, with an equally brilliant but completely different record. For now, I shall ask one more time… ‘Who’s Sorry Now? Not Connie. No sir… Preach!’

46. ‘No Other Love’, by Ronnie Hilton

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No Other Love, by Ronnie Hilton (his 1st and only #1)

6 weeks, from 4th May to 15th June 1956

Through writing these blog posts, I’m becoming a strong believer in nominative determinism. I.e. through looking at the name of the recording artist one can anticipate what the song will sound like. Not that anyone’s been called Sax Jazzington, or anything silly like that. More like how Kay Starr sounds fun and flirty, Slim Whitman sounds grizzled and lonesome, Jimmy Young sounds… normal, and a little dull. I feel that Ronnie Hilton should fall into the latter category.

And, lo and behold, he does. It starts dramatically enough, though: a burst of cymbals, then another, then another… Then it feels like a step back in time, to the dark days of *shudder* David Whitfield. It’s semi-operatic, its over the top, it’s not a particularly easy listen. Hilton’s voice is overwrought. It’s a powerful voice, a technically very good voice, the sort of voice that your gran would have approved of; but it’s too much. It’s probably no worse than the Whitfield, Laine days of a couple years back, but it already sounds very dated coming so soon after more progressive-sounding records by Bill Haley, Alma Cogan and even Dean Martin.

Lyrically too, this is a song that’s been done before. No other love have I… Into your arms I’ll fly… Waiting to hear you say… ‘No other love have I’. He’s a little lovelorn, is Mr Hilton. I’ve mentioned it before, but why is it the girls that have all the fun in these early chart toppers? With a few exceptions (Vera Lynn, cough cough) they get to be perky and flirty while the men stay at home and stoically wait for their love to be fulfilled.

One thing I was certain of, without doing any kind of research, is that Ronnie Hilton was British. His voice has that properness, that stoicism, void of any kind of vulgar, American swagger. One other thing that I was pretty certain of, again before delving into Wikipedia and around, is that ‘No Other Love’ must have been from a soundtrack, such is its unnervingly bombastic approach to what is an otherwise very basic love song. And yes, it’s a Rogers & Hammerstein number, from their 1953 show ‘Me and Juliet’.

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Actually, the most surprising thing I could uncover about Ronnie Hilton – this is his only appearance at the top so let’s give him a moment in the sun – is that ‘Ronnie Hilton’ was his stage name. He was born Adrian Hill. Let that sink in for a second: he, or somebody advising him, thought Adrian Hill was a little too boring, a little too staid, and that ‘Ronnie Hilton’ would get the girls swooning. I think that just sums him, this song, and this whole pre-rock era up… If you’re going to change your name in an attempt to gain fame and glory for God’s sake try to come up with something slightly sexy. No?

And – perhaps just as interestingly – Hilton recorded a fairly successful (in the UK at least) version of ‘The Wonder of You’, eleven years before Elvis Presley made it a standard. But… listen to Hilton’s version, then Presley’s version, and it becomes clear why the latter was one of the most famous voices, and personalities, of the 20th Century and the former wasn’t.

I’m being a little down on Ronnie Hilton, really, so let’s give him a break and end with something completely unrelated. Something that just occurred to me as I wrote the intro to this post. The only reason that my nominative determinism theory works is because I have heard so few of these early number one hits. I write the title down, search them out on Spotify, and take a step into the unknown. But, looking down the list of UK #1s through the remainder of 1956, through ’57 and ’58, this is going to become less and less of a thing. I know several of the next twenty or thirty records. Soon I’ll know the majority of them. Of course, every so often, even as we get to the eighties and nineties, there will be songs I simply have never heard before (I have no idea how ‘Doop’, by Doop, goes for example – and it had 3 weeks at the top in 1994) but, on the whole, we are slowly stepping out of the mist and onto firmer, better known ground.

43. ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’, by The Dream Weavers

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It’s Almost Tomorrow, by The Dream Weavers (their 1st and only #1)

2 weeks, from 16th – 30th March / 1 week, from 6th – 13th April 1956 (3 weeks total)

Perhaps it’s time to christen a brand new era in popular music. I’ll call it: the ‘post-pre-rock age’! We’ve had the first wave of the rock ‘n’ roll explosion – the very first rock ‘n’ roll number one – but the waves have receded and we are stood on soggy sand waiting for them to return. And they will, they will… Just not yet.

What I mean is that, to all intents and purposes, we are still in the pre-rock age but that the rules have changed ever so slightly. Of course, the very top of the charts is never where you look for music’s cutting edge. You get to the top of the pop charts by being, well, popular, and by appealing to the largest number of people. But… even if you look at the Top 20 from the week in March ’56 that this latest song hit #1, there are very few records that stand out as being rock songs: Bill Haley is at #7 with ‘See You Later Alligator’, Lonnie Donegan is at #9 with ‘Rock Island Line’ (a skiffle track, admittedly, but still) and there’s a song called ‘Pickin’ a Chicken’ by Eve Boswell which sounds like a rock song involving a funky dance move (a la ‘The Twist’) but is actually just a pretty dull song about having a picnic. The rest is Sinatra, Jimmy Young, Slim Whitman…

And, as with ‘Memories Are Made of This’ which preceded it, ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ has elements of rock ‘n’ roll in it – enough, perhaps, to attract the youngsters but not enough to put off the old folks. Thus the gap between the worlds of Eddie Fisher and Elvis is deftly bridged.

Anyway, to the song. And after that big build-up, all that stuff about it being a brand new era in popular music, ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ is a bit dull. The idea behind it is that the singer’s sweetheart is falling out of love with him, and that she will leave him ‘tomorrow’. And yet he hopes it will be otherwise… My dearest, my darling, tomorrow is near, The clouds will bring showers of sadness, I fear… ‘Emotions As Weather’ – the first chapter in ‘Cheesy Love Songs 101’. It’s almost tomorrow, but what can I do? Your kisses all tell me that, your love is untrue…

It’s a bit cloying, what with its backing singers and plinky-plonky pianos. A bit of a nursery rhyme, too – I can’t decide if it sounds more like ‘Puff the Magic Dragon’ or ‘Away in a Manger’. And again, it’s another very simple #1. The production is very rich – the piano and backing singers turned up to 11 – but there isn’t much there. And, unfortunately, there’s a bit of a THIS IS THE END OF THE SONG ending: You’ll always be miiiiiiiiiiiine!

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But, in the ‘pros’ column there is a rather wonderful key-change – a very rock ‘n’ roll touch. I’m a big fan of a well constructed key-change. I can’t resist them. Who can? Its inbuilt in most people, I think. A Pavlovian reaction. And this is not just a key change, but a mid-note key change… Your love is untruuuu *key change* uuuueeeee. I’m not going to lie – it did give me a mild covering of goose bumps the first time I heard it. But that’s far and away the best thing about this song. A song which we could brand the very first rock ballad to hit the top of the UK Singles Chart, if it didn’t feel a bit of a waste to use up such an honorific title on such an average record.

This is The Dream Weavers only appearance in this countdown, and in the charts. They were big ol’ one hit wonders, you see. Though we should give them a shout out for being one of the few acts so far to have hit the top with an original composition. The Dream Weavers consisted of two high school friends – Gene Adkinson and Wade Buff (great name!) – and a rotating cast of back-up singers. Adkinson and Buff wrote ‘It’s Almost Tomorrow’ themselves, and so are pretty unique among the forty-two songs that we’ve written about previously.

And we’ll leave it there for now. A simple love song – all key changes and not an orchestra in sight – but with familiarly mopey lyrics about rain and heartache, as well as a silly, bombastic ending. One leg in the new world; one leg stuck firmly in the past.

36. ‘Rose Marie’, by Slim Whitman

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Rose Marie, by Slim Whitman (his 1st and only #1)

11 weeks, from 29th July to 14th October 1955

Yee-Hah! I hoped, back when Tennessee Ernie Ford was topping the charts with ‘Give Me Your Word’, that we might be seeing our first Country and Western #1. Well, Ernie didn’t quite live up to his name but we didn’t have to wait long. This is country with a capital C O U N T R and Y.

Slim Whitman stands alone on the prairie. The setting sun casts an orange glow across this horizon. Cacti spread their long shadows over the dirty ground. A tumbleweed bounces lazily by. Slim picks up his spittoon, clears his throat, and begins… Oh Rose, my Rose Marie… I love you… I’m always dreaming of you…

It’s an atmospheric record, I’ll grant you that. Just a piano, a simple rhythm and that weird noise which is the epitome of old, Nashville C&W: strange and echoing, made either by guitars submerged in water or sped up recordings of whale noises. You’ll know it as soon as you hear it.

Anyway, Slim can’t forget Rose Marie, and even wishes he’d never met her. Then he hums as he thinks of her. It’s quite effective. You really can picture him wandering plaintively past hail bays and broken barn doors, as the light finally fades.

There are definitely some pros to this 36th UK chart topper: it is quite an understated ballad, lacking the OTT grandstanding of some of its predecessors, while there are definitely some ‘rockier’ elements to the song too in the twangy guitars and the piano riff. But there are definitely some cons too: Whitman’s voice comes far too close to yodelling for my liking (My Ro-OOse Marie), for example. Some nice touches; some things jar.

I was planning to write something indignant about this record spending 11 (Eleven!) consecutive weeks at the top – setting a record that would last for thirty-six years. But the more I listen to it, the more ‘Rose Marie’ is getting under my skin. It’s simple, it’s heartfelt, it’s kinda cute. There’s another fade, rather than a bombastic finale: a long drawn out note and a piano refrain.

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It’s not a bad way to claim your sole chart-topper – double figures then out – though Slim Whitman did have a handful of other hits. Pictures of him show a very dapper looking pseudo-cowboy with a natty little moustache. It almost goes without saying, by now, that he lived to a ripe old age: dying at ninety in 2013. ‘Rose Marie’ itself (herself?) dates from far earlier than 1955 – from a 1924 opera of the same name, written by none other than Oscar Hammerstein II. And that, fact fans, is that.

34. ‘Unchained Melody’, by Jimmy Young

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Unchained Melody, by Jimmy Young (his 1st of two #1s)

3 weeks, from 24th June to 15th July 1955

Forget ‘I Believe’, discard ‘How Much is that Doggie’, don’t mention ‘Mambo Italiano’… For the first time in this countdown, we have a song that everyone knows.

We’ve flirted with legend so far. Sinatra and Doris Day have hit the top, but not with any of their most famous recordings. Frankie Laine has set an unbeatable chart record with a song that will be unmistakeable to people of a certain age. And there have been other chart toppers that people might be able to sing a couple of lines from. But everyone, and I repeat everyone, knows ‘Unchained Melody’.

But not everyone will know this version. 4 (Four!) versions of ‘Unchained Melody’ have hit top spot in the UK charts – take a bow The Righteous Brothers, Robson & Jerome, and Gareth Gates, we shall hear from you anon. With these versions – the former especially – ingrained in popular culture, Jimmy Young’s version is a strange listen.

The tempo is faster, for a start. Then there are the Spanish guitars, when we are used to it being a piano led song. And then there is the clipped, British delivery. No glossy, American vocals here. Young’s voice is deep, sonorous even. It’s technically a good voice. But there is more than a whiff of David Whitfield about it, especially when he belts out the line Are you still MIIIIIIINE?

He still needs your love, and would like God to speed your love to him. It is the same song, but it’s not. I think that were this a more forgotten hit – a ‘Give Me Your Word’ for example -it might simply file in amongst all the other stiff, slightly overwrought, pre-rock ballads that we have sat through so far. But, unfortunately for Jimmy Young, people took this song and turned it into one of the most instantly recognisable pieces of popular music ever recorded. And his version, while still not the original (there were, inevitably, four other versions in the chart during the summer of ’55), now sounds very dated next to the more modern interpretations.

Interestingly, though, as we study the evolution of the number one record through time, we have a first here. At least, I think it’s a first (I can’t be bothered going back and listening to all the previous thirty-three). So many of these hits have favoured a bombastic THIS IS THE END OF THE SONG approach to the final chorus (to be referred to from now on as a TITEOES ending). And what song would have better suited this kind of OTT climax than ‘Unchained Melody’? But no. What we have here is Young singing the last line – God speed your love to me – the final note being held, the guitars strumming and a fade. A fade! And it works pretty well. It is, ironically – considering the time in which it was recorded – the most understated ending out of the four chart topping versions.

Why, though, is it called ‘Unchained Melody’ when the lyrics make no reference to being ‘unchained’? Is it because the singer is unchaining his heart, and pouring out his feelings to the one he loves? That would be a sensible guess, but no. We might as well address this here, though I am aware that I will have sod all to write about by the time we stumble across the Gareth Gates version. The song is from a film called ‘Unchained’, and is therefore the melody from ‘Unchained’. Kind of like Mantovani’s ‘Song from Moulin Rouge’. Simple. The film has been forgotten, but it lingers on in the title of a world-famous love song. And, it keeps up our run of film soundtrack #1s – four in a row, and counting. Of course, ‘Unchained Melody’ is also very well known for being in an ultra famous scene from another movie: ‘Ghost’. Which is turning this all very meta – kind of like the play within a play. Or not. I think I should stop writing soon.

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But I can’t finish without mentioning the man who has played barely a supporting role in this post so far: Jimmy Young himself. I’ve not so far been able to relate many of these early chart toppers to life events, experiences, or memories… But I do have a special place in my heart for Jimmy Young.

He was known by most as a Radio 2 DJ, rather than a singer. My parents love a bit of Radio 2 – as parents tend to do – and while I did put in some half-hearted protests for Radio 1, or even a commercial station (Shock! Horror!), I didn’t actually mind long car journeys with Steve Wright or Wogan or whoever. But I hated the two hours over lunch when Jimmy Young came on to talk about, ugh, politics, the world, society and the issues of the day. Then I would really protest, and my parents would usually concede to putting ‘ABBA Gold’ on for a bit.

Young just came across as a crusty old man, who thought youngsters didn’t know how easy they had it, who was definitely in favour of bringing back National Service, maybe even hanging… This is obviously all complete speculation on my part (though I see now that he had a column in the Daily Express – draw your own conclusions there…) and he’s dead so I shouldn’t be too rude. He did talk an awful lot, though. And yet I look back on those days fondly now, sitting in a car on our way to a fortnight in, I don’t know, Devon, listening to an old man chuntering on – an old man I had no idea had been a chart-topping singer.

30. ‘Give Me Your Word’, by Tennessee Ernie Ford

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Give Me Your Word, by Tennessee Ernie Ford (his 1st of two #1s)

7 weeks, from 11th Mar to 29th Apr 1955

Before we get down to analysing this next chart-topper, let’s just take a second to appreciate the name of the artist that recorded it. Tennessee Ernie Ford… I wonder what kind of music he might make? (*cough* country and western *cough*)

But, no. While he has the voice for a C&W hit, this isn’t the song. He drawls ‘all’ into ‘aawl’ and ‘wants’ into ‘waaonts’, yet from this second this record cracks into gear, with soaring strings and a dramatic piano, we know we ain’t gettin’ a country lament – no tumbleweeds nor howlin’ coyotes. This is a song that means business.

It’s basically a marriage proposal – a lot of talk of vows, of being beside him, of words being given for ever and always. And, to be fair, you probably wouldn’t say ‘no’ to Tennessee: he has a deep sonorous voice, the voice of a man who can chop trees and wrestle cattle. Rough hands but a warm heart, that kind of thing. The only time the voice lets him down is at the very end, when a song of this gravitas needs a slightly more powerful, and slightly less Pingu sounding finish.

And is it just me, or are these chart toppers starting to get sexier? Ruby Murray was all about softly, breathlessly, touching lips and now Mr. Ford carries on the theme. Give me your lips, he drawls, and let your lips remain. Remain where, you might ask? It’s hardly Prince at his raunchiest; but it certainly isn’t something Eddie Fisher would have sung about either.

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Looking at pictures of Tennessee Ernie, he looks somewhat like you would expect. Perhaps not as rugged as his voice makes him sound, but he has a natty little moustache, and clearly liked to play up his cowboy credentials, with plenty of Stetson ‘n’ rodeo-tassels popping up on a Google image search. He was really born in Tennessee, too.

But, for a song that starts of with grand intent, this is actually pretty dull. Or at least average. File it along with ‘Answer Me’ and ‘Cara Mia’ – songs that were huge, and clearly got people all weepy in their day, but whose melodramatic lyrics and OTT melodies have lost their resonance over time.

20. ‘Cara Mia’, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra

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Cara Mia, by David Whitfield with Mantovani & His Orchestra (both Whitfield and Mantovani’s 2nd of two #1s)

10 weeks, from 2nd July to 10th Sept 1954

The last time I wrote about David Whitfield, when his first number one followed on from Frankie Laine’s rockabilly number ‘Hey Joe’, I might have mentioned something about it being one step forward and two steps back…

But for this to follow on from rock ‘n’ roll pioneer Johnnie Ray, and the gloriously suggestive ‘Such a Night’ (OK, yes, Doris Day did return to the top for a big old spell in between but let’s not allow that to get in the way of my indignation!) – it’s more a case of one step forward, ten steps back! One step for every week this record spent at the top! The difference between this and ‘Such a Night’ is massive. This is pre-rock. If such a thing ever existed, if it could be captured and bottled or defined in a dictionary, then this would be it. The Sex Pistols were punk, Oasis were Britpop, David Whitfield was pre-rock.

Shrill backing singers? Check. Overwrought vocals? Got it. Proper enunciation? Yep. Big bastard of an ending? Oh boy. Seriously, check out this ending. It has three stages. Whitfield comes in for the final verse like he means it, an octave up on previous lines: All I want is you, for ever more… Then comes the final line for which he amps it up even more: TILL THE END OF… And the note that he hits for the final TIIIIIMMMMMMEEEEE!!! cannot be natural. Its impressive, yet horrifying.

I have nothing new to write about David Whitfield. He’s of his time, and who am I to judge? People at the time clearly enjoyed it: very, very few records have ever reached double figures in terms of weeks at #1. ‘Such a Night’ only got one week. And he died young, unlike so few of his contemporaries, aged just fifty-four in 1980. We should also drop a mention for Mantovani, of violin and rhyming-slang fame, from whom we won’t be hearing again in this countdown. The violins in this song sound identical to those in his first chart topper. Mantovani’s signature strings.

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Though the sharp-eyed among you will currently no doubt be thinking ‘Now just wait a minute here!’ Because back a few posts ago I mentioned that every record thus far had been conducted by someone and their orchestra, and that these conductors – Paul Weston, Hugo Winterhalter et al, never seemed to get credited and were deleted from any chart statistics. So why is Mantovani getting a credit here? To be brutally honest… I dunno. Maybe it’s because this, more than any, is a super operatic, orchestral record and they feel that that should be recognised. Maybe it’s because Mantovani already sneaked a week at the top with his own song, ‘Moulin Rouge’, and so was slightly more renowned than your run-of-the-mill conductors. Maybe Mantovani was just really concerned about his legacy and so paid someone to stick him in the records. Who know? But if I were Paul Weston, I’d be pretty pissed off.

Before finishing, I want to mention a thought that struck me a few posts ago. It seems that in the mid-1950s there were very few ways for people to hear the music that was in the charts without buying it. No MTV (duh!), no Top of the Pops, no YouTube, no nothing. Radio consisted of a handful of stations, very few of which played pop music. Pirate Radio hadn’t got going yet. Perhaps you could have listened to ‘Pick of the Pops’, on the BBC Light Programme, but even that wasn’t first broadcast until 1955. It just seems so alien to me, to us, that you might only know of a record as a listing in a magazine and have no idea how it sounded until you went out and bought it.

Although, this might explain how certain songs managed to top the charts in the first place…

18. ‘Secret Love’, by Doris Day

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Secret Love, by Doris Day (her 1st of two #1s)

1 week, from 16th to 23rd April / 8 weeks from 7th May to 2nd July 1954 (9 weeks total)

A dreamy intro… Is that a harp…? And is that running water, or just the quality of the recording? It’s very soft start to the 18th chart-topping record, and it’s not immediately obvious why this song straddled the very top of the charts for three whole months.

There are some mushy lyrics about the titular ‘secret love’, about being a dreamer, about only being able to tell the stars about how deeply in love you are… So far, so 50s.

But then. Boom. The chorus. I know this song. People know this song. NOOOOOWWWW I shout it from the highest hills, even told the golden daffodils, at last my heart’s an open door, and my secret love’s not secret, anymore…

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Day has a wonderful voice: with elocution as crisp and clear as any we’ve heard before, but without the stiffness and formality that has made some of the previous number ones sound old-fashioned. There’s a great warmth to it, and the way she jumps from softly purring the verse to walloping out the chorus is impressive. It’s effortless. You could say it’s star quality.

And surely she is the biggest star to have topped the charts thus far. Frankie Laine, and Guy Mitchell, were huge in their day but have largely been forgotten. People know Doris Day. Even today people will have heard of her, though they might not be able to pinpoint why. I, for example, knew this song without realising it. And everyone knows her next chart-topper, which contains some of the most famous lines in the history of popular music. But more on that later…

Probably the first time I ever heard of her was through ‘Grease’, and Rizzo’s mocking line ‘Hey, I’m Doris Day. I was not brought up that way…’ Day is held up by the Pink Ladies as straight-laced and old-fashioned – a girl who most certainly would not go to bed till she was legally wed. That, in a way, sums up this ‘pre-rock’ age and its stars who would, long before the turn of the next decade, seem painfully uncool next to Elvis and his kind.

Speaking of movies… Something about this recording gave me an inkling that it was from a movie soundtrack. Perhaps it was the orchestra, or the way the song doesn’t so much end as fade away to grey. Anyway, for each of these posts I make sure I listen to each song three or four times before doing any research on it (honest). But, lo and behold, ‘Secret Love’ is from a movie: ‘Calamity Jane’. Again: a film I’ve heard of – most people probably have – but have never seen. This is a sign of star quality, of true fame, no? When you are woven so deep into popular culture that people stop realising you’re there.

Two other little things to muse upon before we move onwards… At 3 minutes 40 seconds, this is a pretty long record. That’s pretty much the length of the average 21st century pop hit. Actually, these super-early chart toppers have routinely been hitting the three-minute mark. When I started listening to music I – no doubt influenced by the 2.5 minute wonders on my parents ‘Sounds of the ’60s’ cassettes in the car – assumed that songs started out really short and got longer and longer (at least until the 70s, when prog-rock came along and simply took the piss). But it appears that the average length of pop songs (as we know them, post-war, at least) actually started out at three minutes or longer and shrunk in the late fifties/ early sixties.

And the last thing (which is much more important than the average length of chart topping singles): you know how I keep referencing just how long these early pop stars seemed to have lived for? Well, Miss Day has only gone and topped them all. By still being alive! Ninety-five and still going strong (at the time of writing…) Well done her!