Remembering

Prince: Best of the Rest

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April 21st marks the 8th anniversary of Prince’s death. One of the most talented musicians of his generation; and one of the most cheated when it comes to UK #1s. Just the one, in fact: 1994’s ‘The Most Beautiful Girl in the World’.

(We of course shouldn’t forget two very famous, and very good, songs written by Prince, that were chart-topping hits for Chaka Khan and Sinead O’Connor.)

So here are the Prince tunes that came closest: 8 records and 10 songs (thanks to two double-‘A’s) spread over quite a few decades… I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not as up on my Prince as I should be, so I’m not ranking them. We’ll just go by ascending chart position. Hopefully, I’ll learn something about the Purple One as we go…

‘Kiss’ (with the Revolution) – #6 in 1986

We start with the first Prince song I was ever aware of. And as an intro to the man, it ticks most of the right boxes… Outrageous funk, untamed horniness, a painfully high falsetto… check, check, check. But actually, the girl he’s looking for should be a blushing rose: no dirty talk, no flirting… You don’t have to watch ‘Dynasty’, To have an attitude… is the pick of the lines. Fun fact: the ‘ah-ah-ah’ effect is a compressed sample from Brenda Lee’s classic ‘Sweet Nothin’s’. A couple of years after the original, a remake by Art of Noise, fronted by Tom Jones, charted one place higher at #5. No comment…

‘Purple Rain’ (with the Revolution) – #6 in 2016

Title track from both an album and a movie, ‘Purple Rain’ is probably Prince’s signature tune. A gospel power-ballad, about the end of the world, it’s never really connected with me. I can respect it wholeheartedly; but I enjoy other Prince songs more. Originally written as a country song, and intended to be a duet with Stevie Nicks, ‘Purple Rain’ wouldn’t have made this list before Prince died, as it only made #8 originally. Upon his sudden death, this was understandably the song fans flocked to, making it re-chart and peak two places higher.

‘Controversy’ – reached #5 in 1993

Another song that peaked much later. Twelve years after it had failed to chart in the UK, ‘Controversy’ was re-released ahead of a Greatest Hits in 1993 and made #5. It’s tight and funky, with a disco beat, and lyrically lives up to its title. Am I black or white…? Prince asks… Am I straight or gay? In the seven-minute album version, he recites the Lord’s Prayer in full, presumably well aware that it would piss off a lot of people. Prince would spend the rest of his career playing up to similar controversy. For example, when I was at primary school, the one thing we all ‘knew’ about Prince was that he’d had two ribs removed in order to… how to put this… auto-fellate?

‘Sexy M.F.’ / ‘Strollin” (with the New Power Generation) – reached #4 in 1992

It took a while for the UK to catch up to Prince’s talents, but by the early nineties his singles were often charting higher in the UK than in the States. This coincided with what I see people now call Prince’s ‘gangsta period’. He raps most of this tune, classic lines like Can’t you see I’m harder than a man can get, I got wet dreams coming out of my ears… It’s a strangely uncommercial tune, all sharp horns and a monotonously funky beat, and that’s before we come to the x-rated title. So, in the UK it was twinned with ‘Strollin”, in the hope that radio would play that one. In the end, they just played an edit of ‘Sexy MF’ (You sexy mother-AOOW…!) ‘Strollin” is a much more jazzy, innocent number: Strollin’, strollin’, We can have fun just strollin’… and it can’t really compete with a sexy MF shakin their ass…

‘Gett Off’ (with the New Power Generation) – reached #4 in 1991

The crowning glory of Prince’s near-pornographic early nineties era. ‘Cream’, ‘Sexy MF’, and ‘Peach’ are all fun, but nothing matches the utter filth of ‘Gett Off’, from the ear-splitting shriek that kicks things off, through a tale of twenty-three positions in a one-night stand, to a brilliant flute-cum-guitar riff. Other highlights include a nod to that urban legend – Whatcha want to eat? “Ribs”, Ha, toy, I don’t serve ribs – and the crackly, funky James Brown tribute in the middle. If I were to rank these singles personally, then this one would be on top. Prince took himself seriously a lot of the time; but ‘Gett Off’ is a load of fun.

‘When Doves Cry’ – reached #4 in 1984

Early-nineties Prince might have been utter filth, but it’s not as if he was particularly pure and chaste before that… The video for ‘When Doves Cry’ caused consternation, setting up the controversy over the ‘Purple Rain’ album, and the introduction of ‘Parental Advisory’ stickers. The best single from the album, it was his breakthrough in the UK – only his second song to chart. It’s a deeply weird, deeply catchy song, that has no bass line.

‘Batdance’ – reached #2 in 1989

So, yep. Prince’s joint-second biggest hit in the UK is this. Recorded, quickly, for the soundtrack to the Michael Keaton ‘Batman’ reboot, ‘Batdance’ is a deeply, deeply strange song. If you can call it a song, which it isn’t in the traditional sense. There’s a lot going on: samples, audio from the movie, Prince’s raps, spoken asides, the classic Bat-maaaan… refrain all against a clanking, metallic beat… Then there’s a slow and funky middle-section that sounds like the needle has slipped on to a completely different song. Prince lovers may argue this an example of the scope of his talent, others might suggest it’s a classic example of over-egging the pudding. The guitar solo is wild, though.

‘1999’ / ‘Little Red Corvette’ – reached #2 in 1985

One of Prince’s more straight-forward pop moments, albeit one with a deeply cool synth-funk riff, and lyrics about dancing towards the apocalypse. ‘1999’ only made the Top 30 initially but made #2 when re-released in 1985. I wonder if ‘1999’ was ever Prince’s most popular hit, as it seems that the longer we get from the actual year in the title the more its fame is overshadowed by other Prince songs. It charted for a third time, making #10, in… 1999. For the ’85 re-release, it was paired with ‘Little Red Corvette’, which had been an even smaller hit originally. In it, Prince carries on the fine rock ‘n’ roll tradition of comparing beautiful women to cars (baby you’re much too fast…) It’s a fine song: a sort of smokey, disco-power ballad. Recorded in 1982, it’s the sound of the 1980s just starting to come into their own.

Aside from the music, there can be no doubt that Prince was one of, in not THE, ultimate rock star. Beautifully androgynous, deeply strange, myths and legends about him sprouting left, right and centre, and most importantly of all supremely talented. RIP.

Remembering Burt Bacharach

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Legendary songwriter Burt Bacharach sadly died a couple of days ago, and to mark his passing I thought I’d run through the UK number ones that he (and his partner Hal David) were responsible for. There are seven in total, by acts ranging from Perry Como, to Cilla Black, to Bobbie Gentry, among his fifty-two Top 40 hits.

And, because the charts never play fair, we can only give such timeless classics as (deep breath)… ‘Walk on By’, ‘Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head’, ‘(They Long to Be) Close to You’, ‘The Look of Love’, ‘I Just Don’t Know What to Do With Myself’, ‘Twenty Four Hours from Tulsa’, ‘What the World Needs Now Is Love’ and ‘I Say a Little Prayer’… a shout-out now, because they never made the top spot. Still, we have a fair few good ones to be working with, and there’s a link to my original posts in the song titles.

‘The Story of My Life’ – #1 in 1958 for Michael Holliday

Bacharach’s first big hit, originally written for Marty Robbins. Quite jaunty, very whistle-heavy, and not too much of an indication of what was to come… No matter, for a monster hit was just around the corner.

‘Magic Moments’ – #1 in 1958 for Perry Como

Very few songwriters manage to replace themselves at number one, but Bacharach and David managed it with their first two hits. Crooner Perry Como knocked Holliday off the top, and stayed there for eight weeks. More whistling, but still it’s a song that has seeped into our collective conscience. Anyway, these were just the warm-up for a run of all-time classics in the 1960s.

‘Tower of Strength’ – #1 in 1961 for Frankie Vaughan

I’d put ‘Tower of Strength’ in my Top 5 songs I’ve discovered since starting this blog. It’s a real barnstormer, in which Frankie Vaughan spends two minutes just letting rip. He’s the star here, but he needed good source material. In the US it was hit for Gene McDaniels, in a much more laidback version.

‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’ – #1 in 1964 for Cilla Black

Cilla’s version of Dionne Warwick’s original gave her the biggest female hit of the entire decade in the UK. I’m not one to indulge in idle gossip, but… Apparently Warwick hated the fact that Cilla Black got the bigger hit out of this song, claiming that had she so much as coughed on the original then Cilla would have done the same on her cover version. Bacharach was a big fan, however, personally arguing for Cilla to record it ahead of Shirley Bassey.

‘(There’s) Always Something There to Remind Me‘ – #1 in 1964 for Sandie Shaw

Another song originally recorded by Dionne Warwick – Bacharach and David’s muse throughout their long careers – though her version wasn’t released until 1968. Instead it was a bare-footed seventeen-year-old who took it to #1 in late-1964, launching the career of one of the biggest British singers of the decade. It wasn’t a hit in the US until Naked Eyes’ new-wave version in 1983.

‘Make It Easy on Yourself’ – #1 in 1965 for The Walker Brothers

The classiest #1 single ever? Never has Bacharach and David’s effortlessly slick songwriting had a cooler delivery. This was another one first recorded by Dionne Warwick, before being shelved. Along came The Walker Brothers a few years later, to give the songwriting duo their 6th UK chart-topper.

‘I’ll Never Fall in Love Again’ – #1 in 1969 for Bobbie Gentry

The last #1 hit for Bacharach and David (in the UK, at least) was also one of the 1960’s final chart-toppers. After the first two, fluffier songs on this list, the duo settled into a run of songs detailing exquisite heartbreak. Towers of strength, things being there to remind you, people not having hearts… And then this, a classic anti-love song dressed up in trademark B&D gloss. Plus, one of the best ryhming couplets in pop music history…

Burt Bacharach, May 28th 1928 – February 8th 2023

Roy Orbison: Best of the Rest

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December 6th marks the 34th anniversary of Roy Orbison’s death, at the tragically young age of fifty-two. The ‘Big O’ stood apart from other early rock ‘n’ rollers, with his sombre stage persona, his vulnerable, melancholy songs, and his semi-operatic voice.

After his hit-making days ended in the mid-to-late sixties, a decade in the wilderness beckoned. Personal tragedies also unfolded – the deaths of his wife and his two eldest sons in a car crash and house fire respectively. The eighties saw a rediscovery of his work, with hit covers of his songs by Don McClean and Van Halen, and the formation of The Traveling Wilburys supergroup in 1988, alongside Bob Dylan, Jeff Lynne, George Harrison and Tom Petty. On the cusp of a triumphant comeback, Orbison died from a heart attack on December 6th 1988.

I’ve already written about his three chart-toppers (‘Only the Lonely’, ‘It’s Over’ and ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’) – classics the lot of them – and so to mark this day I’ll cover his five next-biggest UK hits…

‘In Dreams’ – #6 in 1963

A candy-coloured clown they call the Sandman, Tiptoes to my room every night… Only Roy Orbison could give a lyric so ridiculous-and-yet-terrifying the weight that it deserves. He dreams of his ex-lover then wakes, bathed in sweat, and alone. (Of course he’s alone – it’s a Roy Orbison song.) It’s got the same build-up as one of The Big ‘O’s very best songs, ‘Running Scared’, which barely scraped into the Top 10. ‘In Dreams’ is not quite as good, but builds to a fine crescendo. Roy, as was his way, hits a note that most humans are incapable of imagining, let along singing. ‘In Dreams’ was used to famous effect in David Lynch’s ‘Blue Velvet’, a move that initially shocked Orbison but one that he came to accept after seeing the film several times (and perhaps, if we’re being cynical, seeing the publicity it brought his music…)

‘Too Soon to Know’ – #3 in 1966

A country cover that, I must admit, I’d never heard before. And yet it’s one of his biggest UK hits. It must have sounded quite unfashionable in the swinging charts of 1966 and yet… When was Roy Orbison ever truly in fashion? Or out of fashion, for that matter? He ploughed his own, spectacular furrow. It’s sweet, but lacking the oomph of Roy’s biggest and best hits.

‘Blue Bayou’ – #3 in 1963

Another bit of country-pop, with a cool bassline. And with Orbison’s angelic tones in the chorus, this is no normal country tune. No matter what genre he turned his hand to – country, pop, rock ‘n’ roll – he couldn’t help doing it a bit different. As a kid, I had no idea what a bayou was, but always thought it sounded nice: where you sleep all day, and the catfish play… I’m still not one-hundred percent certain what a bayou is, but I’d definitely like to hang out there…

‘You Got It’ – #3 in 1989

The comeback hit that never was. Well, it was a hit – one of his biggest – but Roy wasn’t around to enjoy his return to the top end of the charts. And ‘You Got It’ is almost the perfect comeback – a slight updating of Orbison’s sound, with some help from Jeff Lynne, but still a record that could easily slip in amongst his classics from the early sixties. The video above was filmed just a few weeks before his untimely death. It feels churlish to wonder if it would have been such a big hit had he not died… Maybe it would, as it’s a great song.

‘Dream Baby (How Long Must I Dream)’ – #2 in 1962

Interesting that this rockabilly ditty is Roy Orbison’s biggest non-#1. It’s nice enough: a repetitive refrain that turns into a sort of mantra as the song progresses, and it builds to a crescendo as all the best Orbison songs do. But it’s not an all time classic. Not a ‘Crying’, a ‘Running Scared’ or a ‘Blue Angel’ (my personal favourite). The video above is worth a look if not for the song then for the spectacularly uninterested audience. What did he say just before launching into the song…?

Roy Orbison, then. One of the most original chart stars going, with one of the very best voices.

Roy Orbison, April 26th 1936 – December 6th 1988

Remembering Jerry Lee Lewis

/ UK #1s blog / 17 Comments

Last time I did a ‘Remembering’ post, it was on the universally loved and cherished Olivia Newton-John, about whom nobody had a bad word to say. Jerry Lee Lewis, though…

We’ve met some wrong ‘uns in our journey through the chart-toppers of yore. Bad types with equally bad music (Rolf Harris), bad types with music that I couldn’t help but enjoy (Gary Glitter). Jerry Lee Lewis was possibly that baddest of them all. ‘The Killer’, so named because he had allegedly tried to strangle a teacher at his high school – or so he said – lived a life that would make your average, run-of-the-mill criminal blush. Drug arrests, assault arrests, two wives dead in suspicious circumstances and – the one that effectively ended his mainstream chart career before it had truly started – a marriage to his thirteen year-old cousin.

He was, in his own words, an unrepentant hillbilly. Unpleasant and aggressive towards his fans, his family, journalists, and other musicians. (When he met John Lennon, he did so after berating the Beatles and their peers as ‘shit’ from the stage. Lennon, legend has it, still kneeled down to kiss Lewis’s feet.) Why then, does he seem to have gotten away with it? Any current artist who did a quarter of the things Jerry Lee allegedly did would have been cancelled into the dust. Is it because it was all so long ago? Is it because people were more able to seperate art from artist? Or is it because he was just so good?

For, no matter how terrible a person he was, he is rock and roll royalty. One of the five deities: Chuck, Elvis, Buddy, Little Richard, and Jerry Lee. Elvis used his voice (and his body), Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry their guitars. Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard had their pianos, which put them at an immediate disadvantage, as pianos are not hugely conducive to rocking and rolling. Pianos are for classical music, for Beethoven and Mozart, for respectable ladies’ front rooms. You have to sit down to play them, and sitting down is the antithesis of rock ‘n’ roll.

So you have to do what Jerry Lee, and Little Richard did. Pound the keys, assault the keys, stamp on them, jump on them… Set the goddamn piano on fire if you have to. (Which Lewis allegedly did when angry at being lower down a bill than Chuck Berry. ‘Follow that, boy’, he said as he left the stage.) Which leads to Jerry Lee’s one and only British chart-topper: ‘Great Balls of Fire’.

Quite often, as with many genres, by the time rock ‘n’ roll made it to the top of the charts it had been diluted. Elvis’s first #1 was the smooth ‘All Shook Up’. Buddy Holly had one chart-topping rocker: ‘That’ll Be the Day’. Berry had to wait until the nonsense that is ‘My Ding-A-Ling’. Little Richard never had one. Which means that ‘Great Balls of Fire’ is probably the purest rock ‘n’ roll chart-topper. It’s unadulteratedly dangerous, and sexy. It has a title that is at once biblical, yet also sexual. Watch the live performance below, probably quite restrained by his standards, and listen to the shrieks form the audience every time he pauses, when he stands, and when he leers at them. The sweat on his brow, the glint in his eye. Anybody capable of that sort of performance was going to have a few skeletons in the closet. He was complicated, unpleasant, the ‘killer’, but he was rock and roll.

Jerry Lee Lewis

September 29th 1935 – October 28th 2022

Remembering Olivia Newton-John

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The sad news came through yesterday that Olivia Newton-John has died, aged just seventy-three. She featured three times on this blog with her three chart-topping singles (three singles that accumulated an impressive 18 weeks at #1!)

As well as these chart-toppers, she scored thirteen Top 20 hits between 1971 and 1982. If you count school disco classic ‘The Grease Megamix’ and a remix of ‘You’re the One That I Want’ (and I definitely do) you can extend that to 15 Top 20 hits over twenty-five years…

For me, personally, as someone who watched my VHS copy of ‘Grease’ at least once a month between 1997 and 1999, one single moment from her career stands out. Red heels. Black lycra. Black leather. Cigarette in hand. ‘SANdy?’… ‘Tell Me About It… Stud.’

From a moral standpoint, Sandy’s transformation at the ending of Grease is dubious at best. But in terms of iconic movie moments few can beat it. (My twelve-year-old heart certainly ‘beat’ it, even if I’d spent the previous two hours of the film wishing I were Rizzo.) ‘Grease’ gave Newton-John her biggest chart success – you can read my posts on ‘You’re the One That I Want’ and ‘Summer Nights’ here – along with her ELO collaboration ‘Xanadu’. ‘Grease’ also gave her a #2 smash with the classic weepy ‘Hopelessy Devoted to You’.

She had plenty of success away from Rydell High, though. Her first Top 10 came with a Bob Dylan cover: ‘If Not for You’ making #7 in 1971. She ploughed a country furrow for a few years – some might say her cover of ‘Country Roads’ is the better-known version – before representing the UK at Eurovision in 1974 with ‘Long Live Love’. She later admitted that she hated both the song, and the ghastly dress she was forced to wear. ‘Rolling Stone’ at the time descibed her as a seventies version of Doris Day.

A few years in the British chart wilderness – while remaining extremely popular in the US and in her adopted homeland Australia – ended with ‘Sam’, a #6 in 1977. Then came ‘Grease’ and all that that entailed. Her biggest non-soundtrack hit in the UK was ‘A Little More Love’ – very disco, very ABBA -which made #4 in early 1979.

Then came ‘Xanadu’ – by all accounts a thoroughly ludicrous film redeemed by its Jeff Lynne helmed soundtrack. The title track gave ONJ her third and final #1, as well as a worldwide hit in ‘Magic’.

The third and final video I’m going to embed is not the all-conquering ‘Physical’ (a ten-week #1 in the US which only got as high as #7 in the UK). We’ve all heard that plenty, I’d imagine. No, it’s the 3rd single from the ‘Xanadu’ soundtrack, and a duet with her buddy Cliff Richard – who had helped promote her to UK audiences in the early seventies as a regular guest on his TV show. Here’s ‘Suddenly’, which made #15 in 1980.

She contined to record and perform well into the 21st Century, despite a cancer diagnosis in 1992. Away from music she was a passionate animal-rights campaigner, as well as funding a cancer research centre in Melbourne.

Dame Olivia Newton-John, 26th September 1948 – 8th August 2022

Remembering Lonnie Donegan

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Today we remember Britain’s very first rock star. Cliff? Tommy Steele? Marty Wilde? They were but cabaret entertainers giving rock ‘n’ roll a go. Lonnie Donegan? He rocked, well and truly.

I remember listening to his first number one single, and thinking woah. ‘Cumberland Gap’ came in in the spring of 1957, between Tab Hunter’s schmaltzy ‘Young Love’ and Guy Mitchell’s goofy ‘Rock-A-Billy’. It was a short, sharp slap round the face and you can read my original post here. (The live version below is even more ferocious). It’s a traditional American folk song, given the British skiffle treatment, and to my ears it is punk come twenty years early. It was also the first of many times that a Scot has topped the UK charts.

‘Cumberland Gap’ wasn’t Donegan’s breakthrough hit: he’d been scoring Top 10s since 1955, and would amass sixteen of them before his chart career was cut short by the Merseybeat explosion. (Ironically, many of those bands had been hugely influenced by Lonnie and his Skiffle Group. The Beatles began when Paul McCartney joined John Lennon’s skiffle band a few months after ‘Cumberland Gap’ had been at #1.) Here is his first hit: ‘Rock Island Line’, a #8 in the UK and, significantly, a Top 10 in America too.

Born in Glasgow, but raised in the east-end of London, Lonnie Donegan had a background in trad-jazz before moving into the new skiffle movement. His subsequent hits included his 2nd number one, a double-‘A’ side of ‘Gamblin’ Man’ and ‘Putting on the Style’, and the brilliantly named ‘Does Your Chewing Gum Lose Its Flavour (On the Bedpost Overnight)?’. That hit veered towards the music hall, and it was the same style of hit that gave Donegan his third and final chart-topper, ‘My Old Man’s a Dustman’. I don’t think I was as impressed by that record in my original review, as humour is a hard thing to get right in a record, and it doesn’t necessarily age well.

It’s tempting to blame Donegan’s shrinking chart fortunes on the song he released for the 1966 World Cup: ‘World Cup Willie’. (Willie was a lion, and the official mascot for the tournament.) It didn’t chart, but it perhaps spurred England on to their win. (Yes, England won the World Cup in 1966. They still mention it from time to time…) I had never heard it, and was ready to hate it, but it’s actually a bit of a trad-jazz foot-stomper. You can see, though, why skiffle hard-liners felt betrayed by Donegan’s move away from the genre in the sixties.

Despite the hits drying up, Donegan and his band continued to tour throughout the seventies and eighties. This was despite him suffering several heart attacks, one of which killed him on this day in 2002. The Beatles aside, his legacy also lives on through artists like Roger Daltrey, Mark Knopfler and Jack White.

Lonnie Donegan, 29th April 1931 – 3rd November 2002

Remembering The Everly Brothers

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I wasn’t going to mark the sad death of Don Everly on Saturday… because I was under the mistaken impression that his brother Phil was still with us. When I realised that Phil had died in 2014 it became clear that they needed a ‘Remembering’.

When you can count The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, The Beach Boys and Simon & Garfunkel among the many acts you’ve influenced, then you must have had something special going on. (Keith Richards called Don one of the finest ever rhythm guitarists, while John Lennon and Paul McCartney used to pull girls as teenagers by claiming that they were the ‘British Everly Brothers’.) Their country-ish harmonies were a huge part of the rock ‘n’ roll years – go on, listen to them combine on ‘Cathy’s Clown’ below! Being brothers was a blessing – those harmonies – and a curse – they spend decades not recording, or touring, or even talking to one another…

The duo scored four UK number ones between 1958-’61, and I won’t repeat myself by talking about them again. You can read the original posts here:

‘All I Have to Do Is Dream’

‘Cathy’s Clown’

‘Walk Right Back’ / ‘Ebony Eyes’

‘Temptation’

Here are some great, non-chart toppers from the brothers… (Because I’m hastily throwing this together, I won’t follow my usual rules of the songs having to have charted in the UK. Let’s be crazy for an evening!)

‘Bye Bye Love’, 1957

Chosen for self-indulgent reasons… This was one of the very first – and very few – songs I mastered on the keyboard as a child. A simple tune (that’s probably why it was book one, song one of ‘Keyboards for Dummies’) beautifully rendered.

‘Bird Dog’, 1958

The tale of Johnny: who is the funniest, cheekiest, coolest dude in school – making him a bird – but who is also hitting on the singer’s girl – thus a dog. I picked this over the pair’s other, more-famous tale of high school woe, ‘Wake Up Little Susie’ (which is also great) because this one rocks just that bit more.

‘When Will I Be Loved’, 1960

Some good ol’ fashioned rockabilly. I love the heavy, deliberate guitars, and the insistent, almost tribal drums. They re-recorded it when they moved labels, to RCA, but the original was the one released. The newer version is bluesier – here’s a link.

‘Don’t Blame Me’, 1961

The Everlys loved a ballad… ‘Love Hurts’, ‘Let It Be Me’, ‘Crying in the Rain’… But I picked this cover of a ’30s standard for some of their greatest harmonies, the guitar work (not actually from Don or Phil, but Hank Garland), and the bridge where Don really lets loose…

‘I’m Not Angry’, 1962

Not a hit, I don’t think, coming at the end of their glory days. But how filthy and scratchy is the guitar here, in this tale of pettiness? The boys hope that the girl who just dumped them doesn’t get letters, or phone-calls, that her dress rips and her car won’t start, but they’re not angry… just sad. Whatever…

Remembering Rosemary Clooney

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Another short trip back to the earliest days of the charts, when big-lunged men such as Al Martino, David Whitfield and Frankie Laine were dominating the #1 position with earnest declarations of love and faith. Elvis hadn’t arrived yet, Sinatra wasn’t the teen heart-throb of a decade before… The charts needed some sexiness, some fun…

Thank God for the girls, then. Girls like Rosemary Clooney. I’ve already posted on Kay Starr and Winifred Atwell, two contemporaries of Clooney, who brought a jazzy playfulness to their chart-topping records. But Miss Clooney, who scored Britain’s 25th and 28th #1 singles, went a step further, and brought mad-cap craziness to the pop charts.

First up came ‘This Ole House’, in November ’54. A raucous, honky tonk piano-led tale of a rundown house whose elderly inhabitant is waiting to meet the saints… There can have been very few hit songs to reference oiling hinges and fixing shingle… Here she is performing it live, and with slightly more restraint, in the ’80s.

Then just weeks later, she was back with an even better hit. Clooney was of Irish/German extraction, but that didn’t stop her hamming up an invented Italian side. The lyrics are basically nonsense, with nods to Italian, Spanish, Mexican and Neapolitan. (Sample lyric: Hey mambo, no more a-Mozzarella…) Again the energy and playfulness really stood out next to its dully earnest contemporaries. (See also her earlier hit ‘Botch a Me’ if you like the cod-Italian vibes.) ‘Mambo Italiano’ lives on in a way that few pre-rock hits do. It was remixed back into the charts in the early ’00s, and sampled more recently by Lady Gaga and Iggy Azalea.

Rosemary Clooney’s career trajectory was pretty standard for a post-war pop star. From singing with big bands, to a record label, to big hits and on to TV and films – her most famous one probably being ‘White Christmas’ alongside Bing Crosby. What wasn’t so standard was Clooney’s sleeping pill and tranquilliser dependency that developed through the sixties, that ended with her in psychoanalytic therapy for eight years.

She survived, though, came back and continued to record throughout the remainder of her life. Her final performance came just six months before she died of lung cancer in 2002. One of the pall bearers at her funeral was her nephew, George.

Rosemary Clooney, May 23rd 1928 – June 29th 2002

Remembering Winifred Atwell

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In my ‘Remembering’ bits, I like to draw people’s attention back to artists from the dawn of the charts, from posts published long before anyone was actually reading this blog. Back we go, then, to 1954…

Winifred Atwell is a significant figure in the British charts as, when she scored her first #1 in late ’54 (a Christmas #1 before that was something worth noticing), she became the first black artist to do so. ‘Let’s Have Another Party’ – a medley of old music hall tunes – stayed at the top for five weeks. It is very of its time, but still a fun listen. You can read my original post here.

Some of the melodies in that record date from the the 1920s, so we are really looking a century back in time from our modern-day vantage point. Anyway, Winifred Atwell had arrived in the UK in 1946, from Trinidad via the USA, and had been accepted into the Royal Academy for Music, where she achieved the highest grades possible. She supported herself by playing boogie-woogie tunes in clubs around London, where she was spotted and signed.

Between 1952 and ’59, she scored fourteen Top 20 hits in the UK, many with wonderful titles such as ‘Flirtation Waltz’ and ‘Let’s Have a Ding-Dong!’ (You could say she was a suggestive performer, in that she released no less than five singles beginning with the word ‘Let’s…’) She did the Royal Variety, where she was invited to play privately for the Queen, who requested ‘Roll Out the Barrel’. (Ma’am does love a good knees-up!) On stage she would often start off by playing classical pieces on a grand piano, before switching to a battered old piano bought in a market for fifty shillings – her ‘other’ piano, which was credited on her records and which travelled the world with her – to bash out some ragtime tunes.

Her 2nd number one, ‘The Poor People of Paris’ is interesting – not because it sounds much different from her first – but because it featured as sound engineer a young Joe Meek, who would go on to produce three seminal sixties #1s (and who I did a post on a year or so back.) In the background, hovering above Winny’s piano, is a high-pitched whine which I thought, and pondered in my original post, might have been a Theramin, but which I have since read was probably a musical saw. Either way, you can hear the embryonic beginnings of ‘Telstar’ here, in the video below:

And this live performance, from a couple of years later, has Atwell banging away on her famous ‘other’ piano (I love her winks at the camera…)

By 1958, when this was filmed, her hit-scoring days were almost over – killed stone-dead, as so many artists’ careers were, by rock ‘n’ roll and then the swinging sixties. Still, Atwell remained a popular figure on TV variety shows and in concert. She moved to Australia, where she was a huge star, and where she lived until her death on this day in 1983. Her final performances, quite sweetly, were on the organ in her parish church.

Despite her music now sounding incredibly quaint, and her dressing like your aunt at a wedding, Winifred Atwell’s legacy lives on. Keith Emerson spoke of her influence on his music, while David Bowie also reminisced about hearing her rags on the radio as a boy. But the biggest example has to be Sir Elton John, who cites Atwell as one of the main reasons behind him wanting to learn piano.

Winifred Atwell, 27th February 1914 – 28th February 1983

Remembering Alma Cogan

/ UK #1s blog / 6 Comments

I’ve covered 342 #1 singles since starting this blog. Some have been classics, some have been terrible, some have been by the most famous acts in pop music history, some have been by acts unknown to me until that moment… One of the singers I have been happiest to discover on my journey, is the singer of the 35th UK #1 single, Alma Cogan.

Born in East London in 1932, she went from singer-in-residence at a hotel, to the biggest British female star of the fifties. ‘The Girl with the Giggle in Her Voice’ – a nickname she earned after bursting into laughter during an early recording session – with huge frocks and a healthy pair of lungs – to listen to her early hits is to lose yourself in unpretentious pop perfection. Of which ‘Dreamboat’, her one and only chart-topper, is perhaps the perfect example.

(You can read my original post on it here.) Voted Outstanding British Female Singer by NME readers four times between 1956-1960, she scored hits throughout the decade by covering standards such as ‘Mambo Italiano’ and ‘Why Do Fools Fall in Love?’, ‘Little Things Mean a Lot’ and ‘Hernando’s Hideaway’. Being a popular singer in the fifties and early sixties meant that she also recorded her fair share of novelties – ‘Never Do a Tango with an Eskimo‘ – and showtunes. But she sings them with such a twinkle in her eyes that you forgive even her cheesiest moments. Here she is, belting out ‘As Long as He Needs Me’ from ‘Oliver!’ (Apparently the part of Nancy was written with Cogan in mind, and she does have a fantastic cockney rasp in her voice, compared to other more stage-school actresses who have played the role.)

The swinging sixties killed off her chart-topping days, as they did to many stars of the fifties. But there is a fascinating coda to Alma Cogan’s career – her friendship with The Beatles…

Cogan’s star was waning and the Fab Four’s was on the rise, but they would still meet at the same TV recordings. She was the first person that Paul played ‘Yesterday’ to, and she allegedly had an affair with John. She also tried to relaunch herself back into the charts by covering some of the bands hits – her ‘Eight Days a Week’ is a particular moment of overblown brilliance.

For whatever reason, she couldn’t seem to reignite her singles career – in the UK at least – and died tragically young from cancer in 1966. She was just thirty-four. Which terrifies me, as I am thirty-four and I have neither enjoyed a decade-long singing career nor had an affair with a Beatle… Just what have I done with my life?

Here’s one of Alma Cogan’s later TV performances – a cover of ‘The Tennessee Waltz’ – as introduced by her (supposed) lover John Lennon. They do flirt quite heavily in this clip, I must say…

And if that doesn’t leave with a smile on your face, then I don’t know what medication to recommend…

Alma Cogan, 19th May 1932 – 26th October 1966