shirley bassey

Today’s Top 10 – November 26th, 1963

/ UK #1s blog / 18 Comments

The two earlier ‘Today’s Top 10’s I’ve done were pretty succesful. Thanks to all who had a look, liked and commented. I was wondering what to do with the feature going forward, and I think I’ll use it to take a deeper look at interesting periods in chart history. What can the Top 10 tell us about where pop music was at a particular time and place?

So, we’ve done the death of the ’60s, and we’ve done the Summer of Love. Now we turn to perhaps one of the most exciting times in modern popular music: late-1963. The moment when the sixties finally started to swing. Thanks, mainly, to the Beatles. But not, as this chart will hopefully prove, solely because of them. For those interested in significant world events, this was also the Top 10 on the week that JFK was assassinated.

10. Let It Rock / Memphis, Tennessee, by Chuck Berry – down 4 (7 weeks on chart)

But what’s this…? Two rock ‘n’ roll tunes first released in 1959. How the charts like to mess with us… The reason is tied to the times, though. The Godfathers of rock, Buddy Holly, Jerry Lee Lewis, and Chuck Berry, had inspired the new Beat groups that we’ll be meeting further up this chart. The Beatles early albums were full of Berry songs, while the Stones’ first hit had been a cover of ‘Come On’ earlier in 1963. Pye Records saw an opportunity, and released some of these influential tunes for the first time in the UK. Amazingly, this was Berry’s first ever visit to the UK Top 10. A runaway train might not be the most obvious topic for a rock ‘n’ roll tune, but this wasn’t Berry’s first time singing about a railroad. And the way he makes his guitar sound like a train horn is iconic.

It was paired with the more laidback ‘Memphis, Tennessee’, which had also been a hit in a version by Dave Berry & the Cruisers around the same time. It pulls the same trick as such classics as Gilbert O’ Sullivan’s ‘Clair’, and Brotherhood of Man’s ‘Save Your Kisses for Me’, by tricking the listener into thinking that the singer is singing about a girlfriend, when he is actually singing about a small child. Berry, though, consumate storyteller that he was, manages to do it in a far less creepy manner, making the song more about the messy break-up, and the father’s regret, than about dodgy double entendres.

9. I’ll Keep You Satisfied, by Billy J. Kramer & The Dakotas – up 2 (3 weeks on chart)

This one’s much more 1963. One of the big beat combos that had broken through earlier in the year (with another three to come higher up), and who had been at #1 just a few weeks earlier with the Lennon-McCartney tune ‘Bad to Me’. ‘I’ll Keep You Satisfied’ is another L&M composition and, while it would peak decently at #4, it isn’t quite as good. Still, it’s better than the Dakota’s next hit, the dubious ‘Little Children’. Watching the video above, the music may be (slightly) rocking, but Billy J. is giving good crooner energy. Nothing to worry grandma… yet.

8. I (Who Have Nothing), by Shirley Bassey – up 1 (9 weeks on chart)

A constant presence on the charts of the ’50s and ’60s: a bit of Bassey. This is three minutes of pure melodrama, as Shirley watches an old-flame woo his new girl. ‘I (Who Have Nothing)’ was adapted from an Italian hit, which was something of a theme in the early sixties. It’s a classic of its genre: an intro of swirling strings, quiet bits, and bits where she lets loose, belting out high notes like nobody else can. I always find Shirley Bassey somewhat lacking in subtlety, but then again – if you’ve got it flaunt it. If I could sing like her then I’d be belting out my Starbucks orders.

7. Blue Bayou / Mean Woman Blues, by Roy Orbison – down 3 (10 weeks on chart)

Another double-‘A’ side from an American rocker, who had been around since the ’50s. Unlike the Chuck Berry record, though, this was a new hit. ‘Blue Bayou’ is one of Orbison’s gentler numbers – for the Big ‘O’ could of course give Shirley Bassey a run for her money in the belting stakes – but it’s always been one of my favourites. Even as a young ‘un who had no idea what the hell a ‘bayou’ was. Linda Rondstadt recorded a famous cover in 1977, though that didn’t make the UK Top 10.

On the flipside of this disc was a cover of ‘Mean Woman Blues’, an Elvis track from 1957. Personally, while they are both fine singers, I prefer Elvis’s version. I prefer bombastic, overblown Orbison to rocking Orbison. On this record he tries out the famous Grrrrrr, which he’d use to great effect on his chart-topping ‘Oh, Pretty Woman’ the following year.

6. Secret Love, by Kathy Kirby – up 6 (3 weeks on chart)

We’re keeping an eye out for the bands that came along in 1963 and changed popular music forever. But for every beat combo that made it big, there were plenty of British women who were just as instrumental in making the sixties swing. Kathy Kirby’s name hasn’t lasted alongside the likes of Cilla, Dusty, Lulu or Sandie Shaw, but here she is, enjoying her biggest hit. Her take on ‘Secret Love’ starts off very bombastically, much like Doris Day’s chart-topping original from a decade earlier, but soon a groovy guitars-and-backing-singers beat takes over, nicely updating the song for a new era. Plus, she has a great voice, with a bit of bite to it. Kirby may have retired from showbusiness in the early eighties and died in relative obscurity, but for a while she was a huge name: representing the UK at Eurovision in 1965 (finishing as runner-up) and hosting her own television programme.

5. Don’t Talk to Him, by Cliff Richard & The Shadows – up 2 (3 weeks on chart)

Common knowledge would have it that with the arrival of the Beatles et al the career of Cliff Richard – the hottest star in the land just a year or so earlier – fell off a, well, cliff. But glance at any Top 40 from any random moment post-1962, and it quickly becomes clear that Cliff went nowhere. Okay, he didn’t hit #1 as regularly, but ‘Don’t Talk to Him’ was one of an astounding 33 Top 10 hits he achieved across the sixties. I’d never heard this before, but it’s actually a really good song, combining a latin rhythm with some very current, beat guitars. This could easily have been written and recorded by one of the acts a couple of places up this chart, proving that Cliff gave those young whippersnappers a stronger run for their money than the history books suggest. *Some sources disagree as to whether this was Cliff solo, or Cliff with the Shadows, but I’ve gone with the latter*

4. Be My Baby, by the Ronettes – up 1 (6 weeks on chart)

The first of two all-time great, hall of fame pop songs in this week’s Top 4. The fact that this never made it higher than number four is a shock, and I’ve already done a post on how this really Should Have Been a #1. Even on this chart, in the year that it was recorded, where girl groups like the Ronettes were common, ‘Be My Baby’ stands out as special. It would stand out as special on any chart, in any era, simply because it is better than 99.95% of anything else in the history of pop.

3. Sugar and Spice, by the Searchers – down 1 (5 weeks on chart)

Here we are then, a purely Liverpudlian Top 3. The Searchers had been the 3rd Merseybeat band to make number one that year, after the two acts ahead of them in this chart, with their cover of The Drifters’ ‘Sweets for My Sweet’. Although still on the candy theme, ‘Sugar and Spice’ was an original, written by producer Tony Hatch. The chiming guitars and harmonies, as well the almost skiffle rhythm section, are pleasant, almost proto jangle-pop. But within a year, once the Stones, Kinks and Animals started making the upper reaches of the charts, it would start to sound a bit safe. The Searchers had two much better hits to come: their majestic second #1 ‘Needles and Pins’, and their cover of ‘When You Walk in the Room’. Like so many Beat bands that didn’t, or couldn’t, write their own material, the Searchers’ chart shelf-life was limited.

2. She Loves You, by The Beatles – up 1 (13 weeks on chart)

The song that officially kicked off the swinging sixties? The way that ‘She Loves You’ barrels in, chorus-first, on a wave of tight guitars and precision drumming, and yeah yeah yeahs. In France, this style of Beat music literally became known as ‘Yé-yé’ (and surely everyone knows by now how Mr McCartney Senior thought ‘yes, yes, yes’ would have sounded much more proper…) It is utterly perfect pop, to rank alongside the Ronettes a couple of places below it on this week’s chart. Although they developed their sound so far beyond this, I would still rank ‘She Loves You’ in my personal Beatles Top 3. You can read my original post on it, as a number one, here. On this week in November 1963, it was on its way back to number one, having already spent a month there that autumn, and on its way to becoming the biggest-selling single ever, at that point, in the UK (where it remains the Fab Four’s highest seller). Also, the seven-week gap between its two runs at the top remains a record to this day.

1. You’ll Never Walk Alone, by Gerry & the Pacemakers – non-mover (7 weeks on chart)

The 4th Beat group in the Top 10 on this day sixty-one years ago, Gerry & the Pacemakers had made history by being the first act to make #1 with their first three singles. This was the final week of a month-long run for ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’, and it would also be The Pacemakers final week on top of the charts. (You can read my original post on it here.) The fact that for only their 3rd single the band had turned to a cover of a song from a 1945 musical is telling. While the Beatles were just warming up, their contemporaries were often relying on covers (or on handouts from Lennon & McCartney). Plus there was the fact that for record labels and producers, rock and roll was still a very new thing, one that many were convinced wouldn’t last. It was seen as essential for bands to branch out, and to nurture a wider appeal.

Of course we know now that rock ‘n’ roll was here to stay, even if Gerry & The Pacemakers weren’t. ‘You’ll Never Walk Alone’ was also here to stay, and by the end of its initial chart run it had already been adopted by the crowd at Anfield as Liverpool FC’s unofficial anthem, to be belted out pre-match from here to eternity. The song returned to number one in a charity version by The Crowd, following the Bradford City fire, while it also made top spot for a third time in 2020 in a version featuring Michael Ball and the 100-year-old Captain Tom Moore, a phenomenon that can only be explained by how crazy we all went during lockdown. It is nothing short of a modern-day hymn, given the song’s role in the current British psyche.

I hope you enjoyed this flashback to Today’s Top 10 in 1963. What a snapshot of popular music that was, as Britain finally cast off the shadow of the War and started to get a little groovy. Up next we’ll return to 1999, and to a country just a few months away from the terrifying uncertainty of a new millenium. Would all the computers crash? Would planes start dropping from the sky…? Nobody knew, so confused and distracted were people that they kept buying Ronan Keating records in large quantities. Stress will do that to you…

Cover Versions of #1s – The Sugarhill Gang & Shirley Bassey

/ UK #1s blog / 4 Comments

Our next couple of covers… Aren’t really cover versions at all. More re-imaginings of #1 hits…

‘Apache (Jump On It)’, by The Sugarhill Gang – #53 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1982

(Originally a #1 in August 1960, for The Shadows)

The instrumental ‘Apache’ has passed through as many hands as an old five pound note. Originally recorded by Bert Weedon, it was then released to great acclaim by The Shadows – resulting in their first solo chart-topper. In the US, meanwhile, the version that hit big was by Danish guitarist Jørgen Ingmann in 1961, making #2. Skip forward a few years, the Edgar Broughton Band took the guitars and chopped them up with some Captain Beefheart to create this. And then, the Incredible Bongo Band did this:

Their über-funky version became a touchstone of early hip-hop, sampled by LL Cool J, The Roots, and The Sugarhill Gang, the band that had scored the first big rap hit: ‘Rapper’s Delight’, a #3 in 1979. In the space of twenty two years, then, ‘Apache’ had gone from atmospheric instrumental to raucous hip hop, featuring lines like: Custer, Jump on it, Jump on it… and To all you girls that wanna join my tribe, Just move to my rhythm and feel my vibe…

‘As I Love You, by Shirley Bassey – album track from 1969

(Originally a #1 in February 1959, for Shirley Bassey)

No, not a typo… This one isn’t a straightforward cover version, either. Ms. Bassey is covering herself. Well, if anyone can, it’s her. For her 1969 album, ‘Does Anybody Miss Me’, Dame Shirley re-recorded her first #1 hit from a decade earlier. I actually discovered the remake first, and had started to write my post on it before sensing something was wrong. The 1969 version is light, fun, playful… very ‘swinging sixties’. I thought it sounded ahead of it’s time for 1959. Alas, I was right. It was ten years off. The 1959 version that I had to write my original post on is slower, weightier, and nowhere near as playful. Bassey belts it out as only she can… but it’s very old-fashioned. Give me the later version any day!

A couple more tomorrow!

125. ‘Reach For the Stars’ / ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, by Shirley Bassey

/ UK #1s blog / 11 Comments

Ladies and Gentlemen, it’s time to welcome back on stage a member of British pop royalty. Dame Shirley, of Bassey, claiming her rightful place atop the UK charts…

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Reach for the Stars / Climb Ev’ry Mountain, by Shirley Bassey (her 2nd and final #1)

1 week, from 21st – 28th September 1961

Except, despite being singer of huge repute, a diva with a seven-decade long career in the upper echelons of British popular culture, the singles charts never were Shirley Bassey’s natural stomping ground. This is only her second number one – and it’s her last! She’s had five weeks in total at the top of the listings, and only ever had twelve top ten hits in her whole career… Compare that to the titans of the UK Singles Charts – Elvis, Cliff, The Beatles, Madonna – and that ain’t nothing.

But perhaps it’s not so surprising when, amid the teeny-bopper pop and the rock ‘n’ roll that was shaping the sound of the early sixties, she was releasing discs like this. Perhaps the biggest surprise here is that this record got to #1 at all… The first song, ‘Reach for the Stars’, sounds out of place the second the soaring intro kicks in.

I reach for the stars, When I reach for your love, For so far above me, You always will be… It’s a song about adoring someone, about loving them completely… When you come to my arms, In that moment divine, All the stars in the sky, Are mine… It’s not a song about longing, or about a love unrequited. It’s a song about being utterly besotted with someone. (A song that might terrify you slightly if it were about you…)

The lyrics are all about stars and clouds, and the sky, and Dame Shirley sings it as if making sure that she’ll be heard up there in the firmament. The last chorus and verse are absolutely belted out, while the way she packs around four different notes into that last sky-y-y is spine-tingling, as is the way she drags the final all mine…! out to within an inch of its life. In terms of pure singing technique, this is one of the very best-sung chart-toppers so far.

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You might, then, expect the flip-side of this disc to be a subtler affair – yin and yang, and all that. But nope. That’s not how this Dame plays. On ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, she cranks the operatics up even further… Climb ev’ry mountain, Search high and low, Follow ev’ry bye-way, Ev’ry path you know… (on a song that’s already pretty old-fashioned, that Victorian apostrophe in ‘ev’ry’ is just the icing on the cake)… She’s following rainbows, fording streams, doing all these things in search of her dream. It’s a motivational number, lyrically very simple, about never giving up.

Before writing this, I wasn’t familiar with either of these songs – but I had strong suspicions from the first listen that ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’ was a piece of musical theatre (the David Whitfield-esque backing singers are a dead giveaway). But I was astounded to learn that this song wasn’t just from any old two-bit musical – it’s from the bloody ‘Sound of Music’! How did that pass me by? Admittedly I’ve managed to go through thirty-three years on this earth without ever seeing said movie, but I’ve picked up a lot through pop-culture osmosis – the Von Trapps, nuns and Nazis, ‘The Hills are Alive..’ ‘Doe, a Deer…’, the one about the flowers… ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’, though…? No idea. You learn something new every day.

This song ends with a bang every bit as big as ‘Reach for the Stars’. Perhaps too big a bang. While on the former song Bassey stayed the right side of bombastic; here she over-eggs the pudding. The recording crackles as she launches into the final Till you find your dream…, the equipment clearly unable to cope with Shirley’s lung-power. The woman could sing, and still can. Aged eighty-one, she still regularly appears at Royal Variety performances, at the Queen’s garden parties and on her own TV specials – 2011’s ‘Shirley’ for example (no surname required, clearly). As we leave her here, in September 1961, her most famous songs still lie ahead – ‘Goldfinger’, ‘Diamonds Are Forever’, ‘Big Spender’ and so on – while her biggest hits have come and gone – this and ‘As I Love You’ almost forgotten in 2019.

It’s slightly sad to wave such a premature goodbye to Dame Shirley. But this disc is a real outlier in the charts of ’61 and, as I wrote at the start, perhaps offers an insight as to why she never really set the singles charts alight. These are two superbly sung and gorgeously orchestrated ballads, but they aren’t indicative of the general trends in popular music at this time. They do, however, add the eclectic mix of chart-toppers that we’ve enjoyed in 1961 –long may that continue.

Finally, it would be remiss not to mention that this double ‘A’-side lives on in a much more recent song… S Club 7’s smash-hit from 2000, ‘Reach’, which incorporates the titles of both these songs into its chorus; but whose bubble-gum pop cheesiness couldn’t be further from Dame Shirley’s ear-drum shattering balladry. Anyway, I’m happy I got to link to an S Club song several decades earlier than I thought I would (what an utter guilty pleasure that one is…) Onwards!

 

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

/ UK #1s blog / 7 Comments

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!