When will you say yes to me?

Continuing my trip back through the 1968 album charts.

20/10/68 : A Man Without Love - Engelbert Humperdinck

If I thought Tom sounded dated, what am I going to make of this?!?  Looking at the track listing, I think it might be all covers but I'm not certain - and I'm also not in any position to reject albums for such reasons in this year, so here goes...

Oh yes, this feels super dated.  He does have a nice voice (although it doesn't go quite as high as he tries to make it go in places) but it all sounds very 50s to me (but I suspect this stuff was actually more common in the 60s than I'm aware).  I mean it's fine if you like that sort of thing (and a lot of people did) - there are some great songs on there, but it all just sounds like a man down the pub belting them out to me (albeit a fancy boozer with an orchestra).  It was surprisingly familiar in one place, but I have to confess to using the marvellous whosampled.com to work out that Kinobe's chill-out masterpiece "Let's Slip Into Something More Comfortable" from 2000 (it's a cool track) sampled Engelbert's "From Here To Eternity" - nobody expected that!  I also have to comment on that album cover - it's really quite something!

We're at #7 in the charts this week on his thirteenth week of a 28 week run, having peaked at #3 - astounding!  The top five this week were The Hollies, The Seekers, Simon & Garfunkel, TSOM and Tom Jones and the highest new entry was Traffic (#27) - I knew I knew something about them, but had completely forgotten they were formed by Steve Winwood (amongst others).

Wikipedia has nothing on the album, so let's have a little taster on the man to fill up the space.  Arnold Dorsey was born in 1936 in India to a Welsh father and a German mother and he certainly put the hard yards in during the early 60s before finding international success with his recording of "Release Me" (written in 1949), which got to #1 for six weeks, famously keeping "Penny Lane"/"Strawberry Fields Forever" off the top.  And he's still out there touring - the title track of this album was used in Marvel's Moon Knight last year, which apparently introduced him to a whole new generation, who I imagine are somewhat perplexed by what they have been served up.

"Customers also listened to" Frankie Valli, Nancy Sinatra, The Righteous Brothers and The Flamingos - maybe not the most modern selection of musicians.  And Engelbert is certainly not exactly a modern dude, but he deserves some credit for hanging in there for all these years - and on this album he's got a decent enough voice when he picks the right songs.  But there's absolutely no danger of me searching this out again.

13/10/68 - A far too short album
27/10/68 - Very much of its time

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