Who wants uranium to spare?

Continuing my trip back through the 1956 album charts.

16/12/56 : High Society OST - Bing Crosby/Frank Sinatra/Louis Armstrong

Another film I've never seen (I had to check whether it was based on a musical originally, but no) - I know there are songs in it I know, but couldn't tell you what they are off the top of my head.  I'm expecting something with Bing, Frank and Louis to have a pretty high quality level though.

Yeah - some of it sounds a bit dated, but there are decent enough songs on there.  "What Wants To Be A Millionaire", "True Love" and "Well, Did You Evah!" were the ones I knew and they're all decent tracks - the rest of them do somewhat suffer in comparison, but Louis is always good value when he appears (although there's more than a whiff of token comedy negro involved).  Again, I won't be rushing back to it but it was all perfectly bearable.

Off on a tangent, this album reminded me of the very enjoyable Red Hot + Blue album because that features "What Wants To Be A Millionaire" by The Thompson Twins and the Debbie Harry and Iggy Pop having the most fun with "Well, Did You Evah!".  It's a collection of contemporary Cole Porter covers and it's really worth a listen if you're not aware of it - it's got some fine contributions from Neneh Cherry, The Pogues & Kirsty MacColl, David Byrne and U2 amongst many others.

We're at #3 in the chart this week - with a new entry!  Our first of the year - and definitely not the last.  It was starting a 24 week run, with it managing to spend one week at the top (its ninth week after a very slow climb, spending five weeks at #2 before it got there) and the rest of the top five were TKAI OST, Lonnie Donegan, Carousel OST and Bill Haley.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the album, but it's mentioned in passing in the film's entry - it was Frank and Bing's first collaboration, which was allegedly a big part of Frank's decision to join the film.  At the last minute, it was realised that the two of them didn't have a duet in the film (which feels like a proper schoolboy error) so "Well, Did You Evah!" was appropriated from one of Cole Porter's earlier shows for exactly that purpose.

"Customers also listened to" Frank Sinatra (who knew!), Bing Crosby (ditto!), Sammy Davis Jr and Fred Astaire - no major surprises there.  I didn't mind this and part of me wants to watch the film to see how they shoehorned all the songs together in such a way that made any kind of sense - but I'm sure that will never happen.

09/12/56 - Not what I was expecting
23/12/56 - An enjoyable music history lesson

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