You’re a queer one, Julie Jordan

Continuing my trip back through the 1956 album charts.

02/12/56 : Carousel OST - Various Artists

I know that Carousel includes "You'll Never Walk Alone" but that's all I can tell you - I'm expecting it to be pretty old-fashioned with some decent tunes.

Well, it's certainly old-fashioned but it's a bit lacking decent tunes - I recognised "YMWA" but that was it.  The songs seem to be mostly about love, but there's one about a man who smells badly of fish and another one where a guy sings about how much fun he's going to have with his son, which makes you immediately think "it's going to be a daughter, isn't it?" - and it duly is, before we even get to the end of the song.  Having listened to it, I have absolutely no idea what the musical is about - it will be interesting to see what Wikipedia has to say.  It all sounds VERY old-fashioned and the sound quality is dreadful - yes, 1956 was a long time ago but this makes The King And I sound positively hip and happening in comparison.

We're at #4 in the charts this week with a re-entry - it spent one week in the chart on the last run and it spent one week on this run.  And that was it, with this being as high as it ever got.  The rest of the top five were TKAI (but the film soundtrack, not the OST, so it counts as a re-entry - confusing), Lonnie Donegan, Bill Haley and the Oklahoma! OST.

Wikipedia tells me there is a plot, but it seems very convoluted and I'm not sure I really understand it.  It's Rodgers & Hammerstein's second musical (Oklahoma! being their first) and it premiered in 1945, so I guess it is quite a bit older than The King And I - and it's an adaptation of Liliom, a Hungarian play from 1909.  The cast of the film (which is the cast used on this album, although there was an recording of the musical made in 1945 released on 78s) is quite interesting because I know absolutely none of them (a lot of them also appeared in Oklahoma! as well).  I obviously knew that Liverpool FC have adopted "YNWA" (after the Gerry And The Pacemakers version), but I didn't know that Celtic, Borussia Dortmund, FC Twente and a load of other clubs also use it - including (obviously) the Croatian ice hockey side Medveščak Zagreb.

Customers also listened to" original soundtracks for The King And I, Brigadoon, The Sound Of Music and Mack and Mabel - I guess some people really stick with what they know they like!  There wasn't really anything to hate here but there also wasn't anything to relate to either - it all felt very dated and peculiar.

25/11/56 - A really enjoyable album
09/12/56 - Not what I was expecting

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