She's your tootsie-wootsie in the good old summertime

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

24/12/61 : Another Black And White Minstrel Show - George Mitchell Minstrels

Well - where to start with this?!?  I guess we can accept that times were different in 1961 (although that argument doesn't sit quite so well when you read that the TV show continued until 1978) but this definitely falls in the "what were they thinking?" category.  I'm expecting some decent enough songs on it though, although the singing and sound quality might not be exactly top notch.

Well, I can see that if gathering round the old joanna in the evening and having a good old sing-song was the best that life served you up, then this album has some cultural relevance.  It also has some decent enough songs on it but the medley set-up means that it jumps all over the place and hence isn't an obvious album to sing along to.  Let's just go for "of its time" and blithely ignore the (completely inessential) racial aspects - there's nothing useful I can add to that particular discussion.  I was however somewhat surprised to hear women involved - how very progressive of them!

For something slightly alternative, I'm going to include another album this week which is the vastly different The Black And White Minstrel Show because otherwise I'd just be writing exactly the same post - TOMORROW!  The songs are at least different and there are slightly more I recognise than on the follow-up (which is to be expected, I guess), but for all intents and purposes things are exactly the same.  I would also say I'm quite surprised these are available on Amazon Music because, even if you like this kind of music, there must be considerably better examples of it - I do have to wonder how many other people have listened to either of these albums this year.

This week were at both #1 and #2 in the charts with the follow-up album on its eleventh week of a 47 week run, completing a run of eight weeks at the top - and if you think that's mad, just wait until you hear how the first one did!  It was on its 58th week of a 125 week run, having spent nine weeks at #1 and it managed an 80 week run in the top six - boy, they really loved this sort of thing back then.  The rest of the top five were Dorothy Provine, Elvis Presley and South Pacific and once again there were no new entries in the chart.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the albums but they are mentioned in passing in the entry for the TV show, which is actually an interesting read and features several "what were they thinking?" moments. My favourite is that in 1969, in order to address some of the complaints (which were starting to get more vocal at this point), the BBC made a spin-off series which not only featured black artists but also didn't feature blackface make-up for the white artists - they did, however, make the black artists wear whiteface.  The first black performer to appear on the main show was Lenny Henry in 1975 at the age of 17 - something he's since stated that he wishes someone had stopped him doing.

"Customers also listened to" Cliff Adams, Dorothy Squires, Vince Hill (all of whom I know nothing about) and Don Estelle (quite obviously, the It Ain't Half Hot Mum actor).  I struggle to imagine any of them are particularly like the George Mitchell Minstrels though - they are really something else.  Considering only the musical elements, they're tolerable but, whilst it's certainly not my area of expertise, I don't see that they did what they did particularly well - maybe I'll be proved wrong throughout the rest of the year

17/12/61 - A phenomenally successful album
31/12/61 - Not his finest effort to start the year