Wise men say only fools rush in

Starting my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

31/12/61 : Blue Hawaii - Elvis Presley

So - looking at the first chart of the year, it's obvious that the "no soundtracks, no covers, no best-ofs" rule is going to have to be ignored this year - otherwise (I think) only three out of the entire chart (which is a top twenty in this era) would be allowed, so we'd run out of albums in no time.  Which means, as will become clear very soon, that we're going to get to listen to some very "interesting" albums this year.  But where better to start than with Elvis doing some dodgy Hawaiian numbers?

And most of them are very dodgy, but it does fortunately have "Can't Help Falling In Love" on it, which is a great track, despite being it a big old slab of cheese (complete with Hawaiian-style slide guitar here).  The rest of the album is forgettable at best and just reminds me of when the BBC used to show Elvis films in the school holidays rather than them putting anything on that any self-respecting kid would actually want to watch (I have a sneaking suspicion that's not going to be the last time I mention that).

We're at #1 in the charts this week on his fifth week of a somewhat astonishing 65 week run - but nowhere near as astonishing as the fact that he was just starting a TWENTY EIGHT week run in the top TWO, including a 17 week run at #1 from Feb-June '62.  What were people thinking?!?  Having said that, when you see the rest of the top five you begin to understand what was going on - there are two albums from The George Mitchell Minstrels (aka The Black And White Minstrels), a Cliff Richard offering and something snappily titled The Roaring Twenties Songs From The TV Series from Dorothy Provine.  I feel this could be a very long year, but there were no new entries so hopefully we'll run out of music before it's over!

Wikipedia tells us this is his fourth soundtrack album - the plan was for him to do one soundtrack and one standard album a year, but G.I. Blues and this sold by the bucketload, so Colonel Tom Parker pushed Elvis into mainly soundtracks from this point onwards, which was commercially successful but not exactly musically adventurous.  That's about it for any items of interest except for the fact that the 1977 re-release managed to mistakenly swap the stereo channels, which is impressive in that it manages to be a huge error whilst also really no really mattering in the slightest.

"Customers also listened to" other Elvis or Elvis related albums - the fans aren't straying far from the path.  I thought this was bearable, but only just - it was massively popular, but viewed through the lens of time that's somewhat perplexing (but I'm sure bigger mysteries will follow this year).

24/12/61 - Really something else
2005 - Another year finished!