Don't stay at home and decompose
Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.
11/06/61 : I'll Buy You A Star - Johnny Mathis
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Well it's been some time coming, but it finally happened - I had to miss a week out because I'd either heard, ignored or couldn't find all the albums in the chart. Somewhat disappointingly, there was one valid album in that week which was Adam Faith's debut which I'm sure was very much of its time but it's nowhere to be found on the internet. So we find ourselves a week later on our third visit with Mr Mathis - I'm not sure I was aware he was active this early so I'm interested to listen to it.
It's very much in the vein of Frank's croony albums - lots of strings in the background over which his lovely voice just glides. And it's all very well done - I'd go as far as saying it's better than Frank's efforts with his voice being equally listenable with considerably better control. It also does well in that it doesn't rely on well-known classics - I only recognised "Smile" (the third time we've met this after Michael Bublé and, quite obviously, Boyzone) and "The Best Is Yet To Come". This isn't going to be something I chuck on every day (or even, let's be honest, ever again) but it's a very well done example of "that sort of thing" and he really did have a lovely voice.
We're at #18 in the charts this week with a new entry on the only week it ever appeared - which is a shame. The top five this week were Elvis, South Pacific, Cliff, more Elvis and George and we have one more new entry in the chart for Chet Atkins (#19). We also have a second appearance this year for Peggy Lee, the only named woman we've seen so far in the entire chart and she's once again at #20 which is as high as she's got so far - but she does make it to the dizzy heights of #17 earlier in the year, so hopefully we'll actually get to listen to her!
Wikipedia tells us this is his twelfth album (of 73!) and the arrangements were by Nelson Riddle, who we've heard doing a good job on a couple of Sinatra albums this year already - and I only noticed his name on the album cover just as I was about to post this! "The Best Is Yet To Come" on this album was later done by Frank and is apparently the last song Mr Sinatra ever sung in public. The critics were very nice about it - apparently his early albums generally played around with multiple genres and they liked that there was a bit more consistency on this one.
"Customers also listened to" many, many Johnny Mathis albums. And, do you know what - who can blame them? The man is very listenable indeed and there are some very fine tracks on this album.
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