Doopy-doop, wah-wah

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

25/06/61 : Memories Are Made Of This - Ray Conniff 

I've gone from never having heard of Ray Conniff to knowing exactly what I'm going to get - an album of bizarre instrumentals which are somehow inexplicably elevated from the bland.

Yup - it's a rum collection indeed which I struggle to describe but found surprisingly enjoyable.  I think it's because Ray uses quite an extensive selection of instruments and vocal effects so there's quite a lot of variety.  It's also of note because it offers us up our fourth version of "Unchained Melody" (and our second this year).  However, having said that it was surprisingly enjoyable, a whole album is a bit too much and I've also got absolutely no idea why anyone would actually buy it.  It's quite the album cover though, isn't it?

We're at #14 in the charts this week on his second week of a two week run - it's no Hi-Fi Companion in its chart presence certainly.  The top five this week were South Pacific, Elvis, George (the start of a nineteen week run of them occupying the top three), Barber/Bilk (the first week of NINE weeks at #4 - they must have hated the other three!) and Cliff and there were no new entries in the chart.

Wikipedia doesn't have an awful lot on the album but it does tell me that the album features "a chorus performing wordless vocalizing" - wordless vocalizing is actually a good phrase for (at least some bits of) Ray's albums. The only other fact of interest is that this did way better in the US than you'd imagine - 27 weeks in the charts peaking at #4.  Which tells us something about something I guess.

"Customers also listened to" a load of albums that feature Ray in some fashion - which isn't surprising because there's really very little out there like Ray, but I didn't mind this at all in small doses.

11/07/61 - A surprisingly fine album
02/07/61 - The year just gets weirder