Ooh, a girl like you, who's such a cutie

Continuing my trip back through the 1961 album charts.

19/02/61 : Adam - Adam Faith

I was supposed to listen to a different Adam Faith album this week, but it's really tricky to find anything of his seven studio albums amongst all his best-ofs (Amazon must have about thirty of them) and whilst scrolling through a very long list, I came across this one which I'd failed to find earlier in the year and since it's still hanging around the chart, it get's a belated listen. Let's hope it's worth the effort, eh?

Hmmm - not really. The songs are mostly OK and his voice is nice enough when he hits the note, but he's surprisingly off it on a regular basis which just annoys me. I also have to say that "Greenfinger" is a particularly bizarre song about a man who buys his sweetheart a cheap ring - which turns her finger green. All in all, I was just left with a slightly bemused feeling - and maybe an increased appreciation of Cliff. What is the world coming to?

We're at #9 in the charts this week on his fifteenth week of an incredible 33 week run with it peaking at #5 - THIRTY THREE WEEKS?!? The top five this week were Elvis, George, South Pacific, Cliff and Frank and we have one new entry this week for Shirley Bassey (#19).

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for any of the albums he made but I can tell you this was his debut album and far and away the most successful of them all. His entry makes for interesting reading - he had an interesting career but he sounds like he was a dodgy geezer, managing to be declared bankrupt with debts of £32 million. He died of a heart attack after an evening with his 23 year old mistress (he was 62) and amusingly his last words were "Channel 5 is all shit, isn't it? Christ, the crap they put on there. It's a waste of space".

"Customers also listened to" his best-ofs and Marty Wilde - another artist I have yet to have had the pleasure of and I suspect I'll be massively underwhelmed with. But I REALLY struggled to understand the appeal here, I'm afraid.

12/02/61 - Fine, but...
19/02/61 - The other him again!

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