What do you do when you're invited out to the joint where guys get knighted?

Continuing my trip back through the 1958 album charts.

29/06/58 : The Duke Wore Jeans OST - Tommy Steele


Another week skipped over (which has absolutely nothing remarkable to discuss) brings us to someone I've not enjoyed our previous visits with and I also struggle to imagine me enjoying a film with that title, so let's just say expectations are not high here.

Hmmm - it's not great, but it's not dreadful. I can see that it appealed to the "youth of the day" - it's all about a Cockney infiltrating the upper classes whilst pointing out the nonsense of it all. He's got a very characterful voice which tells a story well, if not the best singing voice - but the absolutely best bit about it was that it was only twenty minutes long.

We're at #5 with a new entry on the chart this week - and that was all it ever managed. The rest of the top five were My Fair Lady (a new entry at the top - our first of the year), South Pacific (another new entry), Frank and The King And I. Interestingly, My Fair Lady took over the top spot this week from - My Fair Lady! The London cast recording had been released so it took over from the Broadway cast - with the only significant difference in the cast being the actor playing Freddy Eynsford-Hill, so I struggle to imagine they're significantly different.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but the film sounds absolutely dreadful. It's also fair to say that Peter Rogers, the film's producer was not a fan of Tommy Steele, describing him as "vain, conceited, bad mannered and the biggest crime of all, unprofessional". The only other fact of interest is that the next film by the director, Gerald Thomas was the first Carry On film, Carry On Sergeant (and he went on to direct another 27 of them!).

"Customers also listened to" Charlie Drake, Antony Newley, Bernard Cribbins and Norman Wisdom - I'm pretty certain I'm fine without enduring any of their output. And I can assure you I'll not be searching this one out again, but it could have been worse (or longer).

08/06/58 - Oh look, it's him again!
13/07/58 - A fine voice indeed

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