Another brief visit to the 50s is over

Somewhat surprisingly (because I thought I had one more album to go but it turns out I'd already met it) that's the end of 1958 - which was very similar to previous visits to the strange times that were the 50s.

It seemed entirely appropriate that we started the year with Elvis, Elvis, Frank because those two (along with musical soundtracks) really had the year tied down (and we'd already met most of the soundtrack albums). We only saw fifteen albums all year (up from a measly ten in 1957) and Elvis had two albums (with another two we'd already seen) and Frank had two and a half (with three we'd already seen and two best-ofs ignored) - the only other artist with multiple entries was Perry Como with a couple. It's also fair to say it was a year with a slight masculine bias.

For the year-end list, we have to look at bestsellingalbums.org (which isn't the most reliable of sources) and it just rams home how much people loved soundtracks back then with the top five being My Fair Lady, South Pacific, The King And I, Pal Joey and King Creole. The only non-soundtrack albums in the top ten are Frank, Frank and a Frank best-of (of course) with Oklahoma! and The Duke Wore Jeans making up the top ten.

So were any of the albums we saw any good?

Well, let's start with a very niche minority group that we only had one album from all year. Yes, that rarest of breeds in '58 - the women! And Ella Fitzgerald did a great job with her lovely voice to give us one of the better albums of the year - and it was certainly the best by a woman, for the simple reason it was the only album by a named woman in the entire chart all year (although I do have to admit they were well represented on the soundtrack albums).

The next niche group to consider is non-soundtrack, Frank, Elvis or Perry albums - there are a few more of these, but not loads! The Crickets was easily the best of them with an album which was both enjoyable and historically significant - I really liked it. Johnny Mathis and Lonnie Donegan also both did a decent job and Tom Lehrer's offering was interesting, if somewhat odd. And then there was the absolute abomination that Russ Conway produced - I'm still struggling to sleep at night as a result of my exposure to his peculiar piano-based torture.

Soundtracks next - of the ones we saw The Pajama Game was easily the best of these, with The Duke Wore Jeans being easily the worst (but mercifully short!) and My Pal Joey was distinctly average. It's interesting how much of the chart was taken up by soundtracks which ruled a lot of the '57 chart as well though.

All of which leaves us with two Elvis, two Frank and two Perry. Perry surprised me by making a surprisingly decent album, with the other one being much more what I was expecting. Frank put two decent but different albums whereas Elvis put out two decent but remarkably similar albums - and that's your lot!

Looking at the #1 albums of the year, we had six and a half different chart-toppers (half due to a tie one week) which means this year beats '57 by the smallest margin possible. My Fair Lady was at the top for the longest with 19 weeks, Pal Joey had ten (seriously?) and South Pacific had nine. We also had an album debuting at #1, although it was a bit of a cheat because it was simply the London version of My Fair Lady taking over from the Broadway version.

The generally accepted best albums from the year that we didn't come across were Billie Holliday's Lady In Satin, Cannonball Adderley's (who?) Somethin' Else, Miles Davis's Milestones, John Coltrane's Blue Train, Sonny Clark's Cool Struttin' and eponymous offerings from Bo Diddley, Little Richard and Buddy Holly. They may be highly regarded, but none of them have charted here - and in checking that, I learned that Billie Holliday has never had anything in the chart here ever! And the most read post of the year was the one for easily the worst album from Russ Conway and the least read post was for one of the best from Ella Fitzgerald - there's no accounting for tastes I guess.

'58 wasn't great, but it was definitely better than '57 because there were albums I listened to and enjoyed - Come Fly With Me Frank, Ella Fitzgerald and The Crickets take the top three, but I think Johnny Mathis was unlucky not to sneak in there. As previously stated, Russ Conway was easily the worst album of the year - my initial plan was to head to '59 next to complete a decade but his multiple presences there have scared me off so I'm heading to '86 which was the year I started university, so should hopefully bring back some happy memories.

Btw, the picture above is the Preston by-pass which was Britain's first motorway and was opened on 5 December 1958 by Harold Macmillan.

29/12/57 - Surprisingly enjoyable (chart timeline)
23/03/58 - Oh, do get a move on!
28/12/86 - Peak Madge (blog timeline)