Stringy-stringy-string-string

Continuing my trip back through the 1959 album charts.

26/04/59 : Continental Encores - Mantonvani


Skipping over exactly three months of the charts (including four consecutive weeks which were EXACTLY the same) we come to this - I know the name Mantovani but don't really know what he did, so this will be intriguing.

Ah - he did that old-fashioned string thing. They're all nicely arranged instrumental orchestral tracks, but I'd struggle to tell you how many tracks there were on the album because they all just blended into each other - there's nothing objectively wrong with them, but that doesn't make them alright. I love that album cover though - it's like a snapshot in our house when I come home from work.

We're at #8 in the charts this week on his/their last week of an eleven week run, with #4 being as high as it got, in six of its first seven weeks. The top five this week still had South Pacific, Gigi and My Fair Lady up at the top, with Elvis and Buddy Holly making up the places and we had one new entry for Russ Conway (#9) but no named women.

Wikipedia does have an entry for the album, but it doesn't really contain any info which maybe isn't such a surprise because his entry lists over 50 albums and I suspect there's only so much you can say about such things. His entry tells us Annunzio Paolo Mantovani was born in Italy but moved to Britain when he was seven. He studied at the Royal College of Music and then formed his own orchestra (as you do) which went on to become massively popular, making him the first act to sell over a million stereo albums and the most successful UK artist before The Beatles came along. I guess things were just different back in the day!

"Customers also listened to" a million other Mantovani albums, which doesn't massively surprise me. I can see that people like this because it's perfectly pleasant on the ear and very unthreatening, but it's not something I need in my life.

22/03/59 - A different and decent album
26/07/59 - A most peculiar album

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