A little bitty tear let me down, spoiled my act as a clown

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

10/10/65 : The Sound Of The Shadows - The Shadows


Our second visit with Cliff-less Shadows and last time my verdict was a damning "mostly competent" - I'm expecting more of the same here.

Yeah - pretty much. I was actually thinking I don't really get on with instrumental albums until then they started singing on "A Little Bitty Tear" - and then I decided that maybe instrumental wasn't so bad after all. Which is a bit harsh because I actually thought "Let It Be Me" was the best track on the album and it features some nice Everly Brothers style vocals - the best instrumental for me is the nicely quirky "Dean's Theme". The rest of it is all perfectly pleasant, but well, it's just very, very dull - I guess there's a reason they chose these guys to make Cliff seem charismatic.

We're at #14 in the charts this week on their fourteenth week of an impressive seventeen week run with it having peaked at #4 in its seventh week. The top five this week were TSOM, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones, Mary Poppins and Andy Williams and we have a new entry for Sonny & Cher (#16).

Wikipedia tells us this is their fourth album and the only fact of even the slightest interest is that the photo for the alternative album cover was taken outside EMI House - they're wild them Shadows, ain't they? Interestingly (and I promise I didn't know this beforehand) "Let It Be Me" was a hit for The Everly Brothers in '60, so that might have given The Shadows a hint for their arrangement. One other name of interest in the songwriters column is Tony Hiller who wrote songs for a load of people, but is probably best known for his work with Brotherhood Of Man including Eurovision Winner "Save Your Kisses For Me".

"Customers also listened to" a million different Cliff albums - some people really don't know what's good for them. A Shadows album is greatly preferable to a Cliff album, but I'm afraid I don't really understand the appeal.

03/10/65 - An unexpected visit
17/10/65 - A decent enough album

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