I saw him, the way he smiled

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

28/03/65 : Fame At Last - Georgie Fame


Some controversy here as I skip over an album that, according to the rules, I probably shouldn't - but there's absolutely no danger of me listening to it. Yes, The Voice Of Churchill contains a collection of excerpts from his speeches and is at #15 at the end of an eight week run - available in all good record stores if you're desperate for a hit. We also skip over a much more straightforwardly avoidable Tamla Motown best-of (a new entry at #16, which just managed a couple of weeks) to come to this - our first visit with Georgie, although he's been played on a couple of albums we've seen from David Gilmour and Joan Armatrading. And I've actually no idea what kinda music I'm going to get here..

It's kinda bluesy-jazz - not something I need in my life, but there's nothing wrong with it and it's all skilfully done. From the number of Hammond organ solos, I assume Georgie is on the keyboards - and he does a particularly good job on "Green Onions" which is undoubtedly a cool track. And that's all I've got to say about it really other than it's been nice to have something a bit different. But he's looking very dapper on the album cover, isn't he?

We're all the way down at #19 in the charts this week with a re-entry on a single week run, which was the last of four runs, with its second run being the most successful at four weeks and peaking at #15. The top five this week were The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, a Jim Reeves best-of (really?), Val Doonican and Sandie Shaw (which is maybe not the coolest top five we've seen) and there are no new entries in the chart.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album - his entry tells us it's another debut album and he's backed by The Blue Flames. They were originally Billy Fury's backing band (including Georgie on keyboards) but when Billy sacked them, Georgie stepped up to the mic and they were pretty successful, having three #1 singles. Apparently, Georgie used to mainly play the piano, but when he heard Booker T's version of "Green Onions", he immediately went out and bought a Hammond organ, so I'm sure he'd be pleased that I liked it. And, at 81, he's still around to take the praise although he doesn't appear to overly active these days.

"Customers also listened to" Alan Price, Geno Washington, PP Arnold and Tommy Moeller - not a collection of people I know much about. Which is also true about Georgie, but I know more than I used to and part of that knowledge is that the man knows his way around a keyboard and I don't mind his stuff.

21/03/65 - Annoyingly inconsistent
04/04/65 - Disappointingly grating


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