I wonder when bluebirds are mating, will you come back again?

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

11/04/65 : The Bachelors And 16 Great Songs - The Bachelors


Under normal circumstances, this album of (guess how many!) cover versions would be ignored but given its incredible chart success, I kinda feel it has to be given a chance - but I'm not expecting it to be great in the slightest.

Well, if I thought The Searchers was looking backwards, this is positively medieval. It's all very twee and dated with things like "I Believe" and "You'll Never Walk Alone" done in a super annoying way - there's no way this was being bought by the cool kids back in the day. I found it very difficult to get through all sixteen songs - this was really tiresome and the album title should be investigated by the Trades Description Act people. 

But there's no doubt it was successful because this was its 43rd week of a 44 week run, with it having peaked at #2 for four weeks, only kept off the top by The Beatles. The top five this week were Bob Dylan, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, The Kinks and Bob Dylan and we have a new entry for Cliff Richard (#12) which was the one we were supposed to listen to but I couldn't find (I really tried, honest!)

Wikipedia has three whole sentences on the album which give you no more than I already have, other than that Record Mirror gave this five stars in their review - what were they thinking? Their entry tells us they were two brothers and a friend who formed the band in '60 and kept it going until '86, when there was a "messy split" - which resulted in two versions of the band on the club circuit for a few years. They were very successful in the UK singles chart, having seven top ten singles including "Diane" which reached #1 in '64. And I'm not saying they thought girls names were a good idea for track names, but they also released "Marta", "Charmaine", "Ramona", "Hey, Dolly", "Marie" and "Roxie".

"Customers also listened to" Solomon King, Ken Dodd, Karl Denver and Kathy Kirby - lots of Ks in there, but that's all I've got for you (we've had a few close shaves, but we've yet to bump into Mr Dodd). And hopefully this will be our last visit with The Bachelors (although '66 may yet send us back there) - this was a very bad album, certainly in with a shout for the worst of the year.

04/04/65 - Disappointingly grating
18/04/65 - Fine if a bit dated

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