Pack up your troubles

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

10/01/65 : Spotlight On The George Mitchell Minstrels - The George Mitchell Minstrels

Just when you think things can't get any worse after Cliff's panto nonsense - that's exactly what they go and do, giving us our third visit with this lot.

I couldn't find this as an album, but five of the tracks are on YouTube and they're more than enough to give me a feel for the album because they're all dreadful music-hall style medleys - you can almost hear the jazz hands going on in the background. I did not like this.

We're at #11 in the charts this week on their sixth week of a seven week run, with #6 being as high as it got in its third and fourth weeks - there's really no accounting for taste, is there? The top five this week were The Beatles, The Bachelors, Val Doonican, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones and there were three new entries in the chart for Keely Smith (#16), Carousel (#19) and Mary Poppins (#20 - it took 47 weeks to climb to #2).

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album, but looking at their discography I can see that I've got at least another two and possibly as many as four more visits to come - amusingly their last album charted in '77, which is famously the year of punk. The entry for the show is interesting because it shows how views change, but very slowly -  although it does note that even as early as 1961, the BBC's chief accountant (an occupation known for their radical views) wrote in a memo that it was "a disgrace and an insult to coloured people - if black faces are to be shown, for heaven’s sake let coloured artists be employed and with dignity". But the show endured until it was finally cancelled in 1978.

It's easy to dismiss this as of its time and I can go with that - provided we accept that the time in question is the 1860s, rather than the 1960s. It's not for me.

03/01/65 - An acceptable album to end the year
17/01/65 - Wtaf is this?