Rapid-plinky-plonk

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

06/06/65 : Cast Your Fate To The Wind - Sounds Orchestral


This is the first act of the year that I'd never previously heard of - I'm assuming it's instrumental easy-listening or jazz, but let's see...

Hmmm - it's kinda jazzy easy-listening instrumental. It's mostly piano based (although one track appears to have a harpsichord on it, which sounds most peculiar), with obvious bass and drum parts so I reckon they must be the main members - but there's all sort of other strange sounds in there as well. The only track I recognised was "Downtown" but they all have some very peculiar timing variations going on - they often sound a bit too clever for their own good. But I have to admit it was a lot less dreadful than I feared - I wouldn't say I exactly enjoyed it, but it was quite an interesting listen. It's a very 60s album cover though, isn't it?

We're at #17 in the charts this week with a new entry at the start of a one week run - and it's the only week Sounds Orchestral ever spent in the album charts, so it's possibly not all that surprising I'd never previously heard of them. The top five this week were TSOM, The Beatles, Burt Bacharach (which feels very generous), Mary Poppins and Bob Dylan and there were no other new entries in the chart.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry on the album but it does tell me that the group were basically a trio - Johnny Pearson (piano), Kenny Clare (drums) and Tony Reeves (bass) and they were set up to rival EMI's (apparently) successful Sounds Incorporated. This was their debut album and although it was the only one to chart, they recorded FIFTEEN more. That's pretty much all there is of interest on the group, but something interesting about Johnny Pearson is that he was the leader of the Top Of The Pops orchestra for sixteen years - which just made me wonder exactly what it was that the TOTP orchestra did.

"Customers also listened to" John Schroeder, 101 Strings, Al Hirt and Bent Fabric - ah yes, that lot. This is a somewhat perplexing album and quite who bought it is very unclear - but I found it quite an interesting visit (and it's certainly no Russ Conway monstrosity).

30/05/65 - Surprisingly enjoyable
13/06/65 - Not Bob's worst album

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