They rubbed it, scrubbed it, they oiled and embrocated it

Continuing my trip back through the 1965 album charts.

07/02/65 : Lucky 13 Shades Of Val Doonican - Val Doonican


OK - it's been in the top five for so long now that I felt I should really make another effort to find it. And, weirdly enough, searching for it on YouTube (which I'd done before) came straight back with it - so I guess I get to listen to Val doing a load of shite Irish songs after all. Or maybe it will be a pleasant surprise.

To no-one's surprise, it's not a pleasant surprise - but I guess it could be a lot worse (and it's not all Irish either!). It's got some most peculiar track titles - "Quit Kickin' My Dog Around" (complete with some terrible barking), "The Agricultural Irish Girl" (this is pretty bad too), "Carlos Dominguez" and the farmyard animal pairing of "Delaney's Donkey" (which is enjoyably terrible) and "Paddy McGinty's Goat" (which could be the same song just with different lyrics). It's not all dreadful though - "False Hearted Girl" is some decent skiffle and "Mysterious People" is twee, but well-done twee. And he's got a perfectly serviceable voice with a nice tone to it, so if you were in the market for this sort of thing, then I can see it fitting the bill nicely - I'm just a bit surprised that quite so many people were in the market for it.

We're at #3 in the charts this week on his tenth week of a 25 week run, with it peaking at #2 in its seventh week whilst spending ten consecutive weeks in the top five - wow! The rest of the top five this week were The Rolling Stones, The Beatles, Jim Reeves and The Beatles and we have three new entries for Winston Churchill (#14), Cilla Black (#15) and Peter, Paul And Mary (#20) - which is quite the mix!

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album - he released about 25 albums, but only our previous visit has an entry. His entry suggests he was a thoroughly good egg - he only ever had one manager and one wife and he's described as "a perfectionist who knew his limits", which seems like a decent way to be remembered. His TV show was amazingly popular, attracting 20 million viewers and also being sold to the US - somewhat surprisingly he never had a #1 single either here or in Ireland, despite having multiple tracks that got to #2 or #3.

I suspect if Val had gone down the Perry Como route, then I would have found him perfectly bearable but also perfectly forgettable - the introduction of the novelty nonsense we have on here makes him more memorable, but they're not songs I'd want to listen to often. However, in 1965, it appears that plenty of people did.

31/01/65 - Dated, but well done
14/02/65 - Pretty average

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