Oh, the thrill of being well-informed

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

29/09/63 : Pickwick - Original London Cast

A couple more albums to report that I've ignored - I couldn't report on Hitsville! (#14) because the internet doesn't seem to know anything about it and I decided against listening to Buddy Holly's third posthumous compilation album (#18) because a) I think that's pushing things a bit far and b) a load of it was overdubbed by someone else three years after he died!

Which brings us to a musical that I can tell you absolutely nothing about. Now, sometimes these forgotten musicals from the 60s turn out to be surprisingly decent and it's not clear why they haven't been revived because they still have a lot to say that's relevant to the current times. But the other 95% of the time it's entirely obvious why they've been forgotten...

Hmmm. It's not dreadful, but it's very dated - it also thinks it has very clever wordplay, but it's very forced (a lot of the characters have been given names which very conveniently have multiple rhymes!). I obviously recognised Harry Secombe's voice but I was surprised to also recognise "You Never Met A Feller Like Me" - I suspect my mother must have sung it back in the day a few times because if that's not how I know it, I've absolutely no idea. I do have to report that having got to the end of it (which was a struggle), I've got no clue about the general plot - there's a lot about how men are better than women and yet also constantly being tricked by them and maybe that was enough for a plot back then. What women certainly don't do is appear very much in this - it's a very bloke-y musical with women appearing in a couple of duets and on a few tracks as backing singers. All in all, this isn't one I'll be revisiting.

We're at a perilous #19 in the charts this week on their second week of a three week run, which came hot on the heels of a previous six week run where it peaked at #12 - I think it's fair to say it didn't challenge The Beatles for popularity. The top five this week were The Beatles, The Searchers, The Shadows, Frank Ifield and Kenny Ball and the highest new entry was Chuck Berry (#13). 

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the soundtrack but it does tell us the musical is (unsurprisingly) based around The Pickwick Papers and the cast featured Peter Ustinov, a load of other people I've never heard of and Anton Rodgers, who I remember from various dodgy sit"com"s - the New York cast included Roy Castle and Charlotte Rae (who played the first housekeeper on the televisual masterpiece Diff'rent Strokes). The entry also tells me that I listened to the wrong album because I had the soundtrack to the '93 revival but, in my defence, Harry was also in that one (along with Roy Castle and Ruth Madoc) - he was also in the '69 BBC film version as well! 

If the '93 revival sounded dated, I hate to imagine what the '63 version sounded like but I feel I've probably got enough of an idea to write it up (and I'm not going to let my suffering go to waste!). discogs.com tells us, somewhat unsurprisingly, this is a cheap one, setting you back somewhere from £2-£10 - and you're welcome to it because it's all very dated nonsense.

06/10/63 - Just no, thank you