Rooty-tooty-ba-da-ba-da

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

17/11/63 : Kenny Ball's Golden Hits - Kenny Ball



Somewhat to my surprise, this is our first ever mention for Mr Ball - I know he was closely associated with Acker Bilk who's popped up a few times but we have yet to have the pleasure of Kenny's company. And I strongly suspect I'm going to be nonplussed by the whole thing.

I couldn't actually find this album, but I don't feel I can miss out any albums this year, so I recreated it by using Kenny Ball's Greatest Hits, which might have come out 37 years later but still contained nine of the ten tracks on the original album. And it's all perfectly fine trad jazz with the occasional vocals thrown in for good measure - it's done well but it's not at all the sort of thing I need in my life. It would be fine at a summer fete, but I find it gets very tiresome if I have to actually listen to it for any length of time - sorry, Kenny!

We're at #4 in the charts this week on his twelfth week of a 26 week run, with this being as high as it got (also in its fourth week, somewhat randomly). The rest of the top five were The Beatles, Gerry & The Pacemakers, The Searchers and Frank Ifield (we'll get to him sometime!) and there were once again no new entries in the entire chart.

There's no Wikipedia entry for the album but his entry tells me he put out 26 albums between '60 and '09 and he was still playing with the band right up until his death in '13. He was born in Ilford and died in Basildon, so I get the feeling he wasn't exactly someone who decided he needed to lead a flash life - but he did play at Charles & Diana's wedding reception, which isn't something everyone can say. The only other thing I noticed was that he was made an honorary citizen of New Orleans in '63, so jazz people obviously took him pretty seriously back in the day.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up an original copy of the LP for fifty pence and the very most you can spend on a mint copy is £15 - the downward trend continues! I'm sure this is fine if you like this sort of thing but I'm afraid I really don't (and certainly not recorded) - but at least it wasn't that Merseybeat sound.

24/11/63 - Not as bad as expected

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