We're goin' where the sun shines brightly

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

22/09/63 : Summer Holiday - Cliff Richard & The Shadows


Oh good - them again. Which brings us up to eight visits with Cliff - but at least I know I'm going to tolerate at least one of these tracks. I even remember not minding the film when I saw it many moons ago - and found it most amusing it had Una Stubbs in it because I only knew her from Celebrity Squares and Give Us A Clue at the time.

Well, I obviously knew I was going to recognise the title track, but I'd forgotten that "Bachelor Boy" was also on this album - I also recognised "Foot Tapper", but that was mostly because I'd heard when listening to various Shadows tracks earlier this year. The rest of it is in a similar vein - it's a bit dated and twee, but it is at least charmingly dated and twee, so I didn't mind it.

We're at #15 in the charts this week on their last week of a 36 week run, with it having peaked at #1 - for FOURTEEN consecutive weeks! The top five this week were The Beatles, The Searchers, The Shadows, Kenny Ball and Steptoe & Son (really?) with the highest new entry being Cliff Richard (#13 - there's no escaping the lad!).

Wikipedia tells us this is Cliff's eighth album and his second soundtrack album (after The Young Ones in '61). The only other information is that they made a double album version for the cast and crew which was limited to 80 copies, so it will be interesting to see if any are currently up for sale. Looking at the film's entry, it reminds me that Melvyn Bragg was also in the film, along with a load of other people - most of whom I don't recognise but Ron Moody went on to be better known as Fagin in Oliver! and Jeremy Bulloch went on to remain completely unknown as Boba Fett in Star Wars. Critically, the film and soundtrack were well received and commercially, the soundtrack also got to #1 in Canada and Norway - unfortunately it didn't succeed in the US because it has the misfortune of being released two days after President Kennedy was assassinated, so people probably weren't quite in the mood for such froth.

discogs.com tells us that you can pick up a copy of the album for a quid, with £60 being the most you can shell out for it - that's not one of the rare double album versions, but omegaauctions.co.uk sold one in '21 for £340, so it is rare but it's no Beatles-level rarity. Cliff's produced some monstrosities in his time and a whole load of blandness, but this year (so far) has been unusual in that neither of our visits has been monstrous or bland.

29/09/63 - A load of dated nonsense

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