But while there's moonlight and music and love and romance

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

03/02/63 : Let's Face The Music - Shirley Bassey

What? A woman who's not Brenda?!? I do like a bit of Shirley, but I'm looking forward to this one even more than usual because it also features Nelson Riddle and his orchestra, who've done a good job on several Sinatra albums we've met.

Yeah, this is pretty much what I'd expect - Shirley belting it out over a decent lush orchestral backing. What more do you want?!? The only ones I recognised were "Let's Face The Music And Dance" and "I Get A Kick Out Of You" (our second version of the year, after Frank's) but it was all very listenable.

We're at #14 in the charts this week on the last week of a five week run, with it having peaked at #12 in its debut week. The top five this week were Cliff Richard, Elvis Presley, West Side Story, The Shadows and Elvis Presley (sigh - a '57 release back for no obvious reason) and the highest new entry was a Lonnie Donegan best-of (#16), but I'm also going to mention The Spotnicks (#20) because I've never heard of them. And boy did I enjoy that Wikipedia rabbit-hole...

The Spotnicks were an instrumental rock group from Sweden who were known for "wearing space suit costumes on stage and for their innovative electronic guitar sound". They were the first Swedish group to enjoy international success and released 43 albums over their career which stretched from '58 all the way to '19 - their sound fell out of favour in the late 60s and they split up in '70, but they were still popular in Japan and were asked to reform in '71. It's fair to say they were fairly fluid in terms of band members over the years though, with Wikipedia listing over 40 people who featured at some point. I tell you what though - those guys must have been boiling hot on stage in those costumes, particularly with their vigorous dance moves.

OK - back to Shirley. Wikipedia tells us this is her sixth album - apparently they didn't think it would happen because Nelson was contracted to a different label, but it did. The only other fact of interest is that it was released in the US as Shirley Bassey Sings The Hit Song From "Oliver!" because they dropped a couple of tracks and stuck her version of "As Long As He Needs Me" on it (and, if you don't know, I think you can guess which musical that's from).  And it was then re-released in the UK in '71 called What Now My Love - what on earth were they playing it? There's no word on the critical reception and it didn't do anything away from these shores (she never really cut through over there - I guess there was more female competition).

discogs.com gets very confused what with all the re-releases so I'm not able to give you particularly useful information, but I can tell you that you can pick up a version of the '71 re-release for 8 pence (plus a mere £17 postage). This album is very much what you'd expect - and there's absolutely nothing wrong with that!

10/02/63 - Back again like a bad smell!

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