Just tell her that you love her, make sure you're thinkin' of her

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

18/08/63 : Bobby Vee's Golden Greats - Bobby Vee

I've definitely heard of Bobby Vee because I know he did "Rubber Ball" which is properly cheesy (but in a good way), but I know nothing about him (I believe he's American, but that could be wrong) although I'm surprised to see this is our first ever mention for the lad.

Well, he also did "Take Good Care Of My Baby" and "Run To Him" both of which I like, but all the tracks are pretty decent and there's a (relatively) reasonable amount of variety across the album. Yes, it's still all very Buddy Holly-ish (and there's nothing wrong with that, although I'm not sure we needed his version of "Everyday") but we do at least get slower and faster Buddy style tracks. Overall, I'd say this is one the better offerings from the year - I enjoyed it.

We're at rock bottom #20 in the charts this week on his last week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #10 in his third week. He'd actually had three previous runs, but they didn't amount to much - although he was very busy in the charts around this time because he had six albums chart between '62 and '63 - and his only other charting action was in '80 and '08! The top five this week were The Beatles, The Shadows, the Cliff Richard best-of, The Searchers and Elvis Presley and the highest new entry was This is Mersey Beat Vol 1 (#19), which would probably have been ignored because it featured such well-known groups as Sonny Webb & The Cascades, Derrick Wilkie & The Pressmen and Faron's Flamingos - but I couldn't find it, so the decision was made for me.

Wikipedia tells, somewhat unsurprisingly, that it's a compilation album - but beyond that there's remarkably little of interest there. Checking out his entry to educate myself on the lad, I learn there's a very strong Buddy Holly link because the teenage Bobby was a fan and was going to see him play in Moorhead, Minnesota but unfortunately that was The Day The Music Died, so Buddy never made it there. As a result, a local radio station asked for volunteers to fill in for the gig and Bobby and his friends (who lived in Fargo, which is better known for other reasons now) got the slot - the whole thing seems remarkably preposterous really, but it was the start of it all for young Bobby Vee. 

And he pretty much kept going until the end, performing until '11 when he was diagnosed with Alzheimer's which lead to his death in '13. And we're not finished with the interesting Bobby-facts because, early on in his career, Bob Dylan toured with his band and Bob, who never seems that enthused about anything, was actually really nice about Bobby on several occasions - wonders will never cease. And finally, Bobby was married to Karen for fifty years and such things have tended to tell us who the nice guys are - so let's here it for Bobby and Karen!. Back to the album, critically New Record Mirror gave it four stars (of course) and AllMusic declared it "an above-average release", so they really went wild on it - it also got to #24 in the US.

discogs.com tells us that you can spend £3-20 on a copy of this depending upon the condition, but if you want to go mad then you can splash out £30 on a signed copy, which seems like a bit of a bargain. I actually really enjoyed both this album and learning about Bobby, so this was one of the highlights from '63 for me - even it if is "just" a compilation which would be ignored in other years.

25/08/63 - A WOMAN?!?