Hey, everybody - come along if you can

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

24/03/63 : Dance With The Guitar Man - Duane Eddy

Our third visit with Duane and I've been generally pretty impressed so far, although I'm not convinced I'm going to exactly need another album of it.

Well, I guess it is another album from Duane, but the guitar is surprisingly low in the mix on a load of the tracks which means you'd be hard pushed to tell it's him. The tracks aren't terrible but he has also used some awful backing singers to make some very distracting noises throughout - all of which makes the whole thing seem less bearable than it probably should be. 

We're at #14 in the charts this week on his third week of a four week run, with this being as high as it ever got. The top five this week were Cliff Richard, Frank Sinatra & Count Basie, Elvis Presley, Frank Ifield and West Side Story - it's funny how not having The Beatles in there just makes it feel more old-fashioned. And there were no new entries in the chart this week.

Wikipedia doesn't have an entry for the album probably because he was extremely prolific around this time (he released THIRTEEN albums from '61-'65) and there's really only so much they can say about his random twanging. There is an entry for the title track though which tells us the awful backing singers were The Blossoms, who featured Darlene Love and had a very successful recording career, including the '62 US #1 "He's A Rebel" - although Phil Spector credited their work to The Crystals for no obvious reason. It's fair to say I didn't appreciate their efforts on Duane's album though.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a version of this for £3, but if you want a test pressing then it's going to set you back a pricey £70. I quite like Duane because he makes a distinctive sound and is obviously good at what he does, but this isn't his finest work - I think you only really need a best-of unless you're determined to subject yourself to a Duane deep dive.

31/03/63 - Yeah, this is decent again

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