If you see somebody crawlin' across the floor

Continuing my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

10/02/63 : 32 Minutes And 17 Seconds - Cliff Richard

Skipping over a week brings us to the joy of Cliff again for our third visit with him this year - taking us up to nine visits in total for him, bringing him level with U2 and Taylor Swift. And, of course, the bloody Shadows are on it too which means we've seen them to varying degrees on FIVE albums this year. 

We're back to the "who do I want to be?" Cliff with him trying out a few things on here, but there are definite signs he's working his way towards the "Summer Holiday" kinda thang. It's fair to say big band jazz Cliff was never going to be a starter though because he absolutely murders "Blueberry Hill" on this (but if you want to see it properly murdered, check this out) - and his version of "Spanish Harlem" isn't a lot better. But, for the most part, it's pretty harmless - I think I'm just losing the ability to put up a fight against him. I'm not impressed by the album title though - it's just lazy.

We're at #12 in the chart this week on his last week of a decent 21 week run, with it having peaked at #3. The top five this week were Cliff Richard (sigh), Elvis Presley, West Side Story, The Shadows (double sign!) and South Pacific (notable because this was the last week it ever appeared in the top five, having spent 114 weeks and all of '59 at #1) and the highest new entry was Frank Ifield. This week's chart is also notable for having THREE albums from George Mitchell and his god-awful minstrels in it.

Wikipedia tells us it's his fifth album and he does his usual (for the time) thing of using The Shadows on half the tracks and Norrie Paramor And His Orchestra on the other half (and it's very easy to guess which is which!). Critically, New Record Mirror went all in on it giving it five stars and commercially we're told it got to #1 in Canada (and I think that's the first time Canadian sales have been mentioned in this year).

discogs.com tells us that can pick up a version of this for three quid, but you can spend as much as £30 on it if you really want to (although it's not at all clear what you're getting for the extra money). I'm sure plenty have fond memories of swooning along to sexy young Cliff but it's not for me - but I have to admit that it isn't dreadful.

17/02/63 - Decent but annoying

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