Wah-wah-waaaaah

Concluding my trip back through the 1963 album charts.

06/01/63 : 'S Wonderful!/'S Marvelous - Ray Conniff


Our third visit with Ray and last time I described it as "bizarre instrumentals which are somehow inexplicably elevated from the bland" and I remember being intrigued by it, so I'm pleased enough to meet him again - intriguingly this is two of his albums from the '50s which I assume were repackaged to squeeze a few more sales out of them.

I know I shouldn't really like this because it's, at its heart. cheesy easy-listening jazz - but it's really well done cheesy easy-listening jazz. It uses interesting rhythms and instruments and it's exactly the sort of stuff that Zero 7, Air, Royksopp and many others would sample a "few" years later. No, I'm not going to ever listen to it again but it's a lot more interesting than a load of other albums I've heard this year that I'll never listen to again.

We're at #18 in the charts this week on the last week of a three week run with this being as high as it got. The top five this week were West Side Story (the last of thirteen weeks it spent at the top), Bobby Vee & The Crickets, The Shadows, Elvis Presley and The George Mitchell Minstrels, with the highest new entry being Bobby Vee. 

For a change, Wikipedia has two entries for us to look at - one for each of the original albums. 'S Wonderful! was his '57 debut (the first of over NINETY albums!) and features a chorus of seven singers fronting an 18 piece big band. It was well received critically and commercially in the US, getting to #12 during a 38 week run - but the record label wanted him to do something for the kids, so he followed it up with Do The Bop featuring songs "with a heavy rock and roll beat". Conniff hated the album and it didn't sell, so he was allowed to revert to his preferred sound for 'S Marvelous! which was received similarly well. And his next album was 'S Awful Nice which we'll probably get to see when we get to '60.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up versions of both albums for a fiver and the most you can spend on either of them is £17.41 - so you're not going to break the bank as a Ray fan (which is lucky because there are a LOT of his albums out there. And I find them surprisingly enjoyable!

And with that, we're done with '63 - except for the obligatory write-up, of course!

13/01/63 - Not something I need

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