Something in the way he moves

Continuing my trip back through the 1971 album charts.

30/05/71 : Something Else - Shirley Bassey

Our fourth visit with Shirley and this is another one which I suspect is an album of covers, but I can't check it and if we're going to let Tom through, then it's only fair to let a Welsh lass have a go as well.

It opens with "(Where Do I Begin) Love Story" which we've already met once this year and I've also spotted it on a few albums that I've rejected, so I checked on secondhandsongs.com to see how many times it's been covered. And it lists 533 (!) versions all told, but incredibly over 100 of these were done in '71 including versions by Henry Mancini, James Last and Mantovani - I suspect Shirley's is one of the better versions, but I'm certainly not going to listen to them all to find out.

The rest of the album is very much Shirley doing her thing - most of the songs are of a slower tempo but present her with the opportunity to open up with her particularly fine voice when she feels the need. It's a nice companion piece to Tom's offering in that neither are exactly essential, but they're done well and are certainly listenable - I feel that Shirley has done a better job in selecting her tracks, which gives her the edge for me. And she's certainly gone all in with her outfit on the album cover!

We're at #14 in the charts this week on her fourth week of a nine week run, with it having peaked at #7 in its second week. The top five this week were Paul & Linda McCartney (a new entry - only the second one we've seen this year with John Lennon having had the other one), The Rolling Stones, Simon & Garfunkel, Motown Chartbusters Vol 5 and James Taylor with the next highest new entry being Frank Sinatra (#16).

Wikipedia tells us this is her fourteenth album (she's up to 34 now!) and doesn't have a lot more to tell us other than it continued a comeback which was kicked off by her previous album, Something - and it resulted in a rush of her older albums charting, giving her six albums in the chart this year. There's no word on the critical views at the time and it didn't really storm the US, getting to #123.

discogs.com tells us you can pick up a decent version for £2.50, but you can actually splash out a bit on this and spend up to £37 on a good quality copy - serious cash! Which I won't be spending, but there's nothing wrong with any of it and Shirley really did have a great voice back in the day.

06/06/71 - Pretty much as expected

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