Channelzine

Answer Me by Frankie Laine

What a cheeky bugger.  “Oh, is somebody having a hit record?  Is it me?  Well, quickly, I’ll record their song as well and release it!” Frankie makes yet another appearance – it really was his year, eh? – by releasing a song that was already Number 1, which seems terribly lazy.  For what its worth, I prefer his version, but, really, it’s still a song about God, and still got itself banned.  Interesting fact: on the week of December 11^th 1953, both versions of Answer Me ‘Shared’ the number 1 slot. How that worked I have no idea. Answers on a postcard etc.

Answer Me by David Whitfield

This is an English version of a German song about God. Wait! Come back! It was banned as well! Why? Because it was about God. The BBC, brilliantly, banned it after some complaints.  Seems strange to think that even back in the 1950s people would complain about broadcasts that seem so relatively inoffensive, especially considering how much of the population would have been churchgoers at the time.  Fascinating.  I wonder what’s going to follow this one?

Hey Joe by Frankie Laine

Frankie Laine, feeling put out by the way that the British public stopped buying I Believe six weeks ago, had a bitter plan.  He snuck to the US charts and stole a country song and released it in the UK.  The lyrics don’t make much sense, and it sounds nothing like his previous hit, but it has a charm to it.  As best I can tell, it’s a song about wanting to steal your neighbour’s wife away from her.  Charming.  “Show me you’re my palsy-walsy!” Frankie asks of the titular Joe, requesting that he is introduced to Joe’s wife that he might steal her away.  “I mean to steal her from you!” he tells Joe.  At least he isn’t being underhand about it, right?

Look At That Girl by Guy Mitchell

After so much Frankie Laine, this is wholly refreshing.  It’s chilled out, laid back, swiftly delivered pop, driven mostly by a brushed snare drum and Guy Mitchell’s voice – it’s sugar, honey, golden syrup.  And there’s no unsettling connotations: he’s just saying that there’s a girl and he fancies her, a bit, and he might have a kiss and a cuddle.  It’s innocent and poppy, and the song does exactly what you’d suspect.

This is the first song on this list that I can think of in the terms that we apply to much modern pop music: simple verse, strong melody, driving rhythm, instrumental middle eight, final verse that has a twist on that which has been before (in this case, a dual-layered vocal harmony line and backing singers).  It’s a great, great song. I’ll say it again: Great.  

I Believe by Frankie Laine

I know. People had nothing better to do than to buy this again, three weeks in a row.  I can only assume that the only reason it now stopped being number one is that everybody in the UK had a copy.  

Moulin Rouge by Mantovani

No, not that Moulin Rouge: this one is from the 1952 film of the same name.  The song itself is quite lovely, assuming that you like vaguely stereotypical French orchestral pieces.  In the film it has lyrics, but this version, the one that conquered the UK charts, is solely instrumental, nothing but the aching of the violins covering the melody.  It’s really quite lovely. 

I Believe by Frankie Laine

Here he is again, good old Frankie Laine! The song reappeared for a further six weeks – I can only assume that the public at large were so terrified by the dead girl in I’m Walking Behind You they fled back to religion and hope.  But this is the last we’ll see of the song, right? Surely…

I\’m Walking After You by Eddie Fisher

“I’m walking behind you on your wedding day,” sings Eddie Fisher, which is a little bit creepy immediately, but made far, far creepier by the appearance of the dead girl singing backing vocals.  She covers most lines of the song in her ethereal howl, mimicking Eddie’s lines, something enhancing them, and occasionally being slightly off-key.  “Look over your shoulder, I’m walking behind,” Eddie closes with as the dead girl howls. Shudder.

I Believe by Frankie Laine

This isn’t the only time that this song is going to appear on this rundown, so I’ll deal with the song itself now.  It was recorded to give the British public hope when fighting broke out in Korea in ’52, designed to let people know that war wasn’t going to happen again – and if it did, at least we had babies, and leaves.  The message itself is lovely (and perhaps why it’s now quite the religious standard), and the delivery is as you’d want, or expect: a voice, some gentle instrumentation, some faint choral backing.  But, amazingly, this still holds the record for the longest number of weeks at number one in the UK chart.  How?  Ask me again in a couple of days…

How Much Is That Doggy In The Window by Lita Roza

Somehow, I almost can’t believe that this was ever a single.  It’s like a nursery rhyme, so tacked onto the public consciousness that one cannot see a Dog behind glass without thinking of this.  Listening to it as music is difficult – how do you separate the history, the jokes , the popular culture references (Newman singing it in Seinfeld! It being played to death in Eastenders!) from the song itself?  Well, you do it like this, I suppose: This song is awful. It’s horrendously repetitive, the barking is irritating, the delivery patronising.  Is that what you wanted to hear? Of course not! Even as I listen to this I actually hear my mother singing it to me when I was a little boy, and I can’t be angry at that.  I can only really smile a bit, and file it under a tab marked as ‘Affectionate Memories’.