Albums we loved - The Shadows Greatest Hits

 

Well it was a very much Brrr weekend here  with quite a few inches of snow and temperatures dropping below minus seven degrees  beyond the internet mess referred to on last weeks rather brief post so apart from there being none of the usual internet based stuff to be engaged with something did come that didn't rely on that.

If you're a Britisher Cliff Richard and the Shadows need no introduction, they are a building block of british rock and roll and our much bigger than you might think place in the world of popular music in the last century and this.

Cliff was the first major breakout artist, no disrespects intended to the likes of Marty Wilde, father of the great Kim Wilde having row after row of major hits, commercial and critically acclaimed films before the Beatles and the DC5 did and even got substantial albums in an era where it was mainly film soundtracks, stage shows and compilations that made the pop lp charts.

The Shadows were his backing band, originally entitled The Drifters but changed as that clashed with the American excellent Drifters soul group but by 1960 had started to develop a collection of tunes of their own that radically changed the sound of electric guitar playing, added highly choreographed routines on stage, making even hard bitten critics sit up and pay attention to how good popular music could be.

They had solo hits, even #1's in the UK, some on their own projects, others tied to Cliffs films and featured on the successful soundtrack albums of The Young Ones, Summer Holiday and others  and in 1963 they were rounded up in the massive selling Shadows Greatest Hits album.

Although I had borrowed this album a number of times, by the time I decided to get a selection of this music and that of Cliff's I had bought the early 1970's World Records box set of Cliff and the Shadows that covered 1958 to 1972 and then added a few compilations of Cliff's on compact disc.

What drew me back to this set was it is a perfect summary of what was so great about those early shadows tracks and that these are the original mono mixes we had then, singles on Columbia, their label around 1970/71 only switching to stereo.

The edition I got uses the  same metal parts as the original 1963 pressings but was issued around 1967/8 going by the tinted advertising inner sleeve showing albums of that era in their mono and stereo where issued forms.

The catalogue number on the disc had changed from 33SX1522 to SX1522 reflecting the switch in prefixes as stereo records back in the early sixties being a luxury special offering to as that decade ended to being the norm with less mono discs being issued even if the jacket carried over the old prefix.

Oddly enough the album was not issued in the UK on record in stereo until 1974 although in the early 70's stereo cassette and eight tracks were issued bough three tracks were issued in so-called "electronically reprocessed for stereo" as the original had never been mixed to stereo.

Listening to this with the excellence of their playing coupled with the memories of these tunes has been most enjoyable.

Finishing off a series

 

Way back in 1991 when I was just on to my second ever compact disc player I started collecting a series issued by Emi-Premier called "The Greatest Hits of" and these were from 1970 through 1980 and then just the 1981 and 1982 editions.

Reasons included having a single year focus which was rare and having a commentary on the year politically, culturally and so on which made for a package that took you back in time to that year.

At the time I was unaware that they had a Sixties series issued in 1990 run the same way as back in 1988 I had bought the odd disc of 50's hits in a Emi "The Hits of" series that gathered over twenty hits and served them up on the then new cd media.

In time I got some late 1960's volumes of the "The Hits of" series but that left me short on a good number of the others although I collected the "London-American" series that captured the American hits licensed from the late 1950's and early 1960's before many of the big labels established their own UK operations.

I have no got the 1960 through 1966 editions of "The Greatest Hits" that fill those gaps although I have a number of compilations that are not in a strict year sequence.

They have pictures of key artists and chart positions of songs which is always a good thing.

With spending time listening  to things like vintage chart shows on Boom Radio, having my own copies of many of the featured hits is highly enjoyable as this was the music I heard on oldies shows when on the radio usually feeling poorly.

They do sound great.