Cliff and Hank Marvin share the honours here. Cliff snuggles in close again but stays on the humble side of smarmy. Hank is a model of restraint: tiny lick-lets of guitar (at 0’46” for instance) adding just a hint of colour and a delicate[…]

From dream lovers to an unpleasant wake-up call: Darin snaps his fingers and Kurt Weill ushers the spooning teenagers offstage pronto – one lovestuck girl remains and so Bobby sings her this nasty little song. Everything about “Mack The K[…]

At first glace Jerry Keller’s only Brit hit seems dreadfully badly timed: a breezy Hammond confection about the onset of Summer reaching No.1 in October. But when you hear the record it makes sense – contentedly wistful, this is a song fo[…]

Craig Douglas on the other hand makes Cliff seem like James Dean. On the cover of Cuddle Up With Craig he looks distinctly uncomfortable, and distinctly grown-up. He sings grown-up too. ‘Only Sixteen’ is a look back to a romance that coul[…]

The production on ‘Living Doll’ is pretty special – impeccably polite but amazingly intimate, Cliff sings like his lips are almost brushing your ear but Cliff being Cliff he wouldn’t so much as ruffle your hair without a chaperone[…]

1959 was the first high summer of teen-pop ‘ a catwalk of heart-throbs at the top of the charts. Their songs weren’t quite interchangeable, but there was definitely a certain pop style that was selling and they worked it well. The key was[…]

Not vastly different follow-up to ‘Side Saddle’, which passes the time in the same sweet way. This is the superior tune, in fact, because its teetering scales make for a better hook, but even so you feel he’s taking the mickey a bit[…]

An enticingly louche guitar line is sabotaged at once by Elvis, whose absurd baritone makes one thing very clear: from now on, he’s playing for laughs. People who nod approvingly at Presley’s record tally of British #1s tend not to mentio[…]

The twang of his first No.1 survives in the voice alone, a touch of reassuring gawk in amongst the frothy orchestration, hiccups dropped in like winks to the fans. The suddenly grieving fans ‘ this is the first chart-topper to be driven and hau[…]

If you look at the top TV hits of the late 50s the lists seem to be dominated by cowboy shows. I could try on some spiel about the stark contrast between good and evil in these shows reflecting the political situation of the time, but probably the pl[…]