Posted in 1960s, Music at 12:00 on 5 August 2022
Heyday Cliff Richard was before my time but he still had some songs I could appreciate.
Written by The Shadows’ Hank Marvin, this is one of them.
Cliff Richard: The Day I Met Marie
Posted in 1960s, BBC, Events dear boy. Events, Friday On My Mind, Music, Radio 2 at 12:00 on 14 April 2017
It was with great sadness I heard on Sunday of the death of Brian Matthew, one of the voices of my youth and, through the BBC Radio 2 programme Sounds of the Sixties, also of my recent adulthood.
This came only a few days after the BBC had mistakenly reported his death.
Despite his apparent dismay at a crass decision by the powers that be to replace him, and his stated intention to make further programmes for Radio 2, Mathew was obviously not as hale and hearty as he once was (none of us are.) There had been another lengthy absence from the programme a couple of years ago so the final news was merely a confirmation of what I had feared.
Whatever, Sounds of the Sixties is not – and never can be – the same without him. The new incumbent, Tony Blackburn, is far too chatty (what is all that stuff with Dermot O’Leary, who follows him on air? Just play the music and give us the information about the acts) and always sounds fundamentally unserious about the show’s contents. It’s Blackburn’s style and has always been his style but it grates somehow.
So. Here is the tune that will forever now be associated with Matthew – the one with which Sounds of the Sixties played (and plays) out every episode and which I will never in future be able to hear without a further tinge of sadness.
The Shadows: Foot Tapper
Brian Matthew: 17/9/1928 – 8/4/2017. So it goes.
Posted in 1960s, Friday On My Mind, Music at 12:00 on 14 November 2014
Another of my brother’s 1960s singles. An instrumental this time.
The Ventures were a sort of US version of The Shadows. Or The Shadows were a UK version of The Ventures. Take your pick.
The Ventures: Perfidia
And here’s a rarity. Walk Don’t Run in stereo.
The Ventures: Walk Don’t Run
Posted in 1960s, Music, Nostalgia at 14:00 on 23 March 2011
The Shadows were a bit before my time though they were a kind of Saturday night variety televisual backdrop to my childhood.
But I do know that they were important and that without them there might have been no Beatles, no Clapton, no Jeff Beck, Peter Green, Jimmy Page etc etc.*
It’s only right to mention, then, the passing of bassist Jet Harris.
Terence (Jet) Harris. 6/7/1939 -18/3/2011. So it goes.
*This is maybe overstating the case a little as some of these might have come to prominence anyway but there is more than a grain of truth in it.
Posted in 1960s, Friday On My Mind, Music at 15:00 on 3 September 2010
Just before my time there was a vogue for instrumental bands – The Shadows, The Ventures, The Tornados – but this more or less petered out with the advent of The Beatles.
Booker T and The MGs started out in that earlier era but carried on in that vein; so unusually for bands in the mid to late 1960s continued to eschew actual songs. According to Wikipedia they were (ahem) instrumental in shaping the sound of Southern and Memphis Soul.
I believe I first heard of them when they released Soul Limbo, a minor hit in Britain – and a track now much more famous as being the theme music for Cricket coverage on the BBC (TV and radio) – after which their earlier records received some retrospective airplay. They later had a much bigger hit with Time Is Tight.
I was going to have this track in the Friday slot a few weeks ago but a restricted blog which I frequent got there before me so I’ve held it over till now.
This is a live version of the band’s first single, Green Onions.
Booker T and The MGs: Green Onions
