Though variously known as "Mr. Emotion", "The Nabob of Sob" and "The Prince of Wails" 'Such A Night' finds Johnnie Ray upbeat of mood as he reminisces about what seems less than a one night stand and more like a one night kiss. Well Johnnie's excited enough for the record to have been banned by the BBC for 'excesive panting' anyway, but the music playing behind him is excessive pants - 'Such A Night' is an apt follow up to 'Secret Love' in that it neatly highlights what I see as the split between the old and the new. On this, Ray is restless to break free, an aural Steve McQueen in 'The Great Escape'; in the telling of his tale, Ray's vocal is up and down, quick and slow, squashed and stretched in it's attempt to find a freedom to express though it's kept in captivity by the hail of bullets and barbed wire fence of the restricting stonewall of lazy backing vocals and one trick drum click rhythm that ultimately bring him down. What he really needed were The Jordanaires (who backed Presley on his 1963 version) behind him - Ray is certainly far enough ahead of his time to have employed their services in 1954 so it's a shame his reliance on mutton instead of lamb should derail all the good envelope stretching work he puts in.
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