What the Dickens??? This is the second time that a song has replaced itself at number one - didn't they have enough songs to go 'round back then? Ah, but unlike the tracing paper copies of 'Cherry Pink (And Apple Blossom White)', there's enough of a difference between the two versions of 'Singing The Blues' on offer here to suggest that the buyers weren't totally doolally. Though maybe I should qualify that by saying that there was a similarity in that both singers were trying to adapt to changing styles by cribbing off somebody else; Mitchell had his eyes on a Johnnie Ray cry-a-thon while Tommy Steele's role model sights were on no less than Elvis Presley (those sleeve pictures almost review the songs by themselves).And how - Steele's version is more of a chunky Sun Studio's strum than Mitchell's in your face take with Tommy uh-huhing the lyrics until he's in danger of swallowing his tongue. Without Presley's bass depth to give it resonance though, his vocal sounds slightly weedy, a talented impersonator and nothing more. Which is fitting because that's what 90% of British rock and roll was; an approximation of the rhythms from across the Atlantic fed through an attitude raised on milky tea and Lyons cakes instead of grits and gumbo.
Had I been alive and buying records in 1957, then I'm pretty sure I'd have preferred the rush of Steele's version hands down. It's still perfectly listenable, but the intervening years have sprayed it with the sepia tint of a museum piece, making it more something to be appreciated for what it is rather than truly enjoyed (because of what it isn't). But for all that, what I do still find fascinating is the knock on wood percussion that punctuates the track like a hammer on nails some six months before Presley himself used the same device on 'All Shook Up. Maybe the influences weren't all one way traffic after all?
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