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The second British number one (and the first from a solo female, '(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window'? is a step up in quality from The Stargazers but only insofar as it's better to get shot in one knee than both. Patti Page was the first to record this though her version has always struck me as far too sophisticated for what is essentially a song aimed at kids. Roza's vocal has far more of a smile about it and the 'ruff ruff' doggie noises are played more for laughs here too, all which makes it far more endearing that Page's cut. Roza herself had star qualities in spades - with a warm voice and looks falling in-between Judy Garland and Sophia Loren she should have been bigger. In any event, she deserves a better epitaph than this; for something so simplistic and trite the song has proved surprisingly durable, going on to become a standard of sorts and an albatross of little more than a statistic for Roza. There's always room at number one for a novelty tune and this is better than most but still, is all this really worth the wear of actually compiling these charts in the first place?
On a trivia note, this is by all accounts the rarest UK number one for collectors to track down in decent condition, allegedly because the children it was bought for were none too gentle in their handling of it.
The first home-grown number one on the charts, The Stargazers were a vocal group with a dual operation as both as backing singers for hire and a recording act in their own right, like on this. 'Broken Wings' was a popular song in 1953 in that it charted no less than three times; Art and Dottie Todd were first up, followed by Dickie Valentine. Art and Dottie play it with a straight bat, Dickie drags it out preposterously as if he was getting paid by the syllable and The Stargazers.....well their version is the oddest of the lot.
Rationing didn't end in Britain until 1954, but I wasn't aware that it also extended to our musical output - the main selling point of 'Broken Wings' is the pretty melody, and on this version its carried sparely on the white notes of a very reedy organ, only broken by horn solo that sounds more like a paper and comb. Compared to even the worst that America had to offer in 1953 it's cheap sounding and outdated in the extreme, a finding not helped by a vocal ensemble that although pushed to the fore, remain as plummily detached from it all as a period radio announcer reading the shipping forecast.
'Broken Wings' has the same curious charm as a higher quality novelty out of a more pricey Christmas cracker - a bemused talking point at first but nothing you want to hang on to; if this is the best that Britain could do then no wonder Eddie and Perry were filling their boots until we got our act together.
As a postscript, one of The Stargazers went on to father the lead singer from Johnny Hates Jazz. Make of that what you will.
In which a London banker gives up the good life to travel to what sounds like Kong island to marry a native woman who lives on coconuts and fish in a ceremony attended by baboons and elephants. On paper it sounds pure Victorian music hall but in truth it's a product of 1952 America, an era that saw the craze for a genre that came to be called 'Exotica' - that is, a safe, middle class idea of the culture and music of Oceanic countries that rustled up a hint of the forbidden in the comfort of your own home.
Of course, at heart it was pure fantasy that bore as much relation to reality as a John Wayne western, but it enjoyed an armchair safe popularity and within the genre Les Baxter's 1952 album 'Ritual of the Savage' is a benchmark with Martin Denny, Esquivel and Yma Sumac always getting honourable mentions in dispatches. 'She Wears Red Feathers' is part and parcel of the same though this time it's played for laughs.
Or perhaps more accurately, it's played for a patronising smugness that drips from every bar of the tribal musical flourishes to the "GEE WILLIKERS, aren't I just the craziest!!!!" tone ('cocynuts' indeed) that reaches it's nadir when Mitchell brings his exotic prize home for the 'boys at the London bank' to goggle at in amazement as she drinks tea with the white folk. This all may have worked had there been at least a spark of humour in there somewhere, but time has given it a nasty edge that a postmodern critic could dismiss as popularising ethnic imperialism but which I'd rather dismiss as 'annoying drek'.
An insanely popular star in the forties, Perry Como's own brand of crooning was already starting to sound a bit old and in the way by 1953, and in that respect this can be taken as an attempt to give a rusty image a fresh lick of paint. As a song, 'Don't Let The Stars Get In Your Eyes' has a tricksy meter that can fly with a good humoured zip when pouring from the right mouth. Como, however, tries to bend the tune to his own style of delivery and unfortunately the song is too stubborn to yield (in much the way 'Long Tall Sally' would soon refuse to yield to Pat Boone). The parping horns and matey joshing of the backing vocals try to raise it above ground level, but ultimately this is a dull version that's more Perry Coma than Como. And yes, hands up that's a rotten pun, but this is a rotten single so they kind of deserve each other.
After the satellite bounce of Kay Starr, the former Mr Elizabeth Taylor brings us back down to terra firma with a treacly squelch of a ballad that would have got a pat on the back from Al Martino. Knee deep in self pity, the one time Mr Debbie Reynolds has lost the woman he loves to a new husband and rather than letting go, he spends his days hanging around outside their house remembering the good times they shared ("I pass your house with misty eyes, there stands the gate to paradise") while a counterpoint mass of backing singers egg him on in his mildly stalker-ish activities.
The problem with 'Outside Of Heaven' is the complete lack of grit - though overwrought in tone, the ex Mr Connie Francis sounds more like he's singing for his supper club than genuinely busted up inside, and though it's meant to provide an 'ahhhhh, love never dies' kind of statement, his lack of emotional involvement just makes him seem creepily obsessive; the only emotion shining through here is the retarded kind.
To be fair, Eddie is giving his fans what they wanted and as far as that goes he's bound by the then popular 'Big Book Of Ballads' template with the overloaded backing strings being just part and parcel of the same. That, however, doesn't make this any more palatable to modern ears and to mine, 'Outside Of Heaven' is the epitome of all that was 'bad' about early fifties music in the same the way that Kajagoogoo sum up all that was bad about the eighties.
Well now this is more like it - the swing band backing to 'Comes A-Long A-Love' is lively enough to begin with and a lazy or lesser singer would have hidden behind it's bounce and ridden it in comfort, but Starr climbs straight into the saddle and quickly bests it into second place with a rapid fire vocal of verve with just enough predatory snarl to rough up the smooth edges. Very much a singer's song, you simply can't imagine a Cheryl Cole sticking their heads so far above the parapet as Starr does on this, and in so doing she manages to deliver one of the most modern (and joyous) sounding songs we're going to come across in quite a while. Nice one. On a trivia note, Kay Starr would be the only native American Indian to score a UK number one.
Another much covered song, 'You Belong To Me' had done the rounds before ending up with Jo Stafford, a pop cum jazz jack of all trades who perhaps spread herself too thinly to stand out with distinction in any one genre. As a song, it's the whole of Sinatra's 'Come Fly With Me' album crammed into three minutes; "Fly the ocean in a silver plane, see the jungle when its wet with rains" - the far flung exotic imagery was slightly cynically tailor made for an early fifties public just getting to grips with the expansion of commercial airlines and the opportunity for travel that came with it.
As you'd expect from a singer of Stafford's reputation, her vocal rings clear as a bell throughout, though there's a stilted hesitancy in her delivery that makes her sound more concerned with her diction than putting any real wallop behind it. But then again, the prim and proper understatement of the orchestra backing isn't conducive to the passion gloves coming off and I'd have liked this a whole lot better if that xylophone player had been made to sit on his hands. In short, it's a solid performance of a solid song that would have gone down smooth at the sort of dinner parties I'm not invited to, but it's never going to set my heather on fire.
The second British number one (and the first from a solo female, '(How Much Is) That Doggie in the Window'? is a step up in quality from The Stargazers but only insofar as it's better to get shot in one knee than both. Patti Page was the first to record this though her version has always struck me as far too sophisticated for what is essentially a song aimed at kids. Roza's vocal has far more of a smile about it and the 'ruff ruff' doggie noises are played more for laughs here too, all which makes it far more endearing that Page's cut. Roza herself had star qualities in spades - with a warm voice and looks falling in-between Judy Garland and Sophia Loren she should have been bigger. In any event, she deserves a better epitaph than this; for something so simplistic and trite the song has proved surprisingly durable, going on to become a standard of sorts and an albatross of little more than a statistic for Roza. There's always room at number one for a novelty tune and this is better than most but still, is all this really worth the wear of actually compiling these charts in the first place? 
