Benny Hill

Alfred Hawthorne "Benny" Hill (21 January 1924 – 20 April 1992) was an English comedian and actor, best remembered for his television programme The Benny Hill Show, an amalgam of slapstick, burlesque, and double entendre in a format that included live comedy and filmed segments, with him at the focus of almost every segment.
Hill was a prominent figure in British culture for nearly four decades. His show proved to be one of the great success stories of television comedy and was among the most-watched programmes in the UK; the audience peaked at more than 21 million in 1971.

Alfred Hawthorne Hill was born on 21 January 1924 in Southampton, on the south coast of England. His father, Alfred Hill (later manager of a surgical appliance shop that mostly sold condoms), and grandfather, Henry Hill, had both been circus clowns. After leaving school, Hill worked at Woolworths, as a milkman, a bridge operator, a driver, and a drummer before becoming assistant stage manager with a touring revue. He was called up in 1942 and trained as a mechanic in the British Army. He served as a mechanic, truck driver, and searchlight operator in Normandy after September 1944 and later transferred to the Combined Services Entertainment division before the end of the war.
Inspired by the "star comedians" of British music hall shows, Hill set out to make his mark in show business. He changed his name to "Benny" in homage to his favourite comedian, Jack Benny.
 After the Second World War, Hill worked as a performer on radio. His first appearance on television was in 1950. In addition, he attempted a sitcom anthology, Benny Hill, which ran from 1962 to 1963, in which he played a different character in each episode. In 1964, he played Nick Bottom in an all-star TV film production of William Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. He also had a radio programme lasting for three series called Benny Hill Time, on BBC Radio's Light Programme, from 1964 to 1966. It was a topical show, such as a March 1964 episode which featured James Pond, 0017, in "From Moscow with Love" and his version of "The Beatles". He played a number of characters in the series, such as Harry Hill and Fred Scuttle.
Hill's film credits include parts in five full-length feature films including Who Done It? (1956), Light Up the Sky! (1960), Those Magnificent Men in their Flying Machines (1965), Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968), in which he played the relatively straight role of the Toymaker, and The Italian Job (1969). He also made two short-subject films, The Waiters (1969) and Eddie in August (1970), the latter being a TV production. Finally, a clip-show film spin-off of his early Thames Television shows (1969–73), called The Best of Benny Hill (1974), was a theatrically released compilation of Benny Hill Show episodes.
Hill's audio recordings include "Gather in the Mushrooms" (1961), "Pepys' Diary" (1961), "Transistor Radio" (1961), "Harvest of Love" (1963), and "Ernie (The Fastest Milkman in the West)", which was the UK Singles Chart Christmas number-one single in 1971. He also appeared in the 1986 video of the song "Anything She Does" by the band Genesis.More on Benny Here.

Here is "Gather in The Mushrooms" From 1961 Enjoy

Sonny James "Apache"

Apache

Jimmie Hugh Loden (May 1, 1928 – February 22, 2016), known professionally as Sonny James, was an American country music singer and songwriter best known for his 1957 hit, "Young Love". Dubbed the "Southern Gentleman" for his congenial manner, his greatest success came from ballads about the trials of love. James had 72 country and pop charted releases from 1953 to 1983, including an unprecedented five-year streak of 16 straight Billboard #1 singles among his 26 #1 hits. Twenty-one of his albums reached the country top ten from 1964 to 1976. James was given a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame in 1961 and co-hosted the first Country Music Association Awards Show in 1967. He was inducted into the Country Music Hall of Fame in 2007.

 Sonny James: 
RIP 1928 - 2016 aged 87

The solid guitar instrumental version of *Apache meant fame and fortune for British group The Shadows when the song topped the UK Singles Chart for weeks in mid-1960.  Composed by Jerry Lordan it is in the list of the 100 Greatest Guitar Tracks. The public raved and the song became a worldwide hit. Even until today it is still being played, revived, mixed and re-mixed by many different bands and artistes.

 Many groups like The Ventures, Xavier Cugat and his Orchestra, Surfaris, Aces Combo, artistes like Duane Eddy, Jorgen Ingmann, Bert Weedon and Chet Atkins covered it.

• Jorgen Ingmann is a Danish guitarist who had the first American hit with "Apache," which was the top song in the UK the previous year and later made its way into many hip-hop songs as a popular sample.
  
  The song was written by a British performer named Jerry Lordan, who had three UK Top 40 hits in 1960, but didn't record "Apache." A guitarist named Bert Weedon first recorded it, but it was The Shadows' "Apache" that was first released and became a UK #1 hit for five weeks in 1960. The Shadows met Jerry Lordan when they appeared on the same bill of a 1960 tour, and they heard Lordan perform the song on his ukulele.
  
  The Shadows version didn't make it in America, where the group had little promotion and a lawsuit from an American R&B group also called The Shadows. It was Ingmann who finally delivered the US hit with this song. Ingmann hadn't been playing this style long - he played Jazz guitar in dance halls before he discovered the style of Les Paul in the 1950s. While his version was the US hit, The Shadows recording with guitar work from Hank Marvin is generally considered the definitive version.
• UK guitarist Bert Weedon originally recorded this song, but his Top Rank Record Company procrastinated over its release, and Jerry Lordan passed it to The Shadows. Bert Weedon's version was released shortly after The Shadows' came out, but his only reached #24.
• The Shadows were Cliff Richard's group in the 1960s, and Richard played the Chinese drum that sounded like bongos on The Shadows version. In 1000 UK #1 Hits by Jon Kutner and Spencer Leigh he says "Jorgen Ingmann put in a few tricky bits, but essentially it was a cover job. If the Shads had made the charts there with 'Apache,' things might have been very different for us."
• One Ingmann hit with this song, the floodgates opened for cover versions. Sonny James added vocals to the song and took it to #87 later in 1961. The Ventures released their cover in 1963 and included it on albums released '65, '67, '71, '75, '77, '80 and '82. Other charting covers in America were by Davie Allen & The Arrows (#64 1965) and The Sugarhill Gang (#53 1982).
  
  The most influential cover was by The Incredible Bongo Band, whose 1973 version included an extended drum break that gave the New York DJ Kool Herc the idea of looping that section of the song, creating the first breakbeat. This "break" became one of the most popular samples in hip-hop, appearing in songs by LL Cool J, Grandmaster Flash and The Furious Five, MC Hammer and many others.
• Three years after recording this, Jorgen Ingmann with his wife Grethe won the Eurovision Song Contest with the song "Dansevise" (Dancing Tune). They were representing their home country of Denmark. The couple met in 1955, where married in 1956 and got divorced in 1975.
• This was a rare cover of a UK hit that made it into the US Top 10. Through most of the 1960s, it was usually the other way around, with British bands importing American hits.
   
  Here is The Sonny James Lyric Version From 1961 Enjoy.
  
   

Judy Collins

Here’s a collection of lesser-known originals of stone-cold pop classics, and quite a bit of background information to most of them. In fact, I suggest you make yourself a good cup of coffee, settle back and be engrossed in the stories of some of the most famous songs in pop history.

Suzanne

 Several of Leonard Cohen’s most famous songs were first recorded by folk warbless Judy Collins: Sisters Of Mercy; Bird On A Wire; Since You’ve Asked; Hey, That’s No Way to Say Goodbye – and Suzanne. The song was born in Montréal, landmarks of which are described at length in the song. Cohen already had a chord pattern in place which he then married to a poem he had written about Suzanne Verdal — the beautiful wife of the sculptor Armand Vaillancourt, a friend of Cohen’s — whom he fancied but, as the lyrics have it, touched only in his mind. One night in 1966, a year before Cohen released his debut album, he played the finished song over the telephone to his friend Judy Collins, who was already a star on the folk scene. Duly enchanted, Collins recorded the song for her In My Life album, which was released in November 1966.
Here is "Suzanne" From 1966 Enjoy.

Eddie Cochran

Ray Edward "Eddie" Cochran (October 3, 1938 – April 17, 1960) was an American musician. Cochran's rockabilly songs, such as "Twenty Flight Rock", "Summertime Blues", "C'mon Everybody" and "Somethin' Else", captured teenage frustration and desire in the mid-1950s and early 1960s. He experimented with multitrack recording, distortion techniques, and overdubbing even on his earliest singles. He played the guitar, piano, bass, and drums. His image as a sharply dressed and good-looking young man with a rebellious attitude epitomized the stance of the 1950s rocker, and in death he achieved an iconic status. Cochran was involved with music from an early age, playing in the school band and teaching himself to play blues guitar. In 1954, he formed a duet with the guitarist Hank Cochran (no relation), and when they split the following year, Eddie began a songwriting career with Jerry Capehart. His first success came when he performed the song "Twenty Flight Rock" in the film The Girl Can't Help It, starring Jayne Mansfield. Soon afterwards, he signed a recording contract with Liberty Records. Cochran died at age 21 after a road accident, while travelling in a taxi in Chippenham, Wiltshire, during his British tour in April 1960, having just performed at Bristol's Hippodrome theatre. Though his best-known songs were released during his lifetime, more of his songs were released posthumously. In 1987, Cochran was inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. His songs have been recorded by a wide variety of recording artists. More Here
Here is "A Pocketfull of Hearts" "B" Side of "Jeanie Jeanie Jeanie" From 1958 Enjoy.

The Crickets

Here’s a collection of lesser-known originals of stone-cold pop classics, and quite a bit of background information to most of them. In fact, I suggest you make yourself a good cup of coffee, settle back and be engrossed in the stories of some of the most famous songs in pop history.

 I Fought The Law

Thought by many to be an original Clash song, the more knowledgeable will refer to I Fought The Law as a Bobby Fuller Four song. But even that was a cover of the 1960 song by the Crickets, Buddy Holly’s erstwhile band. Written by Sonny Curtis, one can almost hear Holly sing it. In the event, the song made no great impact until Fuller’s 1964 recording. Fuller was found dead just as the single was becoming a hit (some say suicide, some allege foul play – few suicides involve beating one’s self up before imbibing petrol). The session drummer on the Fuller version, rumour has it, was a young Barry White. A generation later, it became something of a pub-punk classic as spat out by Strummer on the Clash version.The song was written in 1958 by Sonny Curtis, and recorded in 1959 when he joined the Crickets, taking the place of the late Buddy Holly on guitar. Joe B. Mauldin and Jerry Allison continued their positions on the standup bass and drums, respectively, while Earl Sinks filled the role for vocals. The song was on their 1960 LP, In Style with the Crickets, and the following year appeared as the b-side of their single, "A Sweet Love". The song never received any airplay. Milwaukee's Paul Stefen and the Royal Lancers covered the song in 1962; it provided them with a local hit, but it never made the national charts. In 1964, Sammy Masters recorded his cover of the song. That same year, the song was recorded by Bobby Fuller and his band on his own Exeter label in El Paso, which solidified the band's popularity in the West Texas area with one of his biggest local hits. The Crickets were an American rock and roll band from Lubbock, Texas, formed by singer-songwriter Buddy Holly in the 1950s. Their first hit record, "That'll Be the Day", released in 1957, peaked at number three on the Billboard Top 100 chart on September 16. The sleeve of their first album, The "Chirping" Crickets, shows the band lineup at the time: Holly on lead vocals and lead guitar, Niki Sullivan on rhythm guitar, Jerry Allison on drums, and Joe Mauldin on bass. The Crickets helped set the template for subsequent rock bands, such as the Beatles, with their guitar-bass-drums lineup and the talent to write most of their own material. After Holly's death in 1959 the band continued to tour and record with other band members into the 21st century.
Here is "I Fought The Law" From 1960 Enjoy.

Chase Webster

Here’s a collection of lesser-known originals of stone-cold pop classics, and quite a bit of background information to most of them. In fact, I suggest you make yourself a good cup of coffee, settle back and be engrossed in the stories of some of the most famous songs in pop history."Moody River" is a number-one Billboard Hot 100 song from June 1961 performed by Pat Boone.

It was written by and originally performed by country rockabilly singer Chase Webster

(real name Gary Daniel Bruce, not to be confused with Gary Bruce of the Knack). Webster was a labelmate of Boone's at Dot Records. This was the title track from one of Boone's better-selling albums. Boone sang this song as if he were in pain. It was covered some years later by Johnny Burnette in 1962, also Frank Sinatra and Johnny Rivers. In August 2009, John Fogerty covered the song in the album entitled The Blue Ridge Rangers Rides Again.The song tells the story of a man who goes to meet his love at the river, by the old oak tree, and finds that she has committed suicide. A note on the riverbank explains that she has cheated on him and that "No longer can I live with this hurt and this sin. I just couldn't tell you that guy was just a friend." He then looks into the river and sees his own reflection on the river looking back, ever hauntingly, at him. He is the "lonely, lonely face just lookin' back at me". So with "Tears in his eyes, and a prayer on his lips, and the glove of his lost love, at his fingertips".
Here is The Original "Moody River" From 1961 Enjoy.