Christmas week proper, or very nearly, and again. We get charts that reflect it. Thankfully, we've got lyrics this week, which I always appreciate!
I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus - The Beverley Sisters (Peaked at No. 6)
Another version of this song, and it couldn't be more different to Jimmy Boyd's version. It's still not the version people actually know, of course - this version was a more home-grown British affair, and it's odd to hear a version of the song I completely didn't know. At least with Jimmy's, I'd definitely heard it once or twice. This is an unknown, a cover of a song you hear other versions of pretty much annually, but only for a very limited span of time.
The Beverley sisters - the wonderfully named Joy, Babs and Teddie - don't make much effort to sound cute and kidd-y, which is good, as they were in their thirties at this point. There's a token effort at the start to create the fiction of a sister whispering to wake her other twin sisters up - setting the scene, as it were - but that and the lyrics aside, it's not too bad.
We got some other nice touches at the start to make up for the whispering, too, especially the little piano snatch of Jingle Bells, which comes back to round off at the end, and pops up sporadically in the middle. It's fun, and fairly subtle.
The Beverley Sisters, like Jimmy, set a very slow pace, once they start singing, unfortunately, and while their harmonies are undoubtedly lovely, they're a bit on the anaemic side, very high pitched and thin, particularly once the brass comes in to provide a contrast. It's substantial enough to make their singing sound weak amd frail.
There's also something off about the delivery of certain words. It's like the very American lyrics didn't sit great with a British accent and we end up with some very odd pronunciations, especially "last" and "daddy". Unsettling.
Crying in the Chapel - Lee Lawrence (7)
I thought I knew what to expect here. I knew the song, though I didn't know Lee Lawrence. I thought I could predict how I would feel about it. I was incorrect, turns out.
It's the same song Elvis will croon in a bit, but Lee's version starts out glacially slow and very grandiose. Lee Lawrence draws out the word "chaaaa-pel" in a particularly unlikely way, every time it comes up, which is fairly frequently. A quick Google tells me that Lee Lawrence was born to a family of opera singers, which isn't a huge surprise, to be honest.
Theres also a very echoey, high-pitched ghost-choir of backing singers. The overall effect is chilling, in a bad way. It's definitely more creepy than it needs to be, and I think the heftiness of the lyrics don't do much to help, even if they're about being happy and grateful.
I quite like the song itself, that said. It was apparently written by an American who had back problems and prayed for healing and erote this after literally crying in a Chapel after successful back surgery. It's in a category, along with Answer Me, of religious pop, the likes lf which you just wouldn't get today, and you know what, I enjoy the variety.
It doesn't quite convince me here. I think I prefer Elvis' more laid-back version. It feels like it captures the simplicity of coming to church and singing a bit better. Whereas this is a bit too grandiose for my tastes. Also the length of "chaaa-pel" gets me every time.
There's also a Big Old Ending, which ruins just about every song it crops up in. Sorry, Lee!
Ricochet - Joan Regan (8)
A complete unknown, both in terms of the song and the artist, but you know what, I do like this! It's peppy, sassy and has some nice lyrics too. It's a cover of a Teresa Brewer song, apparently, but this is the version that made it big in the UK - a home-grown cover artist, then, just like Lee Lawrence.
It's basically Joan Regan singing about how she's going to dump her love because of his tendency to "ricochet" off to pastures green, but rather than being broken up or angry, she just seems to blithely shrug it off and let him go. It's deliciously petty and dismissive of him.
To be fair, there's a degree of "I should have known" to it. We hear early doors, for example that "They warned me when you kissed me / Your love would ricochet" but she clearly backed herself ("I thought that I could hold you / With all my many charms"). And you know what, I love that for Joan. No false modesty here.
The chorus is fast and satiafying to sing, if a bit of a to gue twister, as Joan sing about how "I can't live on ricochet romance / No, no, not me, / If you're gonna ricochet baby, I'm gonna set you free!" What a casual, gracious way to talk about dumping someone, I love it!
The second to last verse is the beat bit, though, as Joan sings about how she wanted a quiet wedding, he rejected that: "I whispered two was company, but you preferred a crowd". It's a little, specific detail that's just horrible, and I love how dismissive she gets, describing how he buzzed round the other girls in attendance, and how "when you finished buzzin', cousin, you buzzed right back to me." Using "cousin" here is so subtly scathing and I love it.
Throughout, the tune is cheery and Joan's voice and delivery is confident, chipper and just good fun. I rate this song, both for the sentiment and for its general vibe. I haven't mentioned the little jazzy clarinet flourishes, either, or the brass hits, or the oom-pah brass bassline, or the little drum fills at the end of some lines. All very good.
Well, each of those three songs was very different, but all three did encapsulate a pattern thay seems to have been common in the early 50s at least whereby an American original song became a hit once a British act covered it. I wonder if it was a distaste for American artists that did it? Or was it more just about what was available in UK record stores? In some cases the original also made a chart run, but I can only imagine that UK recording would have been more readily available, so might have sold more simply on those grounds. Interesting.
