Number of weeks? 6
What else was going on? From Here To Eternity wins 8 prizes at the Academy Awards; Joseph McCarthy's hearings start to turn their attention to the military
The second I pressed "play" to listen to this song for the first time, I had a fairly gut-wrenching emotional reaction - one that I couldn't quite place. Something about this song was so familiar. It was only after reflecting for most of the day that it came to me. This was a song that I distinctly remember my (sadly deceased) grandmother singing to me when I was very little. I had never given that thought any song over the years, and certainly didn't imagine that it had been a number one single over a decade before my dad was even born. When I started out this project, I didn't fully anticipate a song from this era having such a profound emotional effect on me.
Attempting to set my emotions aside for a moment, I tried to approach the Stargazers' second number 1 single with an objective ear. The song itself was written by Meredith Wilson, who is perhaps most famous for writing the book, lyrics and music to The Music Man. The Stargazers version, well, fails to do this pedigree justice. It's a recording mainly played for laughs, with Marie Benson's vocal becoming downright screechy at points in her solo parts. The harmonies barely come together and the whole thing is a raucous mess of vocals and an extremely clunky piano arrangement.
Consulting other members of the family about my memory of the song I haven't found much corroboration, and even now I'm questioning its veracity. Either
way, as soon as this song started, my grandma instantly sprang to mind. If I'm correct, then it's a fairly powerful reminder of how the songs someone sings when you meet them as a child can become very firmly welded to your memories of them. After a bit of youtube searching, I found a far more melodious version of the song by Nancy Sinatra. I'm going to choose to believe that this was the version that my grandma was (perhaps) singing when I was small.
What happened next? This is the last number 1 that The Stargazers attained in their own right. The group attained five more top twenty singles before they largely went on to become backing singers, singing on Petula Clarke's early recordings. They were voted the most popular vocal group by readers of the New Musical Express for five years running. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that it will be well over a year before another group hit the top spot on our journey.
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