Now It's Time For A Summer Holiday

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI) 

33SX 1472 (mono) / SCX 3462 (stereo)

(UK, January 1963)

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ME AND MY SHADOWS (in mono and stereo)

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI) 33SX 1261 (mono)

(UK, October 1960)

Cliff Richard's third long-playing and second studio album features him and the Shadows in a series of nicely played and beautifully recorded but mostly relatively undistinguished songs, nine of which were authored by the current Shadows membership or founding member Ian Samwell. With the exception of "I Don't Know," the latter's work tends toward Elvis Presley-style rockers (no surprise from the author of "Move It"), while the songs written by Hank Marvin, Jet Harris, and Bruce Welch are more lyrical. The best song here is "Evergreen Tree," a Ricky Nelson-style ballad, very much reminiscent of "Traveling Man," co-authored by Aaron Schroeder and Wally Gold, on which the Shadows abandon their electric instruments for an all-acoustic spot - a couple more songs like that and this album would have been a smash, and it's not like there isn't some good stuff scattered throughout. 

The Shadows in 1960 (left to right): Bruce Welch (rhythm guitar, vocals); Tony Meehan (drums); Jet Harris (bass, vocals); Hank Marvin (lead guitar, piano, vocal)

The Hank Marvin-Jet Harris-authored "She's Gone" is an unexpectedly strong piece of bluesy rock, at least musically, though the overly complex lyrics leave a little to be desired, and also shows the band trying for (and largely capturing) a sound similar to that on Presley's second album. Richard and company were also clearly trying for a softer sound on this LP, even brushing up against doo wop music in the intro of the beautiful ballad "Tell Me." The appeal of much of the material here is limited, however, as most of it is highly derivative of better American models - even the hard-rocking "Choppin' 'N' Changin'" is pretty formulaic, albeit well played and loud, and "Gee Whiz It's You" is a valiant if somewhat failed attempt at capturing an American sound. "Working After School" would have been better off as a doo wop number, though Marvin's guitar does compensate for the absence of some vocal flourishes. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

The First 2 Albums From The SHADOWS

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI) 
33SX 1374 (mono) / SCX 3414 (stereo)

(UK, September 1961)

Having already scored three major U.K. smashes, the Shadows confirmed their independence from singer Cliff Richard with an eponymous album which rates among the most accomplished British LPs of the pre-Beatles era, and one of the most influential rock instrumental sets ever. An entire generation of would-be guitar heroes learned their licks from Hank Marvin and the Shadows, an accolade which a star-studded, mid-1990s tribute album certainly affirms. But the bespectacled guitarist was not the band's sole star. Drummer Tony Meehan's "See You in My Drums," like bassist Jet Harris' "Jet Black" single of two years previous, is a gripping showcase for his own remarkable talents, while "Baby My Heart" unveils vocal talents which, again, the group's earliest singles alone had illustrated. Modern listeners, schooled in the axeman excesses of more recent years, will doubtlessly find the Shadows impossibly well-mannered and implausibly sedentary. Low-key instrumentals like "Blue Star," "Sleepwalk," and "Nivram" (the inspiration behind Peter Frampton's "Theme From Nivram") scarcely begin to speak of the frenetic abuses which the likes of Jimmy Page, Jeff Beck, and Eric Clapton would one day wring from their instruments. What they did do, however, was illustrate the untapped possibilities of the guitar, a lesson which Marvin might have taken his time in teaching, but which was vivid all the same. (Dave Thompson in AllMusic)

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI)
33SX 1458 (mono) / SCX 3449 (stereo)

(UK, October 1962)

The Shadows' second album is one of the group's better efforts, though not a very hard-rocking one. By this time, the Shadows were moving in a direction similar to that of Cliff Richard, aiming for a wider, more mature audience that was attuned to more than rock & roll. Much of what's here, including "Perfidia," "Spring Is Nearly Here," and "Some Are Lonely," could pass for adult pop music more easily than rock & roll, though there is some of that, what with numbers like "The Rumble," "Tails of a Raggy Tramline" (a "Telstar"-like instrumental), the Hank Marvin-Bruce Welch "Kinda Cool," and Brian Bennett's "Little 'B'" (a great drum showcase that doesn't wear out its welcome at all). That material is augmented by the presence of several country & western-style (!) numbers, by way of the Kennedy-Carr songwriting team ("The Bandit," "South of the Border") and the group's own composition efforts, most notably "1861," which would have been a great theme for a Western television series of the era - the latter showcases lead guitarist Marvin's precise and elegant picking. This repertory seems to have been the group's and producer Norrie Paramor's attempt to tap into the folk music boom of the period, and "The Bandit" is a moment of genius, with the group harmonizing almost like the Kingston Trio. Regardless of the idiom in which they're working, the playing is lean, tight, and melodic, displaying the same qualities that the group brought to Cliff Richard's recordings during the first half-decade of his career. Marvin and Welch play their guitars like they're the same person, and Bennett proves himself perhaps the best full-time band drummer in England at the time, providing tasteful fills and little percussion embellishments that were beyond the ability of most rock & roll drummers at the time, and outdoing himself on "Little 'B'." The one grotesquely weak moment here is the cover of "Bo Diddley" - the band should have known better than to attempt it, and Paramor, if he understood rock & roll at all, should have declined to release it, instead giving the world what has to be the wimpiest version one is ever likely to hear. There are, indeed, a few too many soft instrumental numbers breaking up the rock & roll that does work, but the album holds up. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

THE SHADOWS: "Rhythm & Greens" (EP)

Original released on EP Columbia SEG 8362 (mono)
(UK, November 1964)

The Shadows play these tracks on a short film (32 minutes) directed by Christopher Miles, released September 1964: a pop group of musicians are getting to know four attractive girls on a sunny beach to the sound of their transistor, when the programme changes to a history of the English beaches. The Shadows and the girls enact the drama of mankind down to the present day and into the future, when over- crowding pushes them back into the primeval sea. The EP climbed to nº 8 (two weeks) in the UK charts (a total of 14 weeks)

THE SHADOWS: EP "F.B.I."

Original released on EP Pathé ESDF 1357
(FRANCE, 1960)

No One's Gonna Change Our World

Original released on LP Starline SRS 5013

(UK 1969, December 12)

The Various Artists album "No One's Gonna Change Our World" was put together to raise money for the World Wildlife Fund. Today it is mostly known for its inclusion of the first version of The Beatles' "Across the Universe." This was the only song they released during their tenure that was not originally featured on one of their own records. There are a few other decent tunes on here, including a vibrant version of the Bacharach/David hit "What the World Needs Now is Love" by Cilla Black and Cliff Richard & The Shadows' "In the Country." The Spike Milligan stuff is dead on arrival as are the Rolf Harris and Harry Secombe performances. Clearly a mixed bag but nevertheless an intriguing timepiece capturing the wide world of UK pop circa 1969. (in RateYourMusic)

THE SHADOWS: EP "The Savage"

Original released on EP Columbia ESDF 1404

(FRANCE, 1962)

CLIFF AND THE SHADOWS: EP "A Girl Like You"

Original released on EP Columbia ESDF 1390

(FRANCE, 1961)

CLIFF RICHARD: EP "The Next Time"

Original released on EP Columbia SLEM 2141

(PORTUGAL, 1963)

CLIFF RICHARD: The First Studio Album

Original Released on LP Columbia 33SX 1192 
(UK, November 1959)

Producer Norrie Paramor knew exactly what he was doing. Cliff Richard burst onto the British pop scene with a rocker - his first album, accordingly, rocked just as hard. But when he scored his first number one with a ballad, it only followed that album number two would follow suit. "Cliff Sings" is almost unrecognizable as the successor to the hottest live recording of the late '50s. True, the two sides of the original vinyl open with blistering intent - a vicious "Blue Suede Shoes"; a sneering rockabilly "Twenty Flight Rock." But the heart of the album lies in the biggest ballads, the warmest strings, the most dramatic arrangements - all the things, in fact, for which the veteran Paramor had been renowned before he was nipped by the rock & roll bug. It was not a complete disenfranchisement. A second Carl Perkins song, "Pointed Toe Shoes," a fluid "Mean Woman Blues," and the furious "The Snake and the Bookworm" rocked at least as hard as past 45s "Dynamite" and "High Class Baby." And when the last dance loomed at the youth club, George Gershwin's "Embraceable You" was always going to get a lot more couples smooching than some raucous one-two-three o'clock rocker. But a perfunctory "As Time Goes By" and an anemic "Here Comes Summer" were surely included as much because Paramor enjoyed rearranging them, than because they were crucial additions to Cliff's canon, and asked whether the album struck Cliff's existing audience as a disappointment, at the time, it probably was. Certainly the bright young things who sent "Move It" soaring up the British chart would have had little time for the likes of "Little Things Mean a Lot," "I Don't Know Why," or "I'll String Along With You"; might not have been instantly impressed by the newfound rich warmth of the Richard tones. But that audience hadn't exactly broken its neck buying Cliff's post-"Move It" rockers either, so what did they expect? Rock & roll was still young, but its heartiest practitioners were growing older by the day. Cliff knew that if he was to survive in show business, he would need to start adapting to a far wider audience than the rockers would ever allow him to embrace. "Cliff Sings" was the first day of the rest of his career.

The First One Was" Live"

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI) 33SX 1147

(UK, April 1959)

Cliff Richard was England's most successful 1950s homegrown rock & roll star, although his credentials have long been suspect, a result of his shift to a softer sound in the wake of "Livin' Doll" in late 1959. But on this album, newly reissued on CD in 1998 in both its stereo and mono versions on one disc, there's no credibility problem - he sings hard and the band plays even harder. Richard and the Shadows (who were still billed under their original name, the Drifters, on the first pressing's jacket, reproduced here) performed live at EMI's Studio No. 1 on February 9 and 10, 1959, in front of several hundred screaming fans, an audio precursor to the mock concert "played" by the Beatles at the end of "A Hard Day's Night", except that there's nothing "mock" about this show. White rock & roll's first professionally recorded live album is a red-hot document of England's first world-class rock & roll phenomenon. At his best here, which is 95-percent of the show, he sings like a hard-rocking Ricky Nelson with a little bit more power and depth than that description implies, while the Shadows show themselves to be the most professional, if not quite the wildest, rock band in England at that time. Lead guitarist Hank B. Marvin has a genuine American sound, with perhaps more embellishment and flamboyance than a lot of American players might have bothered with, while Bruce Welch, Jet Harris, and Tony Meehan reveal themselves as a solid rhythm section. They also rip through numbers like "Whole Lotta Shakin' Goin' On," not very much slower than a lot of punk bands 20 years later might have done it. Apart from the inclusion of Ritchie Valens' "Donna" (virtually a tribute, Valens having died a week earlier in a much-lamented plane crash), there isn't a slow or soft number here. Interestingly, the stereo mix (which only appeared as fragmentary tracks in countries other than England, most notably Holland) may be preferred - the stereo isn't primitive binaural, although the bass and drums, with Richard's voice, are centered in one channel, and the guitars on the other; obviously, this was a live recording, so there was bound to be some bleeding of the sound, thus making this concert disc a bit more "modern" sounding than many of EMI's other early stereo efforts. And Jet Harris' bass and Tony Meehan's drums are certainly more prominent on the stereo tracks. (Bruce Eder in AllMusic)

Dancing On The Beach With CLIFF RICHARD & THE SHADOWS (And Lots Of Girls Too...)

Original released on LP Columbia (EMI) 33SX 1628

(UK, July 1964)

This Cliff Richard album served as the soundtrack to the movie "Wonderful Life". Re-mastered and full of memorabilia relating to the film, the CD includes a 'History of the Movie' essay, a film synopsis, behind-the-scenes notes and a discography. As with previous Cliff re-masters, the CD features bonus tracks: "Look Don't Touch", "Do You Remember" (alternate version), "Wonderful Life" (alternate version) and "Angel" (non-album import A-side).