Review: Cliff Richard - Cliff Sings (1959)
Tracks: 1) Blue Suede Shoes; 2) The Snake And The Bookworm; 3) I Gotta Know; 4) Here Comes Summer; 5) I’ll String Along With You; 6) Embraceable You; 7) As Time Goes By; 8) The Touch Of Your Lips; 9) Twenty Flight Rock; 10) Pointed Toe Shoes; 11) Mean Woman Blues; 12) I’m Walking; 13) I Don’t Know Why (I Just Do); 14) Little Things Mean A Lot; 15) Somewhere Along The Way; 16) That’s My Desire.
REVIEW
Maybe some of the managers at EMI Columbia had OCD or something, because Cliff Sings is one of the most mathematically precise audience-targeting LPs ever released. Sixteen songs in all, eight on each side, with each of the eights further subdivided in two halves, one consisting of rock’n’roll numbers on which Cliff is backed by the Shadows, one of traditional oldies on which his voice floats above the «Norrie Paramor orchestra» (though the Shadows’ Tony Meehan still plays drums on every single).
The very fact that exactly half of the record is for the kids and the other half is for their parents is nothing to write home about — pretty standard fare for late Fifties’ and early Sixties’ teen idols — but the sequencing is notable. Put all the rock’n’roll on one side, and chances are the second side will never ever be listened to. Put the rock’n’roll and the oldies next to each other, and chances are that just as the angry parents reach the limit of their patience and burst in the kid’s room to smash the record, ‘I’ll String Along With You’ or ‘I Don’t Know Why’ comes along and melts their flaming hearts. The new and the old hand in hand — teenage rebellion soothed by reverence for the elders — conflict and harmony in one soothing package — «supreme versatility», as Norrie Paramor himself proudly states in the liner notes on the back of the LP.
«Supreme» is, of course, a bit of an understatement, given that Cliff and the Shadows’ studio take on rock’n’roll is not too different from the live one — quiet, restrained, and well-disciplined, a far cry from most of the artists who get covered here and hardly an essential listen for anybody other than a music historian. The band is tight, Hank Marvin’s playful and slightly jazzy leads are technically impeccable, and Cliff’s vocal range is astoundingly impressive for a 19-year old, but this is still a strictly diet version of rock’n’roll, with passion and excitement replaced by an almost academic approach to performance — the last thing one really needs when planning to bang one’s head off to a ‘Mean Woman Blues’ or a ‘Twenty Flight Rock’. (For instructive purposes, just play the opening bars of Eddie Cochran and Cliff back-to-back — note how «nasty» the thick and slightly distorted tone on the original is compared to the clean, thin, muffled tone on Cliff’s version).
Melodically, the one song in this section which differs the most from its better known counterpart is ‘I Gotta Know’, which most people probably learn from the slower, doo-woppier version by Elvis; surprisingly, Cliff recorded it before Elvis (probably just a coincidence), and in a version that was musically closer to Elvis’ early rockabilly numbers, with a much more pronounced Nashville spirit. The Elvis version, however, would be far more successful in exploiting the song’s melodic potential, and Cliff’s vocal journey hits far fewer peaks and valleys than Elvis’. Still, if you thought Elvis’ version was way too slow or something, you can find yourself a formal excuse for singling this one here as an outstanding performance — no such luck with anything else, I’m afraid.
As for Cliff singing ‘As Time Goes By’ or ‘That’s My Desire’, I suppose this will largely boil down to how much you enjoy the standards and how much the 19-year old’s sweet-husky voice gets your own juices flowing. There’s nothing particularly wrong with this stuff — technically, Cliff sings it miles better than, say, Paul McCartney ever could — but neither is he Frank Sinatra, and there can hardly be any talk about the man being able to lay down some sort of unique personality touch here: this is all just technically flawless imitation. And when somebody does equally admiring imitations of Carl Perkins and, say, Kitty Kallen (‘Little Things Mean A Lot’), you know that’s all there is to it, really: «Britain Got Talent» is what this is all about. Still, at least there is no denying that Britain really got talent — in 1959, there was arguably nobody else on the island who could find his way into the hearts of the old and the young as smoothly as this kid.