| Master-No: | 22 106 |
| Label: | Columbia |
| Country: | GER |
| Release Date: | 1962-2-27 |
| Artist: | Shadows |
| A-Side: | Wonderful Land |
| B-Side: | Stars Fell On Stockton |
| Beschreibung: | Composer A: Jerry Lordan
Length: Matrix No: 7 XCA 25 859 Composer B: Bruce Welch - Jett Harris - Hank Marvin - Brian Bennett Length: Matrix No: 7 XCA 25 860 Location: Abbey Road Studios, London Date: Februar 1962 Musicians: Hank Marvin (lg) Bruce Welch (rg) Jet Harris (bg) Tony Meehan (drms) Norrie Paramor (strings, fr. horn) from: A pocket Guide to Shadow Music - Malcolm Campbell WONDERFUL LAND, another classic from the pen of Jerry Lordan, is now rightly recognised as one of the all-time greats. He wrote the bulk of the tune very quickly, but the middle-eight took a little longer. “It took me months to do. I just couldn’t get the middle. I used to try playing it regularly and then one day I got it.” The disc topped the chart for eight weeks and it was almost fourteen years before Queen’s ‘Bohemian Rhapsody’ bettered that performance. Sales eventually topped the million mark, but at the time the record caused a storm of controversy and outraged the purists. Jet and Tony appeared on the disc because it had been recorded almost a year previously. Norrie Paramor had taken the unissued recording and dubbed a beautiful, soaring string arrangement onto it (Tony Meehan overdubbed the tom-tom and a little extra drumming on 6 July 1961). The result was highly effective — but opinion was divided. Duane Eddy had used strings on ‘Because They’re Young’, but the practice of marrying rock groups and string orchestras was hardly commonplace. The public was in no doubt though, as the disc’s chart history shows. Years later Jerry Lordan himself recalled the background: “The recording was made but it lacked something and it was shelved, and then Tony Meehan suggested that the ideal thing might be, as a nice contrast, using Hank’s lead guitar, electric guitar, but with a big string orchestra behind, and Norrie Paramor agreed”. The idealistic stance adopted by Hank Marvin in an interview with NME in November 1960, of not issuing Singles with strings attached on the ground that it would not be possible to replicate the sound on stage, was overtaken by events. WONDERFUL LAND still holds the chart record for weeks at No.1 for a guitar instrumental. That record has now stood for over forty years, and it’s unlikely ever to be broken. Jerry Lordan often merely titled his compositions as numbers to begin with — titles came later. In this particular case, a biblical title, ‘Genesis’ was hit upon in due course (the similarly majestic-sounding ‘Theme From ‘Exodus” was a UK hit for Semprini a couple of months before our tune was recorded; as it happened, The Ventures recorded a ‘Genesis’, this a dramatic-sounding piece penned by orchestra leader Hank Levine, for a USA topside in 1962!). However, events took a different turn, as Lordan told Rob Bradford in 1990: “During a playback someone, an engineer I think, said that the melody reminded them of America to which someone replied: ‘Ah yes, America, a wonderful land.’ I thought ‘That’s it! That’s the title!’” A February release: in the course of the Kingston performance of Wednesday 7 March 1962 (see entry under 2002 below) Bruce Welch referred to this Single as having been “released last Friday”. He was mistaken. The record charted on 1 March, but was released by Columbia the previous week. The B-side, the first tune that Brian Bennett recorded and wrote with The Shadows, was a jaunty little number featuring chirpy whistling sections and crisp rim-shots from him. Jet Harris: “We got the giggles when we did STARS FELL ON STOCKTON. If you get four blokes trying to whistle around one mike, all facing each other, well, it’s not going to work. We took about 200 takes on that one!” Its working title was ‘Gooney’s Slade’. No doubt it was their Goonish reference to the whistling and passing similarity of this number to the theme from the surreal Anthony Newley late 1960 ITV television series ‘The Strange World of Gurney Slade’. The Single [titled ‘Gurney Slade’] by Max Harris charted at No.11 in December 1960. The eventual tongue-in-cheek title remoulds that of the 1934 piece by Mitchell Parish and Frank Perkins, ‘Stars Fell On Alabama’. Hank Marvin: “No special significance in the title — we might just as well have called it ‘Moonlight In Wigan’!” Barry Jones, researcher for an exhibition celebrating Stockton’s Old Globe theatre, reported in 1999: “Bruce Welch of The Shadows ... informed us that not only did the band compose their famous B-side STARS FELL ON STOCKTON here, but also wrote much of the music for the Cliff Richard movie ‘Summer Holiday’ while in pantomime at The Globe!” |
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