Billy Fury is a well known name and had many hits. He was one of the British singers from the Larry Parnes camp. One of the other Larry Parnes singers, Tommy Steele, has already featured in this series having reached 40 with his penultimate Top 40 hit.
One could therefore expect this would be one of the latter hits for Billy Fury as his popularity was in decline. But it isn't, in fact the opposite is true.
Billy Fury made his chart debut in 1959 reaching 18 with "Maybe Tomorrow". He had one further hit that year with "Margo" but wouldn't reach the Top 10 until his 3rd hit "Collette" which reached 9 in 1960. A further 4 singles followed which all failed to reach the Top 10, with the 4th being this.
The song itself is a bit of a mystery. I've not found anything on The Four Kestrels and the song writers are Ed Lay and Fred Shoemaker who have seemingly only ever wrote this record, nothing else seems to be known about them apart from that.
However, digging a bit deeper it would appear Ed Lay and Fred Shoemaker don't actually exist, and this is a cover of a song of the same name by Marty Robbins, who also wrote it.
With 7 singles and just 1 Top 10 to his name, with the latest only making 40, things may have not looked great for Billy Fury. The week this dropped out the charts, he entered at 41 with his follow up which went down the following week.
However that record was "Halfway To Paradise" which then climbed the charts eventually reaching 3. Then came "Jealousy" when "Halfway To Paradise" was still in the charts, which became his highest charting single at 2. He would reach the Top 10 with 8 of his following 10 singles after "Don't Worry" which would have been the height of his success.
His popularity would eventually decline in the late 60s, but there was an attempted comeback with 3 singles in the early 80s which all missed out on the Top 40, before his death in 1983.
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