January Charts: 1959

Here are the new entries ranked from best to worst:

1. Platters - Smoke Gets In Your Eyes

2. Little Richard - Baby Face

3. Buddy Holly - Heartbeat

4. Slim Dusty - A Pub With No Beer

5. Frankie Vaughan - That's My Doll

6. Russ Conway - The World Outside

7. Four Aces - The World Outside

8. The Everly Brothers - Problems

9. Elvis Presley - One Night/I Got Stung

10. Jerry Lee Lewis - High School Confidential

11. Bobby Darin - Queen Of The Hop

12. Ronnie Hilton With The Michael Sammes Singers - The World Outside

13. Paul Anka - (All Of A Sudden) My Heart Sings

14. Duane Eddy And The Rebels - Cannonball

15. Al Saxon - You're The Top Cha

16. Pat Boone - I'll Remember Tonight

17. Joni James - There Must Be A Way

18. Rosemary June - (I'll Be With You) In Apple Blossom Time

19. Cliff Richard And The Drifters - Livin' Lovin' Doll

20. Max Bygraves - (I Love To Play) My Ukelele

21. Alma Cogan - Last Night On The Back Porch

We've reached the end of the 50s which is largely unchartered territory for me. As the decade has gone on we've seen the inevitable increase in quantity of records thanks to more chart positions available. But what about quality?

Well if we start with the positives. The best record, "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" is a well known classic with origins going back to way before the charts began but done in a style which was modern for it's time. The same could be said about "Baby Face" by Little Richard too.

We have an original composition in 3rd place from Buddy Holly which could also be labelled as a well known classic, but we all know what happened to Buddy Holly once we were in February.

Slim Dusty gives us a novelty record with "A Pub With No Beer" which gets it's high placing for the simple fact I find it funny. It was however a 2 year old record by the time it hit the UK charts.

Whilst we have a handful of records that sound modern for their time, I would say around half the records wouldn't sound out of place in 1953. Had the charts remained a Top 12 like 1953 then none of these records would feature because they charted below 12.

However that doesn't always make them bad records. The Frankie Vaughan record "That's My Doll" is one I'd consider old fashioned but is quite a fun record.

Then we have the inevitable record with multiple versions, "The World Outside". I was pleasantly surprised by the Russ Conway version, least of all because everything I've heard of his is a forgettable piano medley. The Four Aces version is almost as good, the Ronnie Hilton version not so good.

We have Cliff Richard charting in January for the first time and despite it being one of the more modern sounding records I find it bad enough to score a zero. It's not as bad as the novelty records from Max Bygraves and Alma Cogan below it.

Had this been a Top 12 then it would have scored higher than 1953. As it's a Top 30 though it doesn't.

Score: 32

As we've reached the end of the decade, time to look at the table so far:

I thought I'd go for a graph this time. The mid-table slump perhaps suggested that rock n roll needed to happen. Not a great deal of variation between the years though.