Search - Cliff Richard :: Me and My Shadow / Listen to Cliff

One strong album and one, well, ...

Laurence Upton | Wilts, UK | 01/20/2005

(3 out of 5 stars)

"Listen To Cliff! is fairly awful, only the 8 tracks with the Shadows being bearable, and at times the album really becomes unlistenable. It spawned no singles.

The Shadows, however, who had been his backing group since 1958, were the most accomplished instrumental group in the country at the time, and were hit makers in their own right through Apache, Man Of Mystery, FBI and, at the time of this release in 1961, The Frightened City. Presumably, though, they had career plans of their own. Several of the songs on which they appear are homegrown, usually written by Bruce Welch and former drummer Pete Chester, though Hank B Marvin gets one credit. The album is presented in mono.

The reason for buying this release is for Me And My Shadows, Cliff's 1960 album on which he is backed throughout by the Shadows in their classic line-up of Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch, Jet Harris and Tony Meehan, all heard here to good effect, and in welcome stereophonic sound.

Cliff is no Elvis, having a rather soft clean-cut tone and absolutely no sense of dangerous testosterone levels. However, he is well employed on the set of songs chosen here, mostly written by past and present members of the Shadows and embellished by some off-the-peg songs by regular contributors, including one by Elvis writers Ben Weisman and Fred Wise. Ian "Sammy" Samwell, their ex-bass player and manager, who wrote Cliff's debut smash Move It and Dynamite among others, has a hand in half a dozen of the songs including his solo composition I Cannot Find A True Love, an album highlight which graced the B-side of the hit from the album, Gee Whiz it's You (two non-album hit singles preceded it).

If your collection is short on British rock'n'roll albums, this is among the best examples of the genre to have, once you have acquired Billy Fury's The Sound Of Fury, of course"