What was the number one song in the UK on 11th January 1957?

By Hayley Beasley Dye

Well, if we didn’t have enough of Guy Mitchell reaching number one over and over again with this song, here’s Tommy Steele briefly steele-ing (d’ya get it?) the top spot in between with the same song. Britain’s first teen idol, Tommy was at number for just 1 week with his version.

It’s very similar to Guy’s version and I think I slightly prefer it to this one of Tommy’s. It is a great song, but all you 50s cats were obsessed with it, weren’t you? Did you not get fed up of this song repeatedly being at number one in one form or another? Let’s see if we have a different song at number one in my next post…I’m not holding out much hope though…

Wikipedia

Two other charting versions of the song were released almost simultaneously with Mitchell’s, one by the English singer Tommy Steele (with the Steelmen) and the other (recorded before Mitchell covered it) by US country singer Marty Robbins.

Tommy Steele’s version of “Singing the Blues” made number 1 in the UK Singles Chart for one week on 11 January 1957, sandwiched by two of the weeks that Guy Mitchell’s version of the same song topped the charts. Steele’s recording of the song was not a chart success in the US.

The Marty Robbins version made it to number one on the Billboard C&W Best Sellers chart for 13 weeks in late 1956 and early 1957 and peaked at number seventeen on the US pop chart. In 1983, Gail Davies recorded a cover version, taking her version into the top 20 of the Hot Country Singles chart in the spring of 1983.

The song is often revived, and on three occasions new recordings of “Singing the Blues” have become UK Top 40 hits. These latter-day hit versions were by Dave Edmunds (1980), Gail Davies (1983), Daniel O’Donnell (1994), and Cliff Richard & the Shadows (2009).

Lyrics