Michael Holliday held onto the No.2 spot for another 4 weeks, and eventually clocked up sales of over 750,000 on both 78 and 45 rpm discs. It reached the top spot in the first week of February 1958, displacing Elvis’s “Jailhouse Rock”, and held the stop spot for two weeks before itself being overtaken by another Bacharach and David song, “Magic Moments” by Perry Como. 14, the Michael Holliday version stormed on. It took 12 takes for Paramor and Jones to be satisfied that they had hit material in the can, and as Michael Holliday headed home to Surrey late that Tuesday evening, he had had scant recognition that he had just recorded the song that would be forever associated with him.Īll four British versions were released in the first week of 1958 and entered the UK charts during the middle of January, with the Holliday and Miller versions making the pace. It was the first time that Holliday had stepped outside of Crosby’s shadow. But Jones’ arrangement for “Story” denied Holliday the chance to do a Crosby impression. Holliday was a bass-baritone, who copied and uncannily replicated the voice of his idol, Bing Crosby, so much that he was known as “Britain’s Bing Crosby”. The first change gave Holliday’s record a more upbeat, brighter feel and the key change forced his man to sing higher than normal. Jones took much from the original Robbins arrangement, but critically, he upped both the tempo and the key.
He passed on the job of arranging and conducting the tracks to Ken Jones, the first Holliday session where he had not taken the baton himself. Paramor knew that he had found it the moment that he heard Bacharach and David’s song, and he lined it up for Mike to record at an Abbey Road session on 10 December 1957.
#The story of my life song 1957 tv
More TV and some modest hit singles followed, but by the end of 1957, Paramor and Holliday were still looking for the song that would give them their big record. A record test at EMI’s Abbey Road studios soon followed and by the end of September that year, Columbia A&R man, Norrie Paramor, had Holliday’s debut single, “The Yellow Rose of Texas” in the shops. Born in Liverpool in 1924 as Norman Milne, Holliday first made his presence felt on British television in 1955. Both King and Cogan had their share of hit records in the 1950s, but by 1958, their hit-making days were largely over.Įnter Michael Holliday. Two other British versions were launched by Dave King, a popular singer-comedian, and Alma Cogan, the girl with the laugh in her voice and known for her hooped skirts and sequinned fashion.
#The story of my life song 1957 series
The closest British version to it was recorded by Gary Miller, an also-ran vocalist of the decade who ironically is best remembered now as the singing voice of Troy Tempest in the Gerry Anderson puppet series Stingray (he was the one who sang “Aqua Marina” over the closing titles).
The Robbins version had a strong country-music feel to it, but the tempo of the recording was slow and the vocal sounded laboured. No fewer than four British singers released competing versions of the song and all of them, with the exception of Robbins, made the UK charts. What’s more it was often the case that a British artiste had more success at home with a cover version displacing the original American hit. Britain’s pop culture closely followed that of America, but usually about three months behind. The one exception was his record of “El Paso”, which topped both sets of Billboard charts in 1959.īack in the late Fifties, the world was a small place - no satellites, no internet, no social media - and what happened in the States stayed in the States, at least until the carrier pigeons made it across the Atlantic. All too often, he would hit upon a song and take it the top of the country charts, and then find someone else had taken the honours in the mainstream listings. 1 in the American country charts, but flirted only with the lower reaches of the mainstream Billboard Top 100. It was picked up by the American country singer, Marty Robbins. One of the first products was a song called “The Story of My Life”. Sixty years ago this month - January 1958 - the world changed for a young British pop singer called Michael Holliday - courtesy of two up and coming American songwriters called Burt Bacharach and Hal David.īacharach and David first met in 1957 in the Brill Building in New York and started writing songs, David’s lyrics a perfect fit to Bacharach’s melodies. ‘Some day I’m gonna write ….’ - The story of “The Story of My Life”
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