Old Crooners Never Die

I flicked through the headlines this morning to see what brilliant ideas they would send sparking around the old synapses. First up, Al Martino's death at the age of 82. Every newspaper mentioned that he was the artist who had the very first UK number one hit when he topped the fledgling NME pop chart in 1952. Here we go, I thought. Who else was in that first chart of 27 years ago, I googled. Well, no one actually. Al made number 1 in November 1952 and stayed there till after Christmas. Ok - let's not nitpick -1953 then. Well, the chartsters of '53 were a roll call from my Dad's record collection...Frankie Laine, Guy Mitchell, Perry Como. And Eddie Fisher - wasn't he married to Liz Taylor and died tragically young? There was my angle...how stars of the fifties had burned out young and how amazing it was that Al Martino was the last to go. So a bit more research revealed that Guy Mitchell died 1999 aged 72, Perry Como died in 2001 aged 79 and Frankie Laine died in 2007 aged 94. These were not the hard living rockers I had hoped to find. Well there was still Eddie Fisher. More googling. More disappointment. Wrong husband. It was Mike Todd who died in the plane crash, Eddie's predecessor in the Taylor nuptuals. Eddie's still alive and well at the age of 81. Wish someone had told me that this morning.