Various - Embassy British Hit Parade 1961 / Various

Acrobat Music's series of British Hit Parade collections has become an essential annual purchase for a significant number of collectors and enthusiasts who wish to hear and own every record that entered the British record charts during each year. This year, we are introducing another innovation into our annual trawl of the songs that the great British record-buying public was spending their hard-earned shillings on. This collection comprises every 45rpm single that was released in 1961 on the Embassy label, the cover versions that were sold exclusively in Woolworths stores from 1954 to 1965. Obviously, they were highly selective about the tracks they recorded - they were generally already guaranteed hits - although they did do one or two pre-emptive recordings of things they expected to chart which didn't make it. For those who began their record-buying lives in the '50s and '60s the Embassy label provided a variety of different perceptions. For the purist, it was anathema - the idea of buying anything other than the version of a hit that was in the charts by the star artist was unconscionable (although people would happily buy a watered-down British cover of a stonking and original US hit if that was what was being pushed at them on the radio). For others, the chance to buy a halfway-decent version of two different hits on one 45 for not much more than half the price of a regular single - and from a shop they were probably in most Saturdays - looked like a sensible deal, especially if you weren't a dyed-in-the-wool NME or MM-reading aficionado. There were also those who were genuinely interested in the music, and saw it as an interesting parallel world, buying either or both of the original and the sound-alike version. Half a century and more distant, in the world of collectors, enthusiasts and nostalgia, even the prejudices about the presumed naffness of Embassy recordings have gone out of the window as fans of '50s and '60s pop are happy to revisit the music of the times in all it's forms in a happy voyage of rediscovery, and people can hear them for what they really are. In addition, the artists who made the cover versions have a story of their own to tell, and still command a hard core of fans, and so this collection provides an eclectic slice of nostalgia that will appeal at a number of levels. We are sure that in addition to the enthusiasts with a special interest in Embassy, many purchasers of our main British Hit Parade sets will also be keen to acquire the 'B' sides to ensure the completeness of their collection.