3 July 1964
Wow: a snippet of live audience at the start of ‘Bless You (For Being An Angel)’ to capture the hormone-fuelled frenzy of Bowyermania! And then we segue into an Irish showband iteration of a pre-Emergency US jazz ballad. The Ink Spots indeed released this in 1939, and they’re a fine and important vocal group—no Ink Spots, no Beach Boys harmonies—but I’d say even they’d have been bewildered that in 1964 a country’s most popular live band was serving this as chart-topping, Beatles-contemporary fare.
Bowyer is as likeable a presence as ever, but even his innate energy can’t drag this simper-fest further forward than ’50s doo-wop. The slower pace reduces his voice to an unbecoming warble too. It’s gas to think of the retrograde Irish showband idiom existing in the same decade as raucous Beatles youth and modernity, let alone being chart rivals. And we haven’t even got to the Stones yet. Happily for Bowyer, he’ll soon be back at number one with something a bit more swinging and memorable – from 1949, the avant garde daredevil!
