"Apache" - The Shadows - Dario's Musical Memory Lane
The Shadows are a British pop group with a total of 69 UK hit-charted singles: 35 as ‘The Shadows’ and 34 as ‘Cliff Richard and the Shadows’, from the 1950s to the 2000s.
The Shadows were also successful in the British EP charts that were compiled by several different publications during the 1960s based on sales statistics from a limited number of retailers around the country. The Shadows and Cliff Richard & the Shadows each had four No.1 selling EPs.
According to British Hit Singles & Albums (19th edition), the Shadows are the third most successful UK charted hit-singles act, behind Elvis Presley and Cliff Richard.
Pioneers of the four-member rock-group format (consisting of lead guitar, rhythm guitar, bass guitar and drums) in the UK, the group enjoyed a second spell of success and interest in their music from the late seventies until disbandment in 1990. Their unique guitar sound was originally produced by a combination of American Fender guitars, British amplifiers made by Vox and echo units Meazzi Echomatic tape and Binson magnetic disc.
With singer Cliff Richard, the Shadows dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s (i.e. the five-year “Before-Beatles” period: 1958–1962), before The Beatles’ first full year in the charts in 1963.
John Lennon once claimed that “before Cliff and the Shadows, there had been nothing worth listening to in British music.” As the first backing band to emerge as stars in their own right, they were early trailblazers for the beat-group boom that eclipsed them. – The Times 30 November 2005.
In 1960, the band released “Apache,” an instrumental by Jerry Lordan, which topped the charts for five weeks. Further hits followed, notably “Wonderful Land”, another Lordan composition with orchestral backing, at the top of the charts longer than “Apache” (8 weeks). This, and “Kon Tiki” six months earlier, reached number one. The Shadows played on more chart-toppers as Richard’s band. This group, referred to subsequently as “The Original Shadows,” had seven hits.
Members of the band were; Hank Marvin · Bruce Welch · Brian Bennett
Mark Griffiths · Jet Harris · Tony Meehan · Brian ‘Licorice’ Locking · Warren Bennett · John Rostill · John Farrar · Alan Tarney · Alan Hawkshaw. ( info wikipedia)
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