Chart entered : 11 December 1953
Chart peak : 8
Number of hits : 11
The charts have now been going for a year and our next entry is someone else I'd never heard of before. She really limps over the line at the end but rules are rules !
Joan is the first British female to make the cut. She was an Essex girl ( real name Siobahn Bethel ) whose friend pushed a demo record on to Bernard Delfont and thereby got a contract with Decca , usually re-making American hits by female artists. Her first mark was Teresa Brewer and her cover of "Till I Waltz Again With You", her first single release, sold 35,000 copies according to The Guardian's obituary - unimaginable now that that wasn't enough to get it into the charts.
I haven't been able to find a definitive discography for Joan so I don't know how many singles she'd released before this one. The Independent's obituary suggests it may have been her fourth and that the song was picked because Decca thought she was sounding too much like Vera Lynn on the ballads.
The Squadronaires ( the RAF's orchestra ) slavishly reproduce the arrangement on Brewer's version right down to the little drum roll at the end. Brewer ( though 22 at the time ) did a little girl vocal and possibly invented teen pop despite the big band trappings. Joan was three years older and a mother of two from an annulled marriage so her vocal is more mature though she still sounds like she's having fun. The song , an admonition to a boyfriend with a wandering eye, isn't that great - the chorus seems too fast to me - but it's refreshing to hear drum breaks after all those ballads . It's not surprising that this injection of energy made the charts; you might have thought it would do better than number 8.
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