Chart entered : 19 April 1957
Chart peak : 23
Our second farewell of 1957 isn't too much of a surprise. The "brothers" had their moment of glory in 1955 when their version of the song "Hernando's Hideaway" ( from the Adler- Ross musical The Pajama Game ) beat myriad competitors including Johnnie Ray to land at number one for a couple of weeks in November ( it's one of Popular's most threadbare entries ). They notched another top tenner in its wake in conjunction with the jazz band George Chisholm Sour-Note Six with the medley "Join In And Sing Again" , a medley of old show tunes split across both sides of the single.
Thereafter their chart fortunes fell off a cliff. Their last 5 hits all peaked below the Top 20, 3 of them only notching a single week in the charts. This one managed to hang around for three weeks.
With "Heart" they were hoping for lightning to strike twice with another Adler-Ross number , this time from the baseball-based musical Damn Yankees. In its original context it's sung by four members of the hopeless Washington Senators vowing to do their best in the face of adversity. It's a straightforward song and the Brothers do it completely straight sounding a bit more cheery than on their debut offering and completely unaware that rock and roll or skiffle have happened in the meantime. The Norman Shaw Orchestra back them with a tootling xylophone that brings to mind I Love Lucy and other '50s delights that I just about recall from early '70s TV.
Johnny Johnston however had not been idle while Bill and Elvis stormed the charts and by 1956 had already set up his own company Johnny Johnston Jingles Ltd to capitalise on the arrival of ITV. He was responsible for such classics as "Beanz Meanz Heinz" and "You Can Be Sure Of Shell" and wrote the music for the first colour commercial, advertising Birds Eye Peas, in 1969.
There isn't much easily available information about the group members around. When Johnston passed away in 1998 only The Independent had an obituary and that had no information beyond 1969 . I haven't a clue about the others ; some sources mention that Denny Vaughan was Canadian and died in 1972 but I think they have him confused with a Canadian TV host whose show's lifespan coincided with the Brothers' heyday and so is unlikely to be the same guy.
I think they released 5 more singles on Decca : "I Like Music You Like Music" ( Sept 1957) ; "Join In And Sing No 4 (1957 )" ;" A Very Precious Love " ( March 1958 ); "Scratch Scratch" with Jean Campbell of the Keynotes ( May 1958 ) and "Love Is All We Need" ( 1959). Of these I've only been able to hear the middle one which is a version of a song from the early Natalie Wood picture Marjorie Morningstar . As sung by Gene Kelly it had an Oscar nomination for Best Song in 1958. The Brothers version is nicely orchestrated with a quiet military beat underpinning the tune and the Brothers' smooth close harmony vocals making it easy on the ear. As the last record was released in 1959 that's as good a guess as any as to when Johnston called time on the group.
The Brothers' music didn't go out of date as such; Sing Something Simple helmed by their ex-Stargazer contemporary Cliff Adams kept their style going, ran on into the new millennium and may have survived longer but for Adams's death in 2001. I remember a nice old guy who used to give me lifts to and from walks in the eighties always tuned in for it at 4.30 on a Sunday afternoon, the last programme on Radio Two before it surrendered its FM frequency to R1 for the Top 40. I believe in the sixties it followed Fluff's Top 20 programme. The Brothers' music lived on but in a parallel universe.
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