Chart entered : 1 September 1960
Chart peak : 50
Another blunder here I'm afraid. Michael's departure post should have preceded David Whitfield's. He is the first artist to go out with a "wooden spooner" - a single week in the anchor position.
This is a rather grim story I'm afraid.Michael's chart demise was unexpected. He'd scored the first new number one ( his second ) of the sixties with "Starry Eyed" and his next two singles including this one charted.
"Little Boy Lost" is a cover arranged by Norrie Paramor of a song by Australian singer Johnny Ashcroft. It's an account of real-life events earlier in the year when an Aboriginal tracker found a four year old boy lost in the outback for five days. It was Australia's biggest single of 1960 and prompted the usual rush to cover it. Ashcroft's version is passable country pop owing a lot to Jim Reeves. Michael's has more interesting guitar work but the song is killed dead by his dreary one dimensional Crosby croon.
His next single was "Catch Me A Kiss" in November 1960, a reasonable Perry Como -ish pop tune arranged by Johnny Pearson. "The Miracle of Monday Morning" is a nice song with a neat arrangement by Paramor - whoever his lead guitarist was he's good - but can't avoid sounding old-fashioned for the new decade. Michael's career was then interrupted by a nervous breakdown; he'd always suffered from stage fright and his condition was worsening.
He got back in the studio in June 1961 to record "I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now", a 1909 song from the musical The Prince of Tonight that just drifts by then a string of EPs.
His next actual single was "I Don't Want You To See Me Cry" in April 1962 which sounds like Bing covering Jim Reeves. It set the direction for the rest of his career ; "Have I Told You Lately That I Love You" and "Laugh And The World Laughs With You" are both in that vein although the last single of his lifetime "Between Hello And Goodbye" in July 1963 reaches out towards Brill Building pop and is slightly more interesting.
The string of flops took its toll on his marriage and his wife Margaret departed as the debts piled up. The Inland Revenue were on his case.
Michael died of a drug overdose ( 20 to 25 Nembutal ) generally accepted as suicide ( it wasn't his first attempt ) on 29th October 1963 . His death was later linked to the suicide of his friend, boxing promoter Freddie Mills two years later with rumours that the men had been lovers. Michael did visit Mills's club on the night he died but according to his biographer that was his first visit and he left with a girl. Pete Murray also described Michael as "a number one crumpet man" and well known in the entertainment world as a skirt chaser.
A month to the day from his death Columbia released a new single "Drums" a Lieber-Stoller composition which has a nice string arrangement by Ivor Raymonde and Michael singing in a lighter style than hitherto. Six months later Raymonde had polished up "Dear Heart" for release with pizzicato strings and a brisk beat. His third posthumous single was poignantly "My Last Date" in July 1964, a pleasant but forgettable piano ballad. Maybe if he'd been around to promote them one of these could have snuck back into the charts but it's only a maybe. Columbia gathered together some previously released material for an EP "Memories of Mike" for the 1964 Christmas market then drew the curtain on him. One last postscript : the enduring popularity of his version of "The Runaway Train" ( an EP track from 1957 ) on Radio One's Junior Choice led to its release as a single on EMI in 1977.
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