Chart entered : 10 October 1963
Chart peak : 15
This was an unexpected return to the charts for Jim after an absence of over six years. Jimmy has always said that Elvis halved his takings and finished off his singing career but here he is still having a decent-sized hit in the Beatles era.
"Miss You" is an easy listening jazz ballad , popularised by Rudy Vallee in the 1930s, with plenty of cocktail piano and Jimmy's voice in fine fettle. It makes absolutely no concession to rock and roll or anything since so was a complete anachronism even then.
I had presumed , perhaps hoped, that this marked the end of Jimmy's recording career and that this would be one of the easiest posts to write but such is not the case. He next re-recorded "Unchained Melody" with the Mike Sammes Singers for Columbia ( the original was on Decca ) and scored a number 43 placing in March 1964. I'm wondering if that was the first re-recording of a previous hit to chart, anyone ?
His next single was a version of Eddie Fisher's 1952 US hit "I'm Yours" in September 1964 then in March 1965 "Wanted" a 1954 hit for both Perry Como and Al Martino which has some lively drumming but otherwise remains firmly rooted in the early fifties.
By this time Jimmy had already begun his radio career. In 1960, producers at The Light Programme had noted his continued popularity with the over-thirties and asked him to present the Housewives' Choice programme for a fortnight. On the back of that Jimmy got a job with Radio Luxemburg broadcasting at 10pm.
In October 1965 Jimmy at last turned to something more contemporary with a Tom Springfield song, "Someone To Turn To" which sounds interesting but I haven't heard it. "Only You" from 1966 is , I'm guessing , The Platters song. "Half A World Away" and "It's Such A Pretty World Today" ( released July 1967 ) bring us up to his departure from Columbia and start as one of the original DJ line-up ( at 46 ) on Radio One.
Jimmy still hadn't given up on making music and released "Silver And Blue" on MGM in March 1968 then "You, No One But You" on Polydor in 1969 with Geoff Love which has some nice clarinet work but is otherwise utterly soporific. His very last new single was in March 1972 "Mister Sunshine" on the obscure Penny Farthing label.
Jimmy was still part of the Radio One line-up when I started tuning in at the start of 1973. However he was moved to the Radio Two lunchtime slot in June that year where he became a colossus of broadcasting interviewing every Prime Minister from Wilson to Blair in just short of thirty years at the helm.
His departure was messy. At the end of the nineties the blindingly obvious strategy of R2 picking up the old Radio One audience was finally adopted and new controller Jim Moir began replacing the dead wood. But what to do with Sir Jimmy as he became in 2001 , the year of his eightieth birthday ? He was enormously popular and wanted to die on the show. Throughout 2001-02 there were rumours then prize prat Nicky Campbell announced he'd been offered the show but turned it down - Jeremy Vine's recent memoirs suggest that Campbell knew Moir had already decided against him. I don't suppose the self-regarding prick gave any thought to Jimmy's feelings on the matter.
Jimmy disdainfully shrugged it off without of course lowering himself by naming his would-be successor and months of public embarrassment and painful private negotiation went on before a leaving date for Jimmy was arranged, Jimmy getting the pithy last few words on air. More than a decade on the likeable Vine still has the air of a stand-in.
Jimmy refused the offer of a weekend show and went into semi-retirement apart from a weekly column in the Sunday Express but he returned to the airwaves in 2011 to take part in a show celebrating his 90th birthday and went on to co-present a show Icons Of the 50s.
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