Cliff Richard & The Shadows

Sir Cliff Richard was born Harry Webb in 1940 and grew up in London, where he met the members of  his backing group, The Shadows ~ lead guitarist Hank Marvin (1941-), rhythm guitarist Bruce Welch (1941-), bass guitarist Jet Harris (1939-2011) and drummer Tony Meehan (1943-2005), replaced in 1961 by Brian Bennett (1940-). Harris also left in 1961 but in various line-ups over the decades Marvin, Welch and Bennett have been the mainstays.

The Shadows had such a distinctive, novel sound which would inspire other young musicians to embrace rock’n’roll, that they not only had 34 hit singles with Richard but also 35 on their own, e.g. ‘Apache’ (1960). The five had their first hit, ‘Move It’, in 1958 and never looked back. They even made four films, ‘The Young Ones’ (1961), ‘Summer Holiday’ (1963), ‘Wonderful Life’ (1964) and ‘Finders Keepers’ (1966). Meanwhile, Richard became a born-again Christian in 1965, strengthening his clean-cut image,

Cliff Richard’s 14 no.1 hits include one in each decade from the 1950s-1990s, a unique achievement. He is also the only artist to have the same song ~ ‘Living Doll ‘ ~ at no.1 twice (the second was for charity). With over 150 singles, he is the UK’s biggest-selling male singer. He represented us at Eurovision in 1968 (came 2nd with ‘Congratulations’) and 1973 (3rd with ‘Power To All Our Friends’).

(Image: Bradford Timeline at Flickr.com / CC BY-NC 2.0)