"Singing the Blues" is a popular song written by Melvin Endsley and published in 1956. (It is not related to the song "Singin' the Blues", written by Sam M. Lewis, Joe Young, Con Conrad and J. Russel Robinson and recorded by Frank Trumbauer and Bix Beiderbecke in 1927.)
The best-known recording was released in October 1956 by Guy Mitchell and spent nine weeks at #1 on the U.S. Billboard chart from December 8, 1956 to February 2, 1957. An example of the U.S. recording is on Columbia #40769, dated 1956, with the Ray Conniff Orchestra. Mitchell's version was also number 1 in the U.K. for three (non-consecutive) weeks in early 1957.
Two other charting versions of the song were released almost simultaneously with Mitchell's, one by U.K. cover specialist Tommy Steele (with the Steelmen) and the other by U.S. country singer Marty Robbins.
Tommy Steele's version of "Singing the Blues" made #1 in the UK Singles Chart for one week on 11 January 1957, sandwiched by two of the weeks that Guy Mitchell's version of the same song topped the charts. Steele's recording of the song was not a chart success in the US.
The Marty Robbins version made it to number one on the Billboard C&W Best Sellers chart for 13 weeks in late 1956 and early 1957 and peaked at number seventeen on the U.S. pop charts. In 1983, Gail Davies recorded a cover version, taking her version into the top 20 of the Hot Country Singles chart in the spring of 1983.
The song is often revived, and on three occasions new recordings of "Singing the Blues" have become U.K. Top 40 hits. These latter-day hit versions were by Dave Edmunds (1980), Daniel O'Donnell (1994), and Cliff Richard & the Shadows (2009).
Read more about Singing The Blues: Charting Versions, Other Cover Versions
Famous quotes containing the words singing and/or blues:
“Why, he was met even now
As mad as the vexed sea, singing aloud,
Crowned with rank fumiter and furrow-weeds,
With hardocks, hemlock, nettles, cuckoo-flowers,
Darnel, and all the idle weeds that grow
In our sustaining corn.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“The blues women had a commanding presence and a refreshing robustness. They were nurturers, taking the yeast of experience, kneading it into dough, molding it and letting it grow in their minds to bring the listener bread for sustenance, shaped by their sensibilities.”
—Rosetta Reitz, U.S. author. As quoted in The Political Palate, ch. 10, by Betsey Beaven et al. (1980)