1977 - 20 Golden Greats - 40 Golden Years!

[cockroach]

Well, it took years until the Live at Kingston live recording was issued...

(Goodness knows why...IMHO, it sounded great and the performances were terrific..but there are some very fussy picky folks around! )

[drakula63]

And here's my copy - purchased in 1977 !!!

[drakula63]

There are almost no words to describe how much this album means to me. My FIRST Shadows record and one that set me on a path that was not only very enjoyable but led to meeting some great people - including two or three members of the band itself.

I too marvelled at the inner sleeve and recall collecting the albums pictured in more or less the order in which they appear.

Amusing story: you will notice that the corner of the sleeve has clearly been bitten off. This was circa 1977 when I was at boarding school. The lad responsible, I shan't name him, later lost his two front teeth and had to wear false ones. And so justice is visited upon all who cross me. And that's not the end of it... remember this is the late '70s. He went out into town one Saturday and got horrifically drunk, to the great displeasure of the staff when he got back. Two things remain firmly in my mind... One) him sitting on a chair in the shower room and being fed copious amounts of coffee. Two) him being violently sick down the toilet and losing his false teeth in the process! Tee-hee!!! Serves him right!

[drakula63]

And so, FORTY years ago it was number 1.

It was very popular on Moonbase too. But not until 1980...

[Moderne]

Have I got this right, Chris? A fellow pupil at your boarding school bit off the corner of the inner sleeve of your copy of The Shadows 20 Golden Greats, and in the ensuing altercation he lost his two front teeth. What a great story! I remember a friend of mine around the same time adding the letter 'S' to the word 'Hits' on the cover of my 'Shadows - 20 Big Hits' book. But your story completely trumps that one! I remember working out piano versions (using that book) of Gonzales, Shotgun, Driftin. Theme from a Filleted Plaice, Jet Black etc. using my rudimentary sight-reading skills ages before I'd saved up enough paper round money to buy all the actual records. I used to wonder what Jet Black and Driftin' sounded like for years before I tracked down the original single. At the time, those tracks weren't available at all. Nowadays it's all a few clicks of your laptop on YouTube or Spotify!

[drakula63]

Have I got this right, Chris? A fellow pupil at your boarding school bit off the corner of the inner sleeve of your copy of The Shadows 20 Golden Greats, and in the ensuing altercation he lost his two front teeth. What a great story!!

No, I would hate you to think that I'd knock someone's front teeth out just for biting the corner off the LP inner sleeve. No. Anyway, he was bigger than me! No, now that I think about it, I've got it slightly wrong. He bit the corner off the sleeve AFTER he had got his new front false teeth - as if to demonstrate their amazing biting ability! His teeth must have been rotten or something - well, he was from Staffordshire! So when said false teeth disappeared round the U-bend of the toilet, I was more than a little delighted! Poetic justice!

Another thing has just occurred to me. One of the teachers at the school had an old burgundy-coloured 1970s Volvo. The car had an 8-Track cartridge player and I distinctly remember The Shadows 20 Golden Greats being in it! It is, again, true to say that EVERYONE (apparently) had that album in one form or another in 1977. What a great year! What a great album!!

[RayL]

My own 'surprise hearing' of The Shadows in the mid-seventies was of being in a department store with my wife when tracks from 20 Golden Greats started playing from the ceiling speakers. At that time the usual background music was things like Mantovani and His All-String Vest (I may have got that name slightly wrong) so to hear Apache (which had faded from public consciousness in the preceding 15 years) was a real surprise.

[Fenderman]

You can hear snatches of the Shadows on 'Come dine wih me'. I've heard FBI, Apache, Dance on! and Wonderful Land.

[iefje]

It is interesting to note that "20 Golden Greats" do not just collect twenty of The Shadows' hits, but a lot of the sound mixes are different to the originals:
"Apache" and "The Frightened City" are in a different true stereo balance. "Guitar Tango", "Atlantis", "Geronimo", "Stingray" and "Theme For Young Lovers" have their stereo channels reversed. "Foot Tapper", "Wonderful Land" and "F.B.I." are in mock stereo mode. The mock stereo mixes of the last two are different to the mock stereo mixes on the compilation album "The Shadows' Greatest Hits" and the 1972 UK single "Apache"/"Wonderful Land", "F.B.I.". The 1977 UK single "Apache"/"Wonderful Land", "F.B.I." feature the mixes from the "20 Golden Greats" LP. The 1987 CD issue of "20 Golden Greats" features the more common mixes of all tracks.

[Moderne]

Bruce said in his book "Rock 'n' Roll...", and in The Shadows with Mike Read book that he "worked hard on that album"...stretching the stereo image and applying 'mock stereo' to the tracks originally recorded (or that were thought to have been recorded) in mono to make them more compatible on modern equipment. The received wisdom at the time was that no hi-fi buff who played his new LPs of old mono recordings on his state-of-the-art Bang and Olufsen stereo would tolerate music in mono - so most reissues of the time had mono recordings electronically re-processed. Sometimes this was hardly noticeable - other times they became almost unlistenably different from the original. I would imagine a certain amount of EQ adjustment/compression (I'm going a bit off-piste here!) would also have been needed to squeeze 20 tracks onto one LP; I'm sure Jim Nugent can offer a better explanation.

I do remember Hank saying at the time that he felt the re-mastering of 20GG had taken the raw edge off numbers such as Apache.