Anthony Newley - The Decca Years 1959-1964 [2CD Remastered] (2000)

"Little more than a year after Anthony Newley's death, Decca Records has come up with a definitive compilation of his early recordings as a pop singer. After he had spent years as a stage and screen performer, his recording career came as a surprise, triggered by his portrayal of an Elvis Presley-like singer in the 1959 film Idle on Parade. Decca signed Newley, who reeled off a series of pop/rock hits in the U.K. over the next few years. His approach was not unlike what Andy Williams and Bobby Darin were attempting in the States at around the same time. These were singers too old to really be part of the rock & roll revolution, but still younger than the established pop singers like Frank Sinatra, who split the difference, injecting rocking rhythms and teen sentiments into their singles, but also turning out LPs in the Sinatra mold for the adult market. The added wrinkle in Newley's case was that he managed to achieve yet another career development in 1961 by co-writing, directing and starring in the stage musical Stop the World -- I Want to Get Off in London and then on Broadway. Decca's approach on this 55-track, two-CD set, which runs more than two-and-a-half hours, is to devote the first disc largely to the singles, which find Newley stealing Lloyd Price's thunder by scoring the U.K. hit with "Personality," but also introducing such songs as Lionel Bart's "Do You Mind" (Andy Williams borrowed it for an American hit).

Later, with songwriting partner Leslie Bricusse, Newley even began writing his own singles. The first disc concludes with tracks from the original London cast album of Stop the World. The second disc turns to Newley the adult LP artist, beginning with all 12 tracks, in order, from his second solo album, Tony (1961). Newley strictly followed the Sinatra "concept album" formula of alternating "swinging" albums of up-tempo rhythm songs with ballad collections, and Tony was in the former category, as the singer made like the hip Vegas act he would later become. As of the 13th track, however, the disc turns to the 1960 ballad album Love Is a Now and Then Thing for seven songs of sadness and heartbreak. The next five tracks are a miscellany drawn from the 1965 compilation album Newley Delivered, which gathered together stray recordings after the singer had left Decca, then the collection concludes with three tracks from the 1964 ballad album In My Solitude. That makes for the bulk of the material Newley recorded for Decca over his five-year tenure. The only caveat with the collection is that, ending in early 1964, it does not cover his career as a whole; within months, he was singing a new signature song, "Who Can I Turn To (When Nobody Needs Me)" in another original musical, The Roar of the Greasepaint -- The Smell of the Crowd, but by then he was contracted to RCA Victor."