Let me take you down... The Beatles' songs were so sturdy and well-crafted that artists such as Matt Monro and Ella Fitzgerald became early adopters. But from the start, John, Paul, George, and Ringo's contemporaries had been just as likely as the older generation to mine their songbook. As the sixties continued and the Beatles ushered in the shift from pop to rock (minus the "and roll"), similarly youthful artists brought their own increasingly adventurous spins to the lads' material.
To many, the phrase "English weather" conjures images of fog, clouds, and rain. To Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs, English weather means something "melodic, melancholy, with jazz and folk touches, and the same similar shrug of resignation..." So explains the compilers of the recent English Weather, an absorbing 18-track compendium from Ace Records collecting rare and unusual songs that might be, in their words, akin to "an unfamiliar album with a hint of Crosby, Stills and Nash, but an identifiably