Tommy Steele - The Decca Years 1956-1963 (2000) [2CDs set]

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(Interviewed for the 1997 Brit Girls documentary, Morrissey said "She (Rita Pavone) made the best record in the history of... abattoirs. It was called 'Heart', it was on RCA and I think it got to number 12 or 26. Incredible, absolutely incredible, almost as good as... Tommy Steele.")



Tommy Steele - The Decca Years 1956-1963 (2000) [2CDs set]
2x EAC-FLAC(Tracks) with CUEs & LOGs - 689 MB | Full Scans | MP3 CBR 320 Kbps - 333 MB
Rock & Roll / Rockabilly / British Invasion | TT - 151:44 mins | Label: Decca Records # 466409-2

Tommy Steele (born Thomas William Hicks, 17 December 1936, Bermondsey, London), is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and Rock and Roll star. The Decca Years compilation contains 68 tracks, including A & B-sides of 27 singles, plus the best of his EP and LP tracks.

You'd never know it to look at film of him today, but during the summer of 1956, Tommy Steele became England's first home-grown rock & roller. Or he wasn't a rock & roller at all. Some 43 years after he first charted a record, many pop music scholars still question whether Tommy Steele belongs on a list of rock & roll performers. Listening to it today, it seems a curiously bland, formulaic effort at rock & roll, its use of the word "rock" in the lyrics more than its style identifying it, though he and the band do play hard. In order to appreciate it, however, one must recognized what the state of English popular culture was during the second half of 1956. At that time, a few British jazz bands were beginning to add rock & roll to their repertoires or, in some cases, retooling themselves entirely. Tony Crombie & His Rockets, in particular, were starting to make a lot of noise and names for themselves at dances. Their model was Bill Haley's Comets; this band and others like it were sax-driven, with lots of rhythm guitar (good lead guitarists being almost impossible to find), their songs relying on rousing repetitive choruses and a heavy beat, rather than any particular cleverness or flair in their lyrics -- forget Chuck Berry, the Brits didn't even have anyone with Bill Haley's nonexistent songwriting ability in their midst. And, as was the case with Haley, none of them was especially youthful or particularly charismatic, and English teenagers found little of it compelling. Then along came Tommy Steele, who was all of 19 years old and sang and played a guitar. He had a toothy smile, wore his hair in what was considered an unkempt manner (compared with the proper way most English performers groomed themselves), and seemed possessed of boundless energy and humor. He was no blues singer or stylist like Elvis Presley, his voice more pleasant than powerful, his demeanor more genial than threatening, but the latter was actually a point in Steele's favor in becoming a star in England -- Elvis' overtly sexual presence gave Americans pause, and would have been impossible to emulate in England. His songs, especially the early ones, were uniquely English variants on a rock & roll sound, honking saxes in front of a basic rhythm guitar and piano backing, with maybe a little moderately amplified jazz-type lead guitar ("Doomsday Rock") and lyrics that included lines like "The British Museum's got my head" (on "Rock with the Caveman").

Tommy Steele's reputation as a rock & roller over the years has risen and fallen, depending upon the which side of his music output was available and who was doing the writing. A lot of Britons who were simply kids listening to records back when he started making them still love his work to this day (Decca was reissuing his original LPs as 10" discs in the early '80s), and few Englishmen over the age of 25 have harsh words to say about him. Some scholars and historians feel differently, deriding Steele as a manufactured pretender rather than a real rock & roller. Other call him "the most innovative and influential act of the 1950s" in England, although that's a bit extreme -- Lonnie Donegan and Cliff Richard are certainly in the running for that designation. Steele's success as a rock & roller was important, vitally so, in several respects. His music proved that English musicians could, after a fashion, write and play something roughly akin to American-style rock & roll without being too loud or crude (two impediments to rock & roll's acceptance, or at least being tolerated, in England); additionally, his success drew a major British record company into rock & roll, which was doubly important considering that Decca had passed on signing Lonnie Donegan a year earlier because they doubted that the skiffle boom would last. Additionally, his music and its success were also a vital link in the chain of evolution from Lonnie Donegan to Cliff Richard, which helped pave the way, indirectly, for the Beatles and all that followed. Most important at the time, he was the first English teenager to elicit excitement with his music from the mass public and, incidental to his popularity, he wrote or co-wrote many of his own songs in the beginning (which was understandable, in part, because few professional songwriters in England at that time could compose rock & roll). Performers such as Cliff Richard, the Beatles, and the Rolling Stones (who provoked a legendary riot at Royal Albert Hall in October 1966, just by taking the stage) would elicit stronger reactions, but Steele was the English teenager who let the genie out of the bottle, even if he wasn't the genie.

-- (cuted) Biography by Bruce Eder, allmusic.com

TRACKLIST:

Disc One :

01. Rock With The Caveman
02. Rock Around The Town
03. Doomsday Rock
04. Elevator Rock
05. Singing The Blues
06. Rebel Rock
07. Knee Deep In Blues
08. Teenage Party
09. Butterfingers
10. Cannibal Pot
11. Shiralee
12. Grandad's Rock
13. Butterfly
14. Water, Water
15. A Handful Of Songs
16. Hey You!
17. Plant A Kiss
18. Nairobi
19. Neon Sign
20. Happy Guitar
21. Princess
22. It's All Happening
23. What Do You Do
24. The Only Man On The Island
25. I Puts The Lightie On
26. Come On, Let's Go
27. Put A Ring On Her Finger
28. A Lovely Night
29. Marriage Type Love
30. Hiawatha
31. The Trial
32. Tallahassee Lassie
33. Give! Give! Give!
34. You Were Mine
35. Young Ideas

Disc Two:
01. Little White Bull
02. Singing Time
03. What A Mouth (What A North And South)
04. Kookaburra
05. Happy-Go-Lucky Blues
06. (The Girl With The) Long Black Hair
07. Must Be Santa
08. Boys And Girls
09. The Dit-Dit Song
10. My Big Best Shoes
11. The Writing On The Wall
12. Drunken Guitar
13. Hit Record
14. What A Little Darlin'
15. He's Got Love
16. Green Eye
17. Butter Wouldn't Melt In Your Mouth
18. Where Have All The Flowers Gone
19. Flash Bang Wallop
20. She's Too Far Above Me
21. Half A Sixpence
22. Giddy-Up-A-Ding-Dong
23. Kaw-Liga
24. Young Love
25. Take Me Back Baby
26. Build Up
27. Time To Kill
28. Hair-Down Hoe-Down
29. Sweet Georgia Brown
30. Tommy The Toreador
31. Hollerin' And Screamin'
32. Lonesome Traveller
33. So Long (It's Been Good To Know Yuh)

Compilation and project co-ordinate by Tim Chacksfield.
Digital tranfers and remastering by Paschal Byrne at the Audio Archive Company.


Download: Tommy Steele - The Decca Years 1956-1963 (DCD)

from FileSonic

lossless
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1292987321/TommySteele1999L1.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1292988431/TommySteele1999L1.part2.rar
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http://www.filesonic.com/file/1292993361/TommySteele1999L2.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1292998021/TommySteele1999L2.part2.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1292997851/TommySteele1999L2.part3.rar

Scans
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1293005851/TommySteele1999Sc.rar

MP3 320
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1293001371/TommySteele1999M1.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1293001331/TommySteele1999M1.part2.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1293005711/TommySteele1999M2.part1.rar
http://www.filesonic.com/file/1293005751/TommySteele1999M2.part2.rar


from FileServe
lossless
http://www.fileserve.com/file/wYymMde/TommySteele1999L1.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/CtV2bAB/TommySteele1999L1.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/2ndrw7j/TommySteele1999L1.part3.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/Ha4AaGY/TommySteele1999L2.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/xE6hWSM/TommySteele1999L2.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/WNaNsPn/TommySteele1999L2.part3.rar

Scans
http://www.fileserve.com/file/Ud87TBK/TommySteele1999Sc.rar

MP3 320
http://www.fileserve.com/file/uyx3Dnx/TommySteele1999M1.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/u87VcCp/TommySteele1999M1.part2.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/94E7EFw/TommySteele1999M2.part1.rar
http://www.fileserve.com/file/hdvKSES/TommySteele1999M2.part2.rar

The archives are interchangeable ~ 3% on restoration included

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