SLIM WHITMAN - “Rose Marie”
(29th July 1955)
A strange but very effective combination of music-hall corn and lonesome prairie ballad, with Whitman sliding vocally between a stagey archness and soft sad yodelling. The backing - clumsy piano, whistling and lovely touches of slide guitar - was what won me over first of all, then the singing, and finally the song. The love-hate dynamic here - being in erotic thrall to a woman you half dread but can?t escape - is an old blues theme, older than the blues really. “Rose Marie” sounds like it might be an old song, too, with little archaisms (”‘Twould mean my life”) and the fated fealty of the concluding lines: “Of all the queens that ever lived I’d choose you / To rule me my Rose Marie”. 8
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wichita lineman on May 30th, 2008
It sounds like it was recorded in a ghost town, with its clanking pianola and tumbleweed vocal. It’s definitely addictive and - as the best selling single of 1955 - indicative of how the British public’s tastes were switching to something earthier than David Whitfield.
That too-brief burst of slide guitar sweeping upwards into the cloudless sky is pure Joe Meek. I’ll bet he was a fan.
His tally of hits is tiny (4 Top 10s, 3 more Top 20s) considering that a Very Best Of got to number one in that weirdly countrified year, 1976. Even so he was far less well known in the States - one “hit” which stalled at 93.
TV advertising for an American comp in the late 70s saw Slim on screen telling the folks how he’d been number one in England longer than Elvis or the Beatles (well, Rose Marie stayed there for 11 weeks). It worked - he sold 1.5 million copies of the thing.