Actors - Cliff Richard

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	Actors - Cliff Richard

Sir Cliff Richard (born Harry Rodger Webb in Lucknow, India, on October 14, 1940) is one of the United Kingdom's most popular singers.

With his backing group The Shadows, he dominated the British popular music scene in the late 1950s and early 1960s, before the advent of The Beatles. A conversion to Christianity and subsequent softening of his music led to his having more of a pop than rock image. Although never able to achieve a significant impact in the United States, Richard has remained a popular music, film, and television personality in the UK.

During the last six decades Richard has charted many hit singles and holds the record (along with Elvis Presley) as the only act to make the UK singles charts in all its active decades (1950s–2000s). According to his website, he has sold 250 million records over the course of his career.

Born in India, Richard and his family moved to Britain after Indian independence in 1947. It is widely believed he is of Anglo-Indian (`Eurasian') descent, although he has never publically acknowledged or refuted this.

1958—1963: Success and stardom

The Anglo Indian Harry Webb came from a skiffle group to be lead singer of the rock n roll Drifters in 1958 (not to be confused with the American group of the same name). Before their first "big time" out of town performance at the Regal Ballroom in Ripley they took the name Cliff Richard and the Drifters. The members of this band were Harry, who had become Cliff, Ian "Sammy" Samwell, Terry Smart and Norman Mitham. None of these survived to be part of the later and better known Shadows.

Cliff gained a recording contract for himself only, leaving the band behind, with EMI in the summer of 1958, where he remained until signing with Decca in 2004. As the Drifters faded away Cliff and the Shadows would be contractually separate entities, and the group would not receive any performer royalties for the records they made backing Cliff.

Cliff went into Abbey Road Studios to record his first record on July 24, 1958, but the producer, Norrie Paramor, had little faith in the Drifters and consequently brought in two experienced session men, Ernie Shear & Frank Clarke, to provide backing on lead guitar and bass.

On the first 1958 record, Norrie Paramor provided a song called "Schoolboy Crush", a cover of an American record by Bobby Helms. But Cliff was allowed to record one of their own for the B-side. This was "Move It", written by Ian "Sammy" Samwell famously on the upper deck of a Green Line Bus on the way to Cliff's house for a rehearsal.

There are a number of stories about why the A-side song was replaced by the B-side. One story says that their producer Norrie Paramor played the record to his daughter, and she raved about the B-side instead of the A-side. Another possible reason for the flip was that influential TV producer Jack Good (producer), who used the act for his TV show Oh Boy!, said the song to be sung on his show had to be "Move It".

The single was flipped and went to number 2 in the charts. Music critics Roy Carr and Tony Tyler would later write that it was first genuine British great rock classic, to be followed by Johnny Kidd and the Pirates's "Shakin' All Over" before The Beatles hit with "I Saw Her Standing There".

In the early days Cliff Richard was something of a British equivalent to Elvis Presley. Supplanting previous British would-be rockers such as Marty Wilde, Richard was the first in Britain to adopt Presley-style dress and hair styling. In performance he struck a pose of rock attitude, rarely smiling or even looking directly at the audience or camera. His late 1958 and early 1959 follow-up singles, "High Class Baby", "Livin' Lovin' Doll", and "Mean Streak", carried a real rocker's sense of speed and passion. It was on "Livin' Lovin' Doll" that The Drifters began actually to back Cliff on record. By that time, the band's lineup had changed, with the bringing in of the more skilled Jet Harris, Tony Meehan, Hank Marvin, and Bruce Welch. They changed their name to the Shadows when legal complications began arising with the U.S. Drifters.

However, Richard's fifth single, "Living Doll", was a gentle ballad, ushering in a change of focus. Subsequent hits such as "Travellin' Light", "I Love You", and "Theme for a Dream" became quite popular and cemented Richard's status as a mainstream pop entertainer, rivalled only by Adam Faith and Billy Fury.

The Shadows were not a backing group just like any other. In 1960, the Shadows (though having previously recorded as the Drifters without Cliff) won an EMI recording contract of their own. That year they released "Apache", which saw the birth of British rock guitar instrumental music. The record set the Shadows on a path of their own, and they soon became an instrumental group making major hits of their own. They continued to appear and record with Cliff and wrote many of his hits.

[ Visit the complete Wikipedia entry for Cliff Richard ]

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Actors - Cliff Richard

1958—1963: Success and stardom

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