Charles Blackwell and His Orchestra - Death Valley (45 single)

British producer and orchestra leader Charles Blackwell began his career with legendary producer Joe Meek (Tornados, Telstar) in the early 1960s. In fact Blackwell recorded an entire album that was supposed to come out on Meek's Triumph label, but the label folded before the record could be released.

The album, Those Plucking Strings, did not surface until 2006 on a CD put out by the British RPM label. It's still readily available on disc and as a download.

One of the songs on Those Plucking Strings was the folk standard Freight Train. Blackwell would tackle this tune again on a 1962 single for Columbia in the U.K. On the flip side was the wonderful western-themed Death Valley, written by another great British orchestra leader and arranger, Norrie Paramor.



Neither side of this single appears to have made it to the digital age nor onto an LP.

Here, from YouTube, is the "A" side of the Columbia single.

Charles Blackwell's career stretched into the disco era, when he put out the best-selling Boogie Down album under the single moniker of Blackwell. He later launched a failed attempt to make a pop star out of TV hunk David Hasselhoff.