I got this CD towards the end of 2005, shortly before I started here. It cost me £3.33 from Amazon, which must be pretty close to the price I paid for the cassette version in late 1976 or early 1977. At this stage any comment from my parents along the lines of "I remember when a gallon of strawberry jam was only two and sixpence" would be guaranteed to get an exaggerated stage yawn from me. Inflation was boringly reliable then, and mostly it still is now. But, kids, isn't it fascinating that the price of a crappy old cassette would get you nine or ten pints of fine Watneys ale then, whereas the price of a shiny CD will only get 330ml of fizzy lager in many London bars?
So this was a nostalgia purchase, because The Singles Album was the first recorded music I ever bought. It could have been Anarchy in the UK, but it wasn't. I still have that tape somewhere, so I'll save that story for another time. For now, the first thing I'm interested in is how any album can be shoddily copied and degraded, and extended like a dodgy conservatory on a Barratt Home.
The cover captures some of this. Have a look at the original vinyl cover, where you can actually see the features of Shirl's face. The cover of my CD — see how it's become Shirley Bassey: The Singles instead of The Shirley Bassey Singles Album — is even worse than it looks in the image above. The face is a dark rusty colour that blends into the hat and coat.
eBay is a great way of excavating the archaeological record of albums like this: there are an incredible number of versions still circulating. Here's a cassette copy (available until early June), where the cover photograph is still decent quality. In common with my cassette copy it has 12 tracks, but unlike my copy these tracks are in the same order as my CD copy (which has an extra four tracks bolted on the end). My cassette has the same track order as this one (auction ends later today).
Meanwhile the MusicBrainz entry is for an Australian release, which has reverted back to the title The Shirley Bassey Singles Album, but now has 20 tracks in a completely different sequence.
Anyway, now I can hear the great orchestral arrangements better than I ever could on my knackered old cassette. And I still enjoy them — or probably enjoy them in a different way — especially Where Do I Begin and the anglicised Brel of If You Go Away.
 MusicBrainz entry for this album
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