Cliff singing Please Don’t Tease at the London Palladium
'Stars In Your Eyes' season, June-December 1960
Please Don't Tease was Cliff's ninth single release and the third to attain number one status. It became a number one hit for Cliff and The Shadows in June 1960, and spent an incredible 18 weeks in the UK charts throughout that summer. It was recorded at Abbey Road Studios on 25 March 1960 during a frantic two week recording period to lay down tracks for the forthcoming Me And My Shadows album release.
The song featured on Cliff's 'Saturday Spectacular' TV show for ATV on 30 July 1960 – having just been deposed from the number one slot in the UK charts by his own backing band with Apache. This performance has already been officially released on the Hit List video back in 1993, and parts of it were first used in the BBC 'Rock And Roll Years' series made in the mid-eighties. Like most of the songs from this July 1960 'Saturday Spectacular', the acoustics are far from ideal as The Shadows at the far rear of the stage sound indistinct and muffled.
The surviving recording of the song from one of the 'Me And My Shadows' shows during the summer of 1960 was made using a reel to reel recorder which unfortunately had "speeded up" – a characteristic often displayed by such recorders at the time, though this can be rectified to some degree: the quality of the track is nonetheless remarkably lucid and clear. Other radio performances of it include two appearances on BBC's 'Parade Of The Pops' on 6 August and 1 October 1960.
MC: although the vocal element is tolerably clear, Cliff's phrasing leaves something to be desired at times, but really the degree of tape-wow and other nasties makes this one of the more dispensable Luxembourg survivals.