Congratulations to George Harrison

As a kid (I'm talking 2-3), I did not know who George Harrison was. I only knew the weird photo on the fancy boxed set in my Dad's record collection.  The gold-leaf spine lettering and sheer heft of this package told me this was something IMPORTANT.  As I got older (4-5), I think I assumed it was classical music.  Finally, around age 6, I learned who he was and figured it out.

Finally, as an annoying middle schooler (12-13) I listened to the album for the first time.  There's 2 solid LPs of George's songs (which were usually passed over by John and Paul dating back to 1965).  The third disk, "Apple Jam," was literally just jamming.  And quite good.  George should have released this separately as a sort of "Super Session," and it still would have done well.  They do it in jazz all the time!  Anyhow, the only non-jam track is "It's Johnny's Birthday," a weird audio salute for John Lennon's 29th or 30th.  The melody stuck with me for years till I heard Cliff Richard's "Congratulations."

Say what you will about Richard, but he essentially invented rock and roll for British teens (teens like the Beatles).  He only had a couple stateside hits, but his influence on England's music cannot be denied.  He's not in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame; never been nominated.  He does not seem pleased by the "snub."  I guess if he gets in, you have to include other huge hitmakers-in-foreign-countries like Bryan Adams?

Anyhow, he recorded "Congratulations" in 1968 for the Eurovision song contest.  That's where every European country puts forth a song/performanace, and the whole world (except North America) watches, and the winning country gets to host the next year's contest, and if Israel wins, the Middle-Eastern nations cut off the broadcast early and announce the second-place country as the winner.  Weird.  It's SUPPOSED to be like the Olympics, where politics are put aside and everyone takes drugs.

"Congratulations" was so heavily favored to win, the papers started asking who would come in SECOND to the song.  Instead, in some bizarre twist of nationalism, one country threw its votes to a different country than expected and Spain ended up winning by ONE vote.  There's an entire documentary on the Francoist conspiracy that caused this, but it's apparently been debunked.  Either way, "Congratulations" remains a popular British hit that's identified with Eurovision, while the winner ("La, la, la") is not.