Cliff and the Shadows performing Nine Times Out of Ten
on the New Year's Eve ATV Spectacular on 31 December 1960.
This great rock 'n' roll track was penned by the partnership that had already written All Shook Up for Elvis Presley. It was originally intended for Elvis to record in 1959 but found its way to Cliff who laid down his version at EMI's Abbey Road Studios on 15 March 1960. When the song was belatedly released as his tenth hit single in September that year, it stayed in the NME UK charts for over 12 weeks, peaking at number 2 during October 1960.
Cliff performed this rocker frequently in his live concerts during late 1960/1961 and on television and radio too. When he hosted the 1960 New Year's Eve Spectacular for the ATV network he sang this song and also his contemporary release I Love You. He also gave a great performance of it on the fourth show of his six-part ATV series 'Cliff' broadcast on Thursday 9 March 1961 – which was officially released on the Hit List video compilation back in 1993. Fortunately both these shows survive in the archives of Carlton International, though they remain unseen in their entirety to this day.
Radio performances of the single include three appearances on BBC Radio's 'Parade Of The Pops' on 1 and 26 October and 19 November 1960. The Luxembourg recording is of poor quality and includes just half the song, as it was probably used as a fade-out at the end of one of the shows.
MC: this sticks closely to the Single version, and is robustly delivered by all concerned; but reproduction is poor, and there seems little or no reason to wish that we had more of it.