1979 (Shirley Bassey's # 1 Hit - Shirley performs a powerfully dynamic rendition of one of her signature songs 18 years afer she originally recorded it back in 1961. Climb Every Mountain is a song from the musical, 'The Sound Of Music'. Shirley is performing this song on her 1979 TV Variety Show. At the conclusion it says, 'Shirley Bassey Introduced' - This meant that it was her first show of the 1979 series. Bassey started show business in 1953 at the age of 16 yo, and now in her mid 70's, thankfully, Dame Shirley's voice is still as powerful as ever. This powerful song was waiting for someone like Bassey to record it.
Shirley first recorded this song as a Columbia single in 1961, and then included the track on her 1961 LP title, 'Shirley Bassey'. Shirley's powerful recording of this classic song climbed the charts until it reached the Number 1 position!
ABOUT the song:
"Climb Ev'ry Mountain" is a show tune from the 1959 Rodgers and Hammerstein musical The Sound of Music. Here it is sung at the close of the first act by the Mother Abbess. It is themed as an inspirational piece, to encourage people to take every step towards attaining one's dreams.
This song shares inspirational overtones with the song "You'll Never Walk Alone" from Carousel. They are both sung by the female mentor characters in the shows, and are used to give strength to the protagonists in the story, and both are given powerful reprises at the end of their respective shows. However, as Oscar Hammerstein II was writing the lyrics, it developed its own inspirational overtones along the lines of an earlier Hammerstein song, "There's a Hill Beyond a Hill". He felt that the metaphors of climbing mountains and fording streams better fitted Maria's quest for her spiritual compass. However, the muse behind the song was Sister Gregory, the head of Drama at Rosary College in Illinois. The letters that she sent to Hammerstein and to Mary Martin, the first Maria von Trapp on Broadway, described the parallels between a nun's choice for a religious life and the choices that humans must make to find their purpose and direction in life. When she read the manuscript of the lyrics, she confessed that it "drove [her] to the Chapel" because the lyrics conveyed a "yearning that ... ordinary souls feel but cannot communicate".
Tony Bennett had a very minor hit in 1960 with his recording of the song. In 1961, Welsh singer Shirley Bassey recorded the song and released it as part of a double A-sided
