Clinton Ford

Clinton Ford specialized in romantic ballads alongside country & western novelties and notched several chart singles across the late 1950s and early 1960s. The standout success arrived with “Fanlight Fanny” in 1962. Born Ian George Stopford Harrison on 4 November 1931 in Salford, Manchester, he launched his professional career by fronting the Backwards Skiffle Group, an ensemble he later conceded had little genuine connection to the style yet exploited the prevailing trend. After serving as a Butlins Redcoat entertainer, he relocated to his family’s Liverpool base and performed at the newly launched Cavern Club. Oriole Records secured his signature, yet early prospects faltered when fellow Redcoat Russ Hamilton scored a major success with “We Will Make Love” and Ford’s intended cover of Marty Robbins’s “The Story of My Life” was preempted in Britain by Columbia’s Michael Holliday. He subsequently assembled the Hallelujah Skiffle Group, though the genre’s popularity had already waned and the venture yielded no commercial traction. Late in 1959 he finally reached the charts with a version of Red Foley’s “Old Shep,” which lasted just one week yet marked the sole charting rendition of that song in the U.K.

Still pursuing contemporary fashions, Ford next entered the listings with the trad-jazz number “Too Many Beautiful Girls.” His peak release revisited the music-hall repertoire of George Formby, who had cut “Fanlight Fanny” in 1935; the resulting self-titled album climbed to number 16 in 1962. Following a tour alongside Kenny Ball & His Jazzmen, he revisited the Cavern Club only to discover that trad jazz and country & western novelties had been eclipsed by a rising local group, the Beatles. A Columbia Records contract followed, but momentum had dissipated, leaving just one further hit five years later: the country track “Run to the Door,” issued in 1967 on the Piccadilly imprint, a Pye subsidiary. Subsequent albums and singles failed to register commercially, though Ford sustained a presence through pantomime appearances and modest revival shows before retiring to the Isle of Man, where he remained as of 2008.