20 Golden Greats

Personnel: Hank Marvin, Bruce Welch (vocals, guitar).Without a single misplaced footstep in sight, 20 Golden Greats soared effortlessly to the top of the U.K. chart, becoming the Shadows first album chart-topper since their sophomore album, back in 1962. It was a deserved triumph -- and, perhaps, a predictable one, even at the height of punk rock. A straightforward run through the Shadows' early- to mid-1960s singles, the peerless sequence which stretched from "Apache" in 1960 to "The Rise and Fall of Flingel Bunt" in 1964, consumes 15 of the album's 20 tracks; the remainder of the set then cherry picks the next four years to round up the lesser-heard, but equally laudable "Maroc 7," "Stingray," "The War Lord," "Genie With the Light Brown Lamp," and "A Place in the Sun." It's a dynamic collection, then, rounding up the 20 most quintessential Shadows hits, as opposed to the 20 most successful, the 20 best-known, or whatever other criteria such compilations like to be guided by. The fact