Craig Douglas: The Boy Next Door

THE SUCCESS American rock'n'rollers in the United Kingdom naturally brought about a wave of British imitators, but the raw aggressive sound of these copyists did not find favour with a sizeable proportion of the pop-music public. In the face of the wild onslaught of these rockers, many yearned for a familiar and comforting voice, the safe and harmless boy-next-door singer. The yearning may have been mute and unconscious, and certainly it was not shared by all, but when Craig Douglas came on to the scene he fulfilled a need for a young balladeer to counteract the harsher trends of late Fifties rock'n'roll.