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[–] cynicaloldfart [S] ago  (edited ago)

"Glad All Over" was written by Dave Clark and Mike Smith. In January 1964, it became the British group's first big hit, reaching No.1 on the UK Singles Chart. In April 1964, it reached No.6 on the American US Billboard Hot 100 chart, becoming the first British Invasion hit by a group other than The Beatles.

"Glad All Over" featured Smith leading unison group vocals, often in call and response style, a saxophone line used not for solo decoration but underneath the whole song, and a big, "air hammer" beat that underpinned the wall of sound production. The engineer Adrian Kerridge developed a thumping drum sound for this track, which became known as the Tottenham sound. Dave Clark recalled to Uncut magazine: "I went to Alexander Palace once, and saw a big band called The Eric Delaney Band. On the front of the stage, he had these timpanis. He came off the drums at the back and played these timpanis, and it was quite amazing. It was showmanship. That's always stuck in my mind. It wasn't very clever l, what he was doing, but it was dynamite, the crowd loved it. That was a big influence." Clark also said: "I knew that we needed a song with the thumps in. we had been playing dance halls and we were getting a great audience response to the stomping things we were doing."

Lead vocalist Mike Smith came across a song called "Glad All Over" by Carl Perkins and wrote a new song with the same title. Smith recalled, "We had lost out on 'Do You Love Me' to Brian Poole and so Dave (Clark) thought we should do an original. He asked me to come up with something and I looked through my record collection for a suitable title."