Richard Harris A Tramp Shining

A Tramp Shining is the debut album of Richard Harris, released in 1968 by Dunhill Records. The album was written, arranged, and produced by singer-songwriter Jimmy Webb. Although Harris sang several numbers on the soundtrack album to the film musical Camelot the previous year, A Tramp Shining was Harris' first solo album. "MacArthur Park" was one of the biggest singles of that year, reaching #2 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart in the United States. The album as a whole was also highly successful, and was nominated for a Grammy Award for "Album of the Year" in 1969.

Cliff Richard has utilized a lot of guises and personae as a performer '50s rock 'n' roller, '60s pop/rock vocalist, Christian musician, '70s rock vocalist, and, since the 1980s, a general U.K. entertainment institution, with a knighthood. But how many listeners ever thought of him as a singer/songwriter? The 31st of February was only ever issued in England, and is built on the work of Cliff Richard as a singer/songwriter. He was never known for his composing during the 1960s, and he proves amazingly good at it here; perhaps he was in the same boat as George Harrison, having stockpiled a brace of excellent original songs that just weren't appropriate for use in his earlier situation, but whatever their chronological origins, the original songs, mixed with some well-chosen outside compositions, make The 31st of February a bit stronger than his solo albums of the late 1960s and early 1970s.