Billy Fury: An Anthology Collects Rocker’s Numerous UK Hits

Like the similarly styled Cliff Richard, Liverpool, England, native Billy Fury was mostly just a home-country phenomenon. The singer, who died in 1983, played no part in the British Invasion and never placed a song on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart.

In the U.K., the story was different. Though not as big a star as Richard, Fury scored 27 Top 40 singles between 1959 and 1966, including 11 that made England’s Top 10. He also released several bestselling LPs and EPs.

As with Richard, the failure to break through in the States is harder to understand than the U.K. success. Fury, who succumbed to a heart attack at only 42, was a strong singer, capable of tender ballads, catchy, midtempo orchestrated pop and raucous rockers. Moreover, he featured excellent material, some of which he wrote himself. Many of his other songs came from first-rate composers such as the teams of Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman, Phil Medley and Bert Berns, and Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield.

You can catch up with Fury’s catalog via a 2026 two-CD set called The Decca A’s and B’s 1959–66, which, as the title suggests, collects both sides of every single he released for the label. This compendium of 62 remastered tracks, which comes with a booklet containing an essay about Fury, features all his big hits, including the self-penned “Colette”; “Halfway to Paradise” and “I’d Never Find Another You,” both by Gerry Goffin and Carole King; and “It’s Only Make Believe,” which topped charts for co-writer Conway Twitty in its original version.

Many of the B-sides are as likable as the As. Among them are covers of “Glad All Over,” “A Thousand Stars” and “The Hippy Hippy Shake,” which produced hits for Dave Clark Five, Kathy Young and the Swinging Blue Jeans, respectively; the self-penned “My Christmas Prayer” and “Last Kiss”; and the rocking “All I Wanna Do Is Cry.”

There is an occasional stumble, such as the inane “In Summer” (which reached #5 on U.K. charts despite its vapidity). However, the lion’s share of this collection suggests that Fury deserves to be ranked alongside better-known contemporaneous vocalists like Bobby Vee, Gene Pitney and Bobby Darin.

The collection is available in the U.S. here, in Canada here and in the U.K. here.