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Last updated: 16 October 2009
Shirley Bassey's As I Love You was the very first Number One from a Welsh artist, but it didn't even start life as the first choice for the single.
As I Love You, recorded with Wally Stott and His Orchestra, was the 'AA' side of Hands Across The Sea, which was judged to be the more likely hit.
As it happened, it was the B side which became the more popular, as a result in part because of an appearance at the London Palladium.
It charted first in December 1958, but it took a few weeks to make the journey to Number One, getting to the top on 9 January 1959 and staying at the top for four weeks. Thus it became the very first Number One by a Welsh artist.
Wally Stott, a noted jazz and orchestral musician, composer and arranger from Leeds, became known as Angela Morley and had gender reassignment surgery in 1972. She died in January 2009, 50 years to the week since hitting Number One with Shirley Bassey.
