The Other Welling Embassy

A Memory of Welling.

In 1960 when I was just fourteen and already hopelessly addicted to Radio Luxembourg, I would rush home from school to listen to all the great records of the day. There was one hit that year, Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow by the Shirelles, and it truly had me hooked. Desperate to own a copy I went to the Eric Spencer record shop in Welling High Street to purchase one but sadly, at 6/8d it was beyond the means of my small amount of pocket money. Then one day in Welling a year later I paid a visit to Woolworths and was overjoyed to hear Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow coming from the Embassy Records counter near the entrance. Yet it wasn't the Shirelles but an Embassy cover version. Truth be told I had never paid much attention to Embassy releases, after all their cover versions were only sold in Woolworths and were dismissed by the mainstream record industry, so much so they were never included in the weekly Top Ten charts. In reality Embassy covers, at half the price of mainstream records, sometimes outsold the original versions and the excellent Will You Love Me Tomorrow by Jean Campbell (the word 'Still' had been dropped from the title} sold in multiple thousands. There is also a certain irony in the fact that today, Embassy records are highly collectable

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