As well as the 63rd anniversary of the recording date of The Shadows' "Apache", today also marks the 30th anniversary of the recording date of the two released duet recordings by Hank Marvin and Mark Knopfler: "Wonderful Land" and "Nivram". Both were first issued on a 7" vinyl single, CD single (also including "Hot Rox") and cassette single in October, 1993, while "Wonderful Land" and "Hot Rox" were also included on the "Heartbeat" album, issued one month later.
On "Wonderful Land", Hank plays the main melody, like he did on The Shadows' original, while Mark plays some of the original's orchestral parts on his guitar, as well as enhancing Hank's parts, something John Farrar did in The Shadows in the mid 1970s during live performances of the track. On "Nivram", both Hank and Mark play the main melody in harmony, but both also each play improvised parts. The other Mark (Griffiths) plays the bass guitar solo in his own style.
Interestingly, during the same recording session, they also started to record a Jeff Lynne composition called "Blue". It was to be featured as the third track on the "Wonderful Land" CD single issue. As the session time ran out, it wasn't entirely completed. I didn't know about this at first, but just recently read about it in the November, 1996 issue 8 of Shadsfax, when I bought it as a PDF-file.
What's your opinion about these recordings?