British balladeer Tony Christie is one of the enduring voices of British pop. 1943, at 18 he joined the popular local group The Counterbeats, later fronting his own combo, Tony Christie & the Trackers. After mounting a solo career, he cut his debut single, "Life's Too Good to Waste," in 1966, followed a year later by "Turn Around." Upon signing to in 1969, Christie teamed with the songwriting and production tandem of Mitch Murray and Peter Callender, with the 1971 LP Las Vegas providing the singer's breakthrough with the smash hit "Is This the Way to Amarillo?" (a number one hit in Germany, Sweden, Denmark, and Spain), Christie remained a constant of the European charts for much of the 1970s via subsequent hits including "Avenues and Alleyways" (the theme to the television series The Protectors) and "The Queen of Mardi Gras”.

Christie enjoying a new wave of popularity and credibility via the 1999 single "Walk Like a Panther” (co-written by fellow Sheffield-er Jarvis Cocker). The single earned Christie his first appearance on Top of the Pops in a quarter century, and his newfound hipster cachet was further solidified when the smash comedy series Peter Kay's Phoenix Nights employed "Is This the Way to Amarillo?" as its theme song. In the spring of 2005, the single was re-released to raise funds for the charity Comic Relief, and spent seven weeks atop the U.K. pop charts.