Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was covered by Hagar Schon Aaronson Shrieve for their 1984 album Through the Fire. It was released as the album's only single and reached No. 94 at the Billboard Hot 100 charts.
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  "A Whiter Shade of Pale" is a song by the English rock band Procol Harum that was issued as their debut record on 12 May 1967. The single reached number 1 in the UK Singles Chart on 8 June and stayed there for six weeks. Without much promotion, it reached number 5 on the US Billboard Hot 100. One of the anthems of the 1967 Summer of Love, it is one of the most commercially successful singles in history, having sold more than 10 million copies worldwide. In the years since, "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has become an enduring classic, with more than 1000 known cover versions by other artists. With its Bach-derived instrumental melody, soulful vocals, and unusual 
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  the music of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was composed by Gary Brooker and Matthew Fisher, while the lyrics were written by Keith Reid. Originally, the writing credits only listed Brooker and Reid. In 2009, Fisher won co-writing credit for the music in a unanimous ruling from the Law Lords. In 1977, the song was named joint winner (along with Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody") of "The Best British Pop Single 1952–1977" at the Brit Awards. In 1998, the song was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame. In 2004, the performing rights group Phonographic Performance Limited recognised it as the most-played record by British broadcasting of the past 70 years and Rolling Stone placed it 57th on its list of 
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  "A Whiter Shade of Pale" was covered by Annie Lennox for her 1995 album Medusa. It was released as the album's second single in May 1995 and became a top-forty hit in Europe and Canada. It was also used in Irwin Winkler's film The Net, appearing in closing credits.
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  Keith Reid got the title and starting point for the song at a party. He overheard someone at the party saying to a woman, "You've turned a whiter shade of pale", and the phrase stuck in his mind. The original lyrics had four verses, of which only two are heard on the original recording. The third verse has been heard in live performances by Procol Harum, and more seldom the fourth. Claes Johansen, in his book Procol Harum: Beyond the Pale, suggests that the song "deals in metaphorical form with a male/female relationship which after some negotiation ends in a sexual act". This is supported by Tim de Lisle 
Title: Procol Harum
Content:  At Olympic Studios, southwest London, with session drummer (and non-Paramount) Bill Eyden, producer Denny Cordell and sound engineer Keith Grant, the group recorded "A Whiter Shade of Pale", and it was released on 12 May 1967. With a structure reminiscent of Baroque music, a countermelody based on J. S. Bach's Orchestral Suite N° 3 in D Major played by Fisher's Hammond organ, Brooker's vocals and Reid's lyrics, the single reached No. 1 on the UK Singles Chart and the Canadian RPM Magazine chart. It did almost as well in the United States, reaching No. 5 on 29 July 1967. In Australia, it was No. 1 for many weeks, setting a record of 8 weeks in Melbourne. After "A Whiter Shade of Pale" became a hit, the band set 
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  The single was released on 12 May 1967 in the United Kingdom by Deram Records and entered Record Retailers chart (later the UK Singles Chart) on 25 May. In two weeks it reached number 1, where it stayed for six weeks. Writing in 2005, Jim Irvin of Mojo said that its arrival at number 1 on 8 June 1967, on the same day that the Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band topped the national albums chart, marked the start of the Summer of Love in Britain. According to music historian Harvey Kubernik, in the context of the Summer of 
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  22 on the soul charts there. The song was included on the US release of the Procol Harum album, in September 1967, but not on the subsequent UK version. In the Netherlands, the single entered the chart at number 1 in June 1967 and reached number 1 again in July 1972. A May 1972 re-release on Fly Records peaked at number 13 in the UK. Due to concerns about overexposure, the song was removed from the band's repertoire in 1969 for a number of years. "A Whiter Shade of Pale" has continued to receive critical acclaim. Along with Queen's 
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  "The Miller's Tale"). The lyricist, Keith Reid, said: "I'd never read The Miller's Tale in my life. Maybe that's something that I knew subconsciously, but it certainly wasn't a conscious idea for me to quote from Chaucer, no way." The phrase a whiter shade of pale has since gained widespread use in the English language, noticed by several dictionaries. As such, the phrase is today often used in contexts independent of any consideration of the song. It has also been heavily paraphrased, in forms like "an Xer shade of Y", to the extent that it has been recognised as a snowclone – a type of cliché and phrasal template.
Title: A Whiter Shade of Pale
Content:  Procol Harum recorded "A Whiter Shade of Pale" at Olympic Sound Studios in London, England. The recording was produced by Denny Cordell. Because they did not have a regular drummer, the drums were played by Bill Eyden, a session musician. The track was completed in two takes, with no subsequent overdubbing. A few days after the session, the band re-recorded the song with their newly recruited drummer, Bobby Harrison, at Advision Studios. This version was discarded, and one of the original mono recordings was chosen for release as the band's debut single. The B-side was "Lime Street Blues", another Brooker–Reid song, which the band recorded at Advision. Cordell was concerned that the sound of "A Whiter Shade of Pale" might prove problematic on the radio, due to the prominence of the drummer's cymbals. He therefore sent an acetate copy to Radio London, and his worries were assuaged when the disc jockey played the disc on-air and announced: "That sounds like a massive hit."

Question: who sang a whiter shade of pale first?
Answer: Procol Harum.
British rock band Procol Harum.