Hello Bill,
Yes, on reflection I think that had George Martin produced The Shadows instead of Norrie Parramor then things might have turned out differently. I believe that it could be argued that, as individual musicians The Shadows were probably better than The Beatles. George Martin was 12 years younger than Norrie Paramor and was definitely more forward thinking.
Being younger, he may have related better to the Shadows and may have stretched them as Musicians. However I don't really think that Norrie Paramor did much wrong, as the Record books suggest in terms of No 1 records and chart history how much better could he have done.
The biggest handicap that the Shadows suffered was the marked refusal of the fans to accept that the band wanted to try something new and thus the poor sales of LP'S from 1967 on and the relative failure of Marvin, Welch and Farrar meant that the only Shadows material that was commercialy viable in the last active years of the Band was the series of increasingly bland cover version albums. I still have a slight hope that the Band will produce one final Studio album with few, if any cover versions and prove what we know, that The Shadows are the greatest Instrumental band in history.