As the risk of being a little too obviously obsessive here, I’ll follow up on a comment I added to my Cilla Black post, about a video that shows Petula Clark’s style, that you can compare to Cilla Black, who was at the cute and coy end of the sexiness spectrum. The video is a little dark, but serviceable. At this link you can read about the TV special they’re promoting.
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Category: Petula Clark
The One and Only Miss Petula Clark!
Cilla Black, British Import
Will the three K’s in the girl group K3 ever find fame beyond Belgium and the Netherlands? I suspect not, with language being the reason why. Do any American network television producers even know about K3? Oh, yes. As of yesterday I am 100% sure of that.
But now let’s go back to 1965, when Petula Clark had a string of hit records that was perhaps unprecedented for any solo female singer. Certainly no other British woman has met with such success before or since. Julie Andrews specialized in musicals, of course.
Dusty Springfield broke onto the U.S. charts some months before Petula, and she was quite successful, although she never had a #1 hit here. But there was also another female English solo singer seeking success in America. Cilla Black was, like the Beatles, from Liverpool, and she was likewise discovered and managed by Brian Epstein.
Cilla Black provides an interesting contrast to Petula Clark. They’re both petite, with strong voices, but where Cilla’s appeal was being cute and coy, Petula’s primary charm was sexiness. With great popularity in England, Brian Epstein behind her, and George Martin producing her records, Cilla had the necessary advantages to succeed in America. But it didn’t happen.
Cilla Black made one appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show. It was on September 12, 1965, the same night the Beatles made their last live appearance for Sullivan. I featured a bit of it at this link eighteen months ago. And this is Cilla on that night.
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In the recording studio, Cilla had the benefit of not only George Martin, but several songs written by Paul McCartney.
The first is “Love of the Love,” from 1963, which I think should have been done in a more laid back style.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/LoveOfTheLoved.mp3]Then there’s “It’s For You,” from 1964, which I think has Martin making Cilla sound conspicuously like Shirley Bassey, who he had recorded recently singing the famous “Goldfinger” theme.
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/ItsForYou.mp3]… and “Step Inside Love” from much later, in 1968, with production values that point towards George Martin’s work with McCartney on “Live and Let Die.”
[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/JUN/StepInsideLove.mp3]Petula Clark’s UK Tour
Petula Clark’s UK tour starts Saturday. Details are here (look for “click here”). Dave Moncur, DogRat reader and resident of Scotland, will be seeing Pet live, and maybe he’ll share some details with us after the show.
According to the Petula Clark blog, Pet was scheduled to make a BBC Radio 2 appearance on Steve Wright’s show today (Friday), but that didn’t happen. Wright says in this audio clip that “starlet” (that’s cute) Pet will be “on soon.”
[audio:/2008/MAY/BBC2.mp3]You’d think a savvy Brit like Wright would know Ms. Paltrow’s name is pronouced “GWYNeth,” and not “GWENyth.” The Petula blog also recently featured this new interview in The Telegraph, with her talking about vacations and travel. Pet certainly does a lot of traveling. I saw her in Connecticut just a few weeks ago!
New Petula Clark CD, Interview
If you happen to live in England, you’re in for a bit of good luck, because a new Petula Clark CD is about to be released, including five new songs! It’s called “THEN AND NOW – THE VERY BEST OF PETULA CLARK”, and it will be out on June 16th. It’s listed on Amazon’s UK site, but not yet here in America. The new songs are described here, on the new Petula Clark blog.
Petula fan Dave Moncur, our DogRat reader in Scotland, wrote to say that the Times Online has posted a new interview with Pet, Not Just Anybody: Petula Clark. The questions are funny and unusual, and I daresay some of them are the sort that only another woman would ask of her. Unfortunately, at the moment the dimensions of the photo of Pet on that page have been distorted. The JPG is here in its original and unmodified form, just like Pet herself, who assures us she’s never had any plastic surgery.
A New Petula Clark Blog
Last year there was a short-lived Petula Clark blog. There was some synergy between my Petula posts and “Petula Clark: Driven by Emotion,” but that blog met an untimely and abrupt end. Petula Clark’s UK fan club has just started a new Pet blog, that you can see by clicking here.
Petula Clark on The Muppet Show
I remember watching a PET-icular Muppet Show at Bismo’s house, way back in 1977 when he was still living with his parents. It starred Petula Clark, and little did I know at the time that Bismo’s dad is also a Pet fan. One of the CD’s I had Pet sign on Sunday is for him. (Yes, Jean, there’s one for you, too!)
I was going to post these as a custom YouTube player, but whomever posted the show prevented embedding, so I downloaded them.
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