Tag: Petula Clark

A Couple More Pet Pics

Petula Clark’s American fan club, PetulaClark.net, has this announcement:

40th Anniversary of the NBC

Petula Clark Special “Petula”

with Harry Belafonte

POSTPONED UNTIL SEPTEMBER 22, 2008

Hey, that must mean Petula will be back in the area! Here’s hoping she does another show here.

D.F. Rogers caught the moment last night that my moment with Petula Clark was caught. Thanks, Dennis.

Victor Lukas, Petula Clark, DOuG pRATt

Even with her head down, Petula takes a lovely picture, and she displays her unmistakable flourish and sense of style even when signing an autograph. Pet has the Rap and Hip-Hop section behind her! Talk about contrasting styles.

Petula Clark signing autograph at Mohegan Sun, May 11, 2008

PETULA CLARK IN PERSON!

Petula Clark put on a wonderful 75-minute show Sunday night, at the Mohegan Sun Cabaret!

Petula Clark at Mohegan Sun, May 11, 2008Petula Clark at Mohegan Sun, May 11, 2008

The place was packed, and it was a truly magical show, with Petula looking her loveliest and performing her absolute best. What a consummate entertainer! Pet is a singer, a story teller, and even a poet. She has a full band touring with her, with horns, and they put out a super sound. I was very pleased to have 60’s Pop Music maven D.F. Rogers there with me, to share the fun of seeing Pet live for the first time.

I sneaked just a few seconds of video. We were sitting too far back for this to look like much, but here it is.

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/PetulaMoheganSunCabaret.flv 440 330]

After the show there was a meet-and-greet signing with Petula at the Spin Street record store in Mohegan Sun. I grabbed a few moments of video from there, as well.

[flv:/Video/2008/MAY/PetulaMoheganSunSigning.flv 440 330]

That’s Petula’s stage manager, Victor Lukas, with her. Last year, having spotted my blog, Victor asked me to do a favor for him and Petula, and I was of course more than happy to oblige. I introduced myself, and Victor took this picture of me with the one and only Miss Petula Clark. Thank you, Victor!

Petula Clark with DOug pRATt

Petula and I had a lovely little exchange, that went something like this:

Pet: “You’re all dressed up!”
Me: “Uh, yeah….”
Pet: “People don’t get dressed up anymore for shows.”
Me: “Well, it’s for, you know, the occasion.”
Pet: “I think you look very nice.”

You can imagine how I felt about that comment! I thanked Pet and Victor and, as Dennis can attest, I left Spin Street in a daze. I would have loved a longer chat with Pet, of course, but there were a lot of people waiting behind me. I wanted to ask how Thursday evening went at the Paley Center, with the commemoration of the 40th anniversary of her TV special featuring Harry Belafonte. I’m hoping there will be a write-up about it in the next issue of Petula & Company.

Thank you, Petula Clark, for a delightful evening that I shall always remember. Truly you are a superstar talent and the finest of ladies.

Petula Postcard

Petula Clark Postcard

One of my relatively rare eBay acquisitions is this Nostalgia Postcard from England, reproducing a magazine cover from late 1949 with Petula Clark, just turned 17. Picturegoer called itself The National Film Weekly, and Petula was a movie star, and not yet a chart-topping hit singles singer. Of course in America we knew nothing of Pet’s 20+ year career when she hit it big here, stateside.

Pet’s Serenade To Love

Let’s make it a Petula Clark triple post for today. From an appearance on the American TV show The Hollywood Palace, she sings “This Is My Song.”

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/PetHollywoodBowl.flv 440 330]

Thirty five years later Petula did what I feel is an ever better rendition of the same song. Be sure to check out the other Petula clips that are linked in the YouTube menu.

A Sing Of The Times

I’m going to do one of my rare reruns. It’s a video that’s so much fun it’s worth watching again. It’s Petula Clark’s 1966 appearance on the Ed Sullivan Show, performing the Tony Hatch song, “It’s A Sign Of The Times.” The set, the clothes, and the colors really are signs of those times. I remastered the video yet again, for bigger and better quality than the one I did before.

As I’ve long joked, in a perfect world Petula Clark, Julie Andrews, and Diana Rigg would all have been on the American scene at the same time, each dominating their respective fields of entertainment. Oh! Wait! They were! They did! 😉

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/SignOfTheTimes.flv 440 330]

I particularly love the way the music moves along when Pet sings the lyric, “Maybe my lucky star, at last decided to shine… maybe somebody knows how long I’ve waited to make you mine.” This is pop music perfection. As a bonus, this time I’ll toss in the original studio recording of the song, taken from a well-worn LP.

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/SignOfTheTimes.mp3]

Another track from the same LP is a Pet-penned autobiographical tune, “Two Rivers.”

[audio:http://www.dograt.com/Audio/2008/APR/TwoRivers.mp3]

Pet Pitches For Coca-Cola

It’s already been over a year since the PBS program The British Beat, hosted by Petula Clark, first aired. Take a look at this video clip I posted, and you’ll see what Comcast analog cable TV looked like, and why I switched to Verizon FiOS digital.

That show wasn’t the first time Pet had been paired, in a sense, with legendary New York DJ Bruce Morrow, aka: Cousin Brucie. Pet did some radio spots for Coca-Cola in the sixties, with Cousin Brucie doing the intro.

[flv:/Video/2008/APR/PetCocaCola.flv 440 330]

I know that Pet greatly admires the late Dusty Springfield, but as a kid I had a hard time recognizing Dusty’s new songs. Versatile to a fault, is how I would now describe her work. In this regard Springfield was similar to Bobby Darin.

Petula Clark, on the other hand, has a distinctive and immediately recognizable sound that’s all her own, whether she’s belting out a pop tune or a love song. She’s done it all, from small French cabaret performances to lavish Broadway productions. For myself, growing up when I did, Pet represents the same thing the Beatles do — the absolute finest in popular music.