Currently listening to.... 2016

This was first published 49 years ago. Things don't change much, do they?

 

Just the right song for this time of year

 

Eartha Kitt was a unique talent. She wasn't sure who her parents were but it's thought that her mother was raped by the plantation owner where she lived. Although she wasn't even sure that the person who looked after her was her mother.

She became a dancer in the famous Katherine Dunham Troupe, then a singer, film star and actress. She appeared in about 30 films (some of the more recent ones were voices in some of the Disney animation films when she was in her 70's), she was in many shows on Broadway and around the world and spoke seven languages. She also had quite few hit records.

Two completely different type of songs that became big hits were:-

 

Mary Travers was a well known folk singer and had many hits solo and as Peter Paul and Mary.

She was a friend of John Denver and they sang and played a lot of songs together so she recorded a lot of his songs - this is from 1971





A song that was sung very successfully by Mary was even more successfully sung by Roberta Flack in 1972. It has been covered by, literally, hundreds of famous singers but Roberta had the biggest hit.

It was written in 1957 by Ewan MacColl and he hated all the recorded versions apart from the original which was sung by Peggy Seeger (different tempo).



Ewan's daughter was Kirsty MacColl (sadly died at the age of 41) who made a number of hit songs (her first one was 'There's a guy works down the chip shop swears he's Elvis') but I like this version of one of her hits recorded with The Pogues (written by Cole Porter in 1934). It was performed at the Jools Holland Hootenanny

 

The version that Ewan hated most of all was Elvis's

 

For a change I'm not linking songs. These are just playing on youtube whilst I'm working.




Alright, I lied! I can't stop myself from linking songs so here are a few western songs.





The second singer on this clip is Ricky Nelson

 

Unfortunately, Peter Sarstedt has just died

This was his biggest hit which I'm sure a lot of you will remember.



This was the biggest hit of his brother, Eden Kane



and his other big hit



and their youngest brother Clive Robin Sarstedt had a number 3 with this

 

Good morning all my friends currently listening to Mrs Woo she's in another one of her "when are you going to grow up" modes ,I said to her I tried that once and didn't like it

 

Second childhood!