Currently Listening To.... mark IV 2015

Cat Stevens is a multi-cuturalist. His father was a Greek Cypriot and his mother was Swedish. He went to a Roman Catholic school and converted to Islam after a near death experience.

Some other songs that Cat Stevens wrote were

 

@longk excellent choice but I was never too keen on P.P. Arnold's version.

She was the first person to release the song and did very well to reach No. 18 in the charts. She worked well with the Immediate label but had some problems after the company went bust.

She picked herself up and did pretty well with accompanying other stars, doing a lot of backing and session work, made a number of albums with other labels and appearing in good roles in some musicals.

 

It was a fantastic recording.

Funnily enough, they released it exactly the same week as Cilla Black released it - first week of February 1965. The Righteous Brothers reached No.1 and Cilla reached No. 2.

 

Here's a nice gentle song. It was written for the film 'Robin Hood, Prince of Thieves'.

Almost 124 million hits on youtube!!

 

As Whitney Houston's daughter has been rushed into hospital it seems fitting to play this lovely song. (Over 127 million hits on youtube)

 

This is Gilbert`s classic world-wide hit from 1972.

We met him in 1973 when he was in London. We were in the same restaurant at a club in the West End and he was on the next table. We had a brief chat with him and he was very nice.

There are many videos of Gilbert performing this song - but none of them capture the spirit of the record . If you haven`t seen this footage before , it was filmed for promotional purposes when the single was released - but music videos weren`t commonly used back in 1972!

It features Clair Mills herself - the daughter of his manager Gordon Mills for whom Gilbert used to baby-sit in the early days of their partnership. He wrote the song as a gift for her parents to say thanks for everything they had done for him. It`s actually Gordon Mills playing the harmonica solo! Hope you enjoy this video of Clair having fun with 'Uncle Ray' - (Raymond is Gilberts real name!)

Clair says that she remembers him with great fondness.

 

Can't let you get too comfortable

Sorry, longk, but I find REZ too discordant.