shewhomust: (guitars)
[personal profile] shewhomust
Friday night being music night on BBC4, we were watching a compilation of songs which had, in their time, been baned by the BBC: some predictable (The Kinks' Lola), some less so.

I had never heard Shirley Bassey's first single, Burn My Candle, and she's not a performer I usually enjoy. I'm happy to assume that what she does, she does well, but the torch songs, the power ballads, the Bond movie themes, the sheer force that made Burly Chassis so inevitable a deformation of her name, these are not for me. This, on the other hand:



At 19 she delivers the song with lightness and wit. It's full of fun. Couldn't last, I suppose, and here she is, ten years later, explaining how a new arangement had taken this "early Shirley" and "poshed it up a little," on her way to becoming Dame Shirley...

Date: 2015-04-11 03:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
Ok, I have to brag on this: my parents gave me the middle name "Lola" specifically to name me after the song. I like to think that Joe Strummer and his ex-wife named one of their daughters "Lola Maybelline" for the same reason!

Date: 2015-04-11 04:06 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pigshitpoet.livejournal.com
whatever lola wants...

; )

Date: 2015-04-12 09:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com
That's very cool, and well worth bragging about. Doesn't it make you young, though!

Date: 2015-04-12 01:04 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] vschanoes.livejournal.com
Oh, that's nice! Thank you! I have not been feeling young lately--lots of trouble getting down and up from the floor, very short of breath, etc. All normal for 7 months pregnant, but still...

; )

Date: 2015-04-11 04:01 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pigshitpoet.livejournal.com
can you believe she is black AND welsh! now that's better than chocolate!

shirley was a beautiful songbird

many thanks!

Re: ; )

Date: 2015-04-12 09:08 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] shewhomust.livejournal.com
I had no idea she did anything like this!

Re: ; )

Date: 2015-04-12 11:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pigshitpoet.livejournal.com
and starting so young! and still performing...

; )

Re: ; )

Date: 2015-04-12 03:19 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] durham-rambler.livejournal.com
is a beautiful songbird. Still performing, as recently as the 2014 Royal Variety Performance (13 November).

Re: ; )

Date: 2015-04-12 10:55 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] pigshitpoet.livejournal.com
would have loved to be a fly on that wall!

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