A Neglected National Treasure

There was a documentary on television last night of Britain's best selling female singer of all time, somebody who has sold more than 70 million records worldwide, appeared in films, television shows, musicals on Broadway and the West End, wrote songs in the sixties under two pseudonyms, sang in English, French, German, Italian and Spanish and had hits in those countries, but who has slipped off the collective national radar.

Ladies and Germs, I present the case for a neglected national treasure.

Petula Clark, despite her position as our number one female recording artist, has been overlooked for too long - one of the reasons I would suggest is that back in the early sixties she decided to marry a foreign national and decamp to France. She has one of the smoothest, yet most adaptable voices in the history of popular music.

If you look at just her well known pop career in the U.K, not only did she sing the vocals on a 1964 hit that has the second most easily recognisable piano intro in pop music history after Let it Be, but her U.K chart career spans twenty eight years from 1954 to 1988, 247 weeks on the chart, 10 Top Ten hits and three number ones. She is the only person, so far, in popular music history to have chart entries more than 50 years apart, from her debut in the U.K in 1954 to her most recent appearance on the Belgium album chart last year.

One of the things I admire about Petula Clark is that she has always been her own woman, not in the Madonna - Oh look its Wednesday time for another strategic career move way - but in the way that her career has clearly defined sections: child star (The Huggetts), television star, film star, pop singer, musical leading lady, chanteuse etc. We are talking about somebody who had their own afternoon television show in 1946 at the age of 14 and who went to sing at the Paris Olympia in an era when the only place considered worthy of venture outside the U.K was America - where incidentally she moved in the late sixties and was a hit all over again.

I have some of Pet's stuff on my mp3 player and a great example of how she has always done her own thing comes in the second verse of 'I Couldn't Live Without Your Love'. The song, written by Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent, was a number one in the States and reached number six in the U.K in 1966. Anyway, back to the second verse fellow anorak wearer's, the way the music is arranged almost insists that the second line has to be sung in an 'American way' in order to rhyme with the first line - except Petula Clark sings it as you'd expect an Englishwoman to sing it - not a hint of a mid-Atlantic twang - it's a brilliant example of how to phrase a lyric.

No one knows that you're so understanding
Even though my love is so demanding
Every time you look at me,
Then you'll know we both agree
That no other love could be

To be honest it's something that not even Petula's only rival as the greatest ever English pop star, Dusty, could have pulled off.

In many ways she was ahead of her time, not only the move abroad, recording in 'foreign' languages, but also in her songwriting. Clever management acumen meant that she wrote songs under two names, her own and as Al Grant, thereby ensuring that songs which would otherwise have been turned down by her record company in the U.K, because they wouldn't be considered 'pop' enough for her followers, found success elsewhere. This isn't anything new, Paul McCartney wrote under various names in the sixties, this enabled songs that would never have seen the light on Beatles albums to be recorded by other artists.

Interestingly whilst in the U.K she seemed to have slipped into that 'Easy Listening' category in the States she has always been regarded as Britain's number one export, she has sold more records than Dusty, Cilla, Lulu, Sandie and Kathy added together. Next year she will present a series on CBS about the history of the sixties 'British Invasion', she also has an album release due of duets with many of her contemporaries.

Like Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark recorded an album in Memphis but it is the one she recorded in Nashville in 1975, Blue Lady: The Nashville Session, which has the most extraordinary story surrounding it. Despite the fact that she hadn't had a hit album in the U.K since 1968, her record company felt that the album was such a departure for her compared with previous recordings that they couldn't release it at the time and waited until 1995 before making it available. The album was produced by Chips Moman, the man responsible for the twenty million selling Norah Jones album which is of a similar style, perhaps Chips felt it was payback time having been denied the plaudits the release more than twenty years earlier that Blue Lady would have undoubtedly procured.

After her 'hits' period she appeared in several films and then took to the stage again, rescuing Blood Brothers from certain closure on Broadway, appearing as Maria in The Sound of Music for a year in the West End and playing Norma Desmond in the Nunn/Lloyd Webber version of Sunset Boulevard.

One of her other claims to fame, which I don't think was mentioned in the documentary, was the fact that she was responsible for bringing the Carpenters to the attention of Herb Alpert. I would suggest that in Karen Carpenter she recognised another versatile music talent whose depth and emotional range has been somewhat overshadowed by the choice, towards the end of her career, of frankly crap material. I defy anyone not to be moved by the intake of breath that preceeds the first line on Goodbye to Love.

To paraphrase Paul Morley: it seems strange that in a country where Cilla Black is feted for having made one career move (singer to Blind Date), Lulu for having a couple of hits and then being considered dangerous for recording a David Bowie song and Sandie Shaw is an icon for her work with Morrissey that we've let our most versatile and talented female entertainer slip through our hands.

Actually there was one of life's cruel ironies in last night's scheduling, the documentary on BBC4 clashed with Children in Need. Remember my claim that her most famous hit has the second most recognisable piano intro in pop music?

When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You can always go - downtown
When you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to help, I know - downtown

Please, whatever you do, don't think of Pudsey or Emma Bunton next time you hear this song.

I rest my case.