If Robbie Leff keeps pointing out videos like this fantastic Petula-Beatles mash-up, I won’t have to think up any more ideas for blog posts!
The official Beatles mash-up is, of course, the Love CD, which has me thinking of the infamous Beachles mash-up of Pet Sounds and Sgt. Pepper that resulted in a cease-and-desist order for its creator from Capitol/EMI.
2 comments August 14th, 2010
Swinging London wasn’t the only place in Europe that was swinging in the Sixties. France had its own brand of Pop music, with a decidedly feminine fragrance. This collection of videos includes Sylvie Vartan, Francoise Hardy, Chantal Goya, and France Gall. It starts with — surprise! — Petula Clark, who was a Pop star in France before returning to recording in English with “Downtown”.
Add comment August 5th, 2010
The BBC has an audio feature on the famous moment when, on American TV, Petula Clark touched Harry Belafonte’s arm.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/witness
Here’s what the fuss was all about. As you can see, Pet actually held his arm.
6 comments April 10th, 2010
Despite two of my recent items about Petula Clark, my pal Denro has accused me of neglecting her. So I’ll remedy that with a link to an excellent interview with Pet from a year ago on Irish TV. I can’t embed it, so click on the link and you’ll see where to find “Petula Clarke” [sic]. From there you’ll have to click PLAY CLIP 14:54 for the interview, and the 2:54 clip is of Petula at the piano. Note: The video is in Real format, and you may need to install some plug-ins, but it’s worth the trouble and waiting.
A fascinating aspect of Petula Clark’s career is that she reinvented herself several times. Beginning as a child star in England, she went on to films and television before establishing herself in France. Petula’s childhood chum Julie Andrews was a Broadway star for eight years before she was in “Mary Poppins,” but when Pet first appeared here in America in late ‘64 we had no idea she had been in show business for twenty years.
Something I didn’t know about Petula until recently is that she’s something of an icon for gay men. Sincerely, that was news to me, and I can’t even say I understand why she has that status, because she’s neither tragic nor kitsch, and as far as I know her father wasn’t gay. Judy Garland impersonations are, of course, a staple of gay revues. Something that Judy Garland and Petula Clark share was appearing on screen with Fred Astaire. In this scene from “Easter Parade,” Judy and Fred perform “A Couple of Swells.”
Petula, sounding very bright and young, can be heard in a duet with one of England’s great dance band leaders, Billy Ternent, doing their own version of “A Couple of Swells.”
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And here I must do the only sort of singing I can do — singing praises. Because I would have had no idea who Billy Ternent was without Clare Teal on BBC Radio 2. Since getting my Logitech Squeezebox WiFi Radio, I have become a big fan of Clare’s big band show.
Add comment January 30th, 2010
According to PetulaClark.net, Pet appeared on “Captain Kangaroo” in 1976. I looked through a book about the program my sister Jeanie Beanie gave me for Christmas some years back, and I found this.
Petula was 43 in this picture, and looked 30, while Keeshan was only 48 or 49, but looked 65.
1 comment January 24th, 2010
Most serious comic book fans — that’s not a contradiction in terms — have read “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay,” by Michael Chabon, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the novel.
More recently, Chabon has a book of essays that I have not yet read, called “Manhood for Amateurs: The Pleasures and Regrets of a Husband, Father, and Son.” Terry Gross interviewed Chabon about the book a few months ago.
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Most serious music fans know the name of critic Ben Fong-Torres, who was portrayed in the movie “Almost Famous.” Yesterday, he commented on something Chabon said in one of his essays.
He [Chabon] recalled a visit to a doctor’s office when he was 4, in downtown Phoenix. His mother promised a restaurant lunch afterward as a reward. He heard “Downtown” over the radio in the office. “Things will be great,” Petula Clark sang, and Chabon has never forgotten. “When I hear Petula Clark on the radio now,” he wrote, “I feel this wave of something old and powerful flowing through my chest and my belly, a bodily remembering of that crucial early-childhood compound of anxiety and the promise of a treat.”
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Add comment January 23rd, 2010