CILLA BLACK – "You're My World"

Doctor Mod says:

After getting the Beatles signed to Parlophone, Brian Epstein started dragging all his other Liverpool “discoveries” into the recording studio. None of them, alas, had even a fraction of the Beatles’ talent, and George Martin was under pressure to make these less than luminary individuals sound as good as possible on disc. Cilla was one of them.

One of Martin’s sonic “bandaging” techniques was quite simple–just drown them out with fortissimo instrumental arrangements at critical moments. This is overwhelmingly obvious with Billy J. Kramer’s version of “Do You Want to Know a Secret?” That loud piano bit serves as white noise so we can’t clearly hear the unbearablity of the vocals. In fact, it almost makes the passage sound intense. The strings on “You’re My World” are indeed piercing, as painful to an overly sensitive ear as fingernails scraping on a chalkboard. But try to imagine what you’d hear if those strings weren’t there.

In some ways, I always feel like a bully in critiquing Cilla–she’s such an easy target. Her popularity in the sixties was based mostly on personality, and those who loved (still love) her could care less about her vocal shortcomings–indeed, some even seem to find them endearing. She had a certain underdog appeal and was cute and cheeky. But cuteness and cheek don’t age particularly well and become grotesque in a sexagenarian.

Cilla could do well enough with something pop-ish and simple. She could even do herself proud with something written with her in mind (i.e., the Lennon / McCartney song “It’s for You,” possibly the best thing she ever did). Unfortunately, Cilla too often chose the big ballads that the greatest female singers of the period (e.g., Dionne and Dusty) could do almost effortlessly–but it takes an extraordinary singer to do them well. Her closest “peers,” Sandie and Lulu, could sing rings around her. Still, it might be possible to forgive her her limitations and remember her fondly if she’d only have faded away gracefully.

My favourite Cilla track is her reading of “I’ve Been Wrong Before” which I think just cuts Dusty’s in that the brusqueness midway actually makes the song’s internal doubt and apprehension more intense. When she crouched down intimately to the listener – “If I Thought You’d Ever Change Your Mind” or her “Misty Roses” – she could be very moving indeed. And yes, Bacharach had to coach her through fifty-odd takes of “Alfie” but he got what he wanted; that sharp, sobbing intake of breath before the “I” of “I believe in love” or the desperate high vibrato on the word “Alfie” over Burt’s final ascending whole tones.

more sixties cilla stuff found here… in full agreement with marcello… i’ve been wrong before was a great vocal… but also the demo for step inside love with mccartney on acoustic guitar was sheer magic… black singing in a lower register. why george martin was so heavy handed with this artist was beyond me.

‘World’ is one of Cilla’s finest moments and is one of the songs associated with her. I get very bored of people saying that she wasnt much of a singer, read the singles/album reviews in the NME/Record Mirror/Melody Maker in the 60’s and they all praised her singing highly. If you want to hear class listen to one of Cilla’s lesser known top ten hits ‘Conversations’, she sings it so very well, as many of my friends would confirm. When Record Collector reviewed her 1963-1978 3 CD set, the reviewer admitted that she is indeed a very much underrated singer.

Thanks Marcello, I agree with your comment about Ive Been Wrong Before. In a 1965 Record Mirror article about the song Dusty said that it should have been huge for Cilla, praise indeed.

As a result of a discussion started regarding a later record of non-English-language origin in these pages, I chased this one up on vinyl. That discussion also mentioned Gino Paoli, who wrote the original Italian lyric, who is credited along with Umberto Bindi (music) and Carl Sigman (English lyric).

It’s been the rounds, this one. There are also versions of it in English (Tom Jones, Helen Reddy) and French (Richard Anthony) as well as the original Italian (Bindi himself, among others). None of them attempt to give it a subtle treatment because it’s not that sort of song. There’s an awful, awful lot at stake here. It’s describing (in whatever language it is sung) how easily the joy of love might turn into the tragedy of loss-the end of **everything** -and that means it positively demands the full-on treatment. Cilla-who is better, especially here, than she’s sometimes given credit for-duly obliges.

Actually the pick of her two No.1s. Some nice touches in that arrangement, too. Were peoples sensibilities different in those days? Maybe.

For comparison, here is the Umberto Bindi original;

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rcfaFXFSvGU

A treat to hear an interview with Cilla on Radio 5 this morning on the occasion of the unveiling of a plaque at Brian Epstein’s former offices in Monmouth Street. She talked about her disastrous first audition with Epstein at the Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead (“Lily Savage territory”) where she sang “Summertime” which the band were playing in totally the wrong key for her; 18 months later he saw her again on proper form and signed her up.

She went on to recall how Paul McCartney wrote “Step Inside Love” as the theme tune to her first TV series in 1968. “He rang me and said, ‘I bet the BBC are trying to give you a Billy Cotton Band Show type theme song’ – they were – ‘so I’ll write you something. The idea is you’re not inviting yourself into the audience’s homes, you’re inviting them into yours.’ So he wrote it and it was a huge hit everywhere – except it was banned from radio in South Africa because they thought it was about prostitution!”

After watching this and reading up on Cilla a bit, I realised something odd – what do Cilla, Lulu and Lynsey de Paul all have in common? It’s something not that unusual among the general public, but puts them in a very small minority among professional musicians (or does it?)

It always surprised me that Lulu supported them. Her business, of course and when Paul Weller allegedly rudely made an issue of it, it’s a wonder the wee lassie didn’t knock the sanctimonious tosser out.

Perhaps the mention of Lynsey de Paul enables us to mark her recent passing. An early Swede fantasy, it must be said. In fact I remember very clearly that “Sugar Me” was riding high just at the time I began my delightful senior school. The song stayed in my head throughout those uncertain early days when you were eleven, surrounded by strangers, and everyone around you was older than you.

You act on it by campaigning for the party of your choice I suppose, not by hectoring and shouting down others who’ve come to a different conclusion. Having strong views is fine, it’s not the same as telling others what to think. Given that the majority of ‘pop stars’ never reveal their political allegiance, and most or all would be in the upper tax bracket, I suspect it was Weller and friends in the minority.

Plus Weller’s own highly vocal support for the Tories around the time of the first Jam album. In No Irish, No Blacks, No Dogs, Johnny Rotten claims he saw him in a Union Jack suit, canvassing for the Conservatives outside Woking station…

#24 – Is Johnny doing a book-signing, then Mark? If so, where is it? Hay-On-Wye?

Ah, it’s fatal to mention stuff that’s soon happening:

He’s doing a book signing at Reading HMV (see, I did try to clue you in), it *was* going to be next sunday but now it’s this sunday so Johnny wont be meeting me

I did, yes, thanks to the BBC website and Punctum’s link on another well known social app…

It does seem they spent longer on the pics for the website than they did on the actual interview, but hey.

When Ennio Morricone – Chi mai (Theme from Lloyd George) was a hit, that reminded me of this, introwise, as well.