Cilla Black - BBC Sessions, Volume 2 (1966-1972)

Here's the second and last volume of Cilla Black at the BBC.

As I explained with Volume 1, Black's interesting music is generally the 1960s and early 1970s. That's the same for many other British female singers of that era. For instance, Dusty Springfield, Petula Clark, and Lulu faded in the mid-1970s too. In Black's case, she kept releasing records, but stopped having hits, and focused more on being an all-around TV entertainer.

By chance, unreleased BBC recordings stop around 1973, at the same time her hits stopped. Thank you to my musical associate Marley who was essential in finding most of the BBC recordings from 1969 and after. 

All but one of the songs here are officially unreleased. That one is an oddity, because it's actually a studio track that I snuck in there. That's because one of my favorite songs by her is "Step Inside Love," which was a big hit for her in 1968, but, strangely, it seems she didn't perform it for the BBC or other TV or radio shows. It's neat that the song was written by Paul McCartney (and even done as a lark by the Beatles during the "White Album" sessions), but it's a darn good song regardless of who wrote it. Instead of including the hit version, I found a rare demo version with McCartney backing her on acoustic guitar, found on the album "The Abbey Road Decade, 1963-1973."

During this time period, Black had a successful BBC TV show called "Cilla." A few of the songs are from that, but only a few. I'll bet there are many more songs from that show that would make interesting listening (including a version of "Step Inside Love," I would imagine), but I couldn't find that much, at least not at a reasonably high sound quality. So six of the songs here are from that, and the rest are from proper BBC studio sessions (not counting "Step Inside Love"). 

With those BBC radio recordings, there was the usual problem of BBC DJs talking over the music. So I applied the usual solution of using the X-Minus audio editing program to wipe the talking while keeping the underlying music. The songs where I did that have "[Edit]" in their names.

This album is 44 minutes long.

01 The 'In' Crowd (Cilla Black)
02 Alfie (Cilla Black)
03 Don't Answer Me (Cilla Black)
04 Step Inside Love [Demo] (Cilla Black with Paul McCartney)
05 Uptight [Everything's Alright] (Cilla Black)
06 Both Sides Now (Cilla Black)
07 It Feels So Good (Cilla Black)
08 The Look of Love - Walk On By (Cilla Black & Cliff Richard)
09 Surround Yourself with Sorrow [Edit] (Cilla Black)
10 Conversations [Edit] (Cilla Black)
11 If I Thought You'd Ever Change Your Mind [Edit] (Cilla Black)
12 [They Long to Be] Close to You (Cilla Black)
13 Something Tells Me [Something's Gonna Happen Tonight] (Cilla Black)
14 Norwegian Wood (Cilla Black & Marvin, Welch & Farrar)
15 Make It with You [Edit] (Cilla Black)
16 The World I Wish for You (Cilla Black)
17 You, You, You [Edit] (Cilla Black)

Melting Pot (Dusty Springfield & Cilla Black)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16066080/CillaB_1966-1972_BBSessionsVolume2_atse.zip.html

The cover photo comes from the "Cilla" TV show, around October 1970.

Cilla Black - BBC Sessions, Volume 1 (1964-1966)

Next up in my BBC sessions project is British singer Cilla Black. There's enough material for two volumes.

Cilla Black, who died in 2015, didn't get a lot of respect back in her 1960s and 1970s heyday, and that's still true today. Her vocal talents, while good, didn't rise to the likes of Dusty Springfield's. It didn't help that after her music career success lessened in the early 1970s, she deemphasized her music and became more of an all-around entertainer, becoming a frequent presenter on British TV. 

That said, there's a lot to like about her music career in the 1960s and early 1970s, which is the time frame of these two BBC volumes. She had lots of hits in Britain, some of them massive. She also had lots of connections to the Beatles, who not only helped her get her first record contract, but even were the backing band for her first audition. The first song here, "It's for You," was written for her by John Lennon and Paul McCartney, and was a Top Ten hit in Britain.

As far as I can tell, every single performance here is officially unreleased. But the sound quality is generally excellent, because most of these songs come from BBC Top of the Pops transcription discs, and those sound as good as official releases. But I tried to augment that source, because many of her key songs happened to have not been played there. So there are three songs from the Ed Sullivan Show in the US, two from a 1966 British TV special called "Cilla at the Savoy," and two more from other BBC shows. As a result, I might have missed a key song or two, but overall, this does an able job as a de facto "best of" collection.

This album is 49 minutes long.

01 It's for You (Cilla Black)
02 You've Lost that Lovin' Feelin' (Cilla Black)
03 Heat Wave [Edit] (Cilla Black)
04 Dancing in the Street (Cilla Black)
05 You're My World (Cilla Black)
06 Goin' Out of My Head (Cilla Black)
07 You're No Good [Edit] (Cilla Black)
08 He Was Really Saying Something [Edit] (Cilla Black)
09 I've Been Wrong Before (Cilla Black)
10 Shotgun (Cilla Black)
11 September in the Rain (Cilla Black)
12 Sing a Rainbow (Cilla Black)
13 Anyone Who Had a Heart (Cilla Black)
14 Yesterday [Edit] (Cilla Black)
15 Love's Just a Broken Heart (Cilla Black)
16 1-2-3 [Edit] (Cilla Black)
17 Let There Be Love (Cilla Black with Dudley Moore)
18 Rainbow Edit] (Cilla Black)
19 Lover's Concerto [Edit] (Cilla Black)
20 Night Time Is Here [Edit] (Cilla Black)

https://www.upload.ee/files/16066012/CillaB_1964-1966_BBSessionsVolume1_atse.zip.html

The cover photo of Black dates to 1966.

Various Artists - NME Poll Winners' Concert, Empire Pool, London, Britain, 4-11-1965

I read an interesting article today (in January 2022) about how the sale of new music is continually falling to all time lows every year, while interest in older music continues to rise. It's a good article. I suggest you check it out:

https://tedgioia.substack.com/p/is-old-music-killing-new-music

As the article points out, there's still plenty of good new music, it's just that's not what gets promoted and makes it big, due to screwed-up record companies and other factors. Compare the artists on the top of the charts today to the quality of the mainstream artists at the time of this 1965 concert: the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Kinks, the Animals, Dusty Springfield, Them (with Van Morrison), the Moody Blues, Donovan, and many more, all sharing the same stage! Is it any wonder that lots of people (including me) are more interested in this kind of music than the generic, pre-packaged pop of today? The amount of sheer talent bursting up the charts in 1965 was staggering.

The reason so many big names played this one concert was because it was an awards show of sorts for NME - New Musical Express, a British music magazine. NME began giving out yearly poll winner awards in 1953, and continue to do it until this day (2022 as I write this). At least through 1971, there were annual concerts to celebrate the winners. But unlike most awards shows, this concert just focused on music instead of bogging things down with lots of speeches and award presentations (though there was a short section for that). 

I would love to hear the 1966, 1967, and 1968 shows in full, since music just got better and better as the 1960s went on, in my opinion, and all sorts of interesting artists played in those later shows, including Cream, the Small Faces, the Move, the Beach Boys, Cat Stevens, the Who, the Yardbirds, and lots more, including more appearances by big names in this concert, like the Beatles and Rolling Stones. It seems only the 1964, 1965 and 1966 shows are available on bootleg. I'm posting the 1965 one first as I think it's more interesting, with these mostly British Invasion acts more fully developed by then.

The sound quality is excellent throughout. This concert was professionally recorded in order to be broadcast on British TV a short time afterwards. The TV version was edited down, but somehow luckily a recording of the entire show has made its way to the public. You can watch the entire thing on YouTube, though it's only in black and white.

This concert took place before artists typically stretched out with lots of soloing and jamming and such. These songs don't differ that much from their studio versions (with a few exceptions, like Them and the Animals). But I still think this is a fascinating listen, as there aren't many quality concert recordings from this early in the 1960s. In particular, there were many artists who were pretty big back in the day but have little to no surviving audio or video of them in concert. Even for major names like the Animals and Dusty Springfield, there's very little from around this time period. And for the lesser known acts, this is often the only evidence of them in concert that seems to still exist.

I'm a big Kinks fan, so a minor disappointment for me is that the Kinks only played two songs. Even at this early stage in their career they were a big enough name to deserve more time. Apparently, this has to do with them being late to the show, as they had just got off a plane coming from another country. You can hear guitarist Dave Davies apologize about this between songs. According to some accounts, they actually played after the Beatles, as the very last act. However, the recording I used had them just before the Beatles, and that seems to fit in terms of the audience applause and announcement and such, so I'm keeping it that way.

As far as naming the artists for each song goes, technically I should have put the names of the emcee or emcees on many of the talk tracks. Some of those had band members talking, some had the emcees, and some where a mix. But rather than spend time dealing with all that, I just put the name of the act being introduced, for simplicity's sake. (Unfortunately, one of the emcees was DJ Jimmy Savile, who later was disgraced in a child molestation scandal. Thankfully, his role here is very minor.) I only put in the DJ names on the very first and last tracks, since those weren't linked to any particular artists.

A couple of the performers here are rather forgettable. I was tempted to cut out Freddie and the Dreamers and Sounds Incorporated in particular. But ultimately I decided it was best to present the entire thing unedited (although I cut out some annoying laughter by Freddie and the Dreamers between songs). Overall, I think the percentage of quality performers is quite high. 

The Beatles only got to do a 15 minute long set, but it's nice that you can actually hear them perform instead of being totally drowned out by screaming, as was typical of the time. Apparently, the arena (Empire Pool, later renamed Wembley Arena), held about 10,000 people. I'm sure that, by 1965, the Beatles could have filled up a much larger venue in London all on their own.

In case you're curious about who won the poll awards this year, there's a list at the NME website, which you can see here: 

https://www.nme.com/nme-awards/awards-history/1965-606223

It seems there were even more musical acts who performed but didn't make it to the recording for one reason or another. I'm not entirely sure if they actually performed, but these other names were included in the program given to the audience and were at least scheduled to perform: Tom Jones, the Bachelors, the Rockin' Berries, and Twinkle.  

This concert is two hours and 23 minutes long. I cut out some dead air between songs. But there was surprisingly little of that to begin with. Either this was already edited down, or this was a tightly run show.

01 talk (Keith Fordyce & Jimmy Savile)
02 Bo Diddley - Pretty Thing (Moody Blues)
03 Go Now (Moody Blues)
04 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
05 Little Bitty Pretty One (Freddie & the Dreamers)
06 talk (Freddie & the Dreamers)
07 A Little You (Freddie & the Dreamers)
08 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
09 Yeh Yeh (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
10 talk (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
11 Walking the Dog (Georgie Fame & the Blue Flames)
12 talk (Seekers)
13 I'll Never Find Another You (Seekers)
14 talk (Seekers)
15 A World of Our Own (Seekers)
16 talk (Herman's Hermits)
17 Wonderful World (Herman's Hermits)
18 talk (Herman's Hermits)
19 Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Daughter (Herman's Hermits)
20 talk (Ivy League)
21 Funny How Love Can Be (Ivy League)
22 talk (Ivy League)
23 Sweet and Tender Romance (Ivy League)
24 talk (Ivy League)
25 That's Why I'm Crying (Ivy League)
26 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
27 Time for You [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
28 talk (Sounds Incorporated)
29 In the Hall of the Mountain King [Instrumental] (Sounds Incorporated)
30 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
31 The Game of Love (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
32 talk (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
33 Just a Little Bit Too Late (Wayne Fontana & the Mindbenders)
34 talk (Rolling Stones)
35 Everybody Needs Somebody to Love (Rolling Stones)
36 Pain in My Heart (Rolling Stones)
37 Around and Around (Rolling Stones)
38 The Last Time (Rolling Stones)
39 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
40 Zip-A-Dee Doo-Dah (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
41 talk (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
42 Going Out of My Head (Cilla Black with Sounds Incorporated)
43 talk (Donovan)
44 You're Gonna Need Somebody on Your Bond (Donovan)
45 talk (Donovan)
46 Catch the Wind (Donovan)
47 talk (Them)
48 Here Comes the Night (Them)
49 Turn on Your Love Light (Them)
50 talk (Searchers)
51 Bumble Bee (Searchers)
52 talk (Searchers)
53 Let the Good Times Roll (Searchers)
54 talk (Dusty Springfield)
55 Dancing in the Street (Dusty Springfield)
56 talk (Dusty Springfield)
57 Mockingbird (Dusty Springfield)
58 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Dusty Springfield)
59 talk (Animals)
60 Boom Boom (Animals)
61 Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood (Animals)
62 Talkin' 'bout You (Animals)
63 talk (Kinks)
64 You Really Got Me (Kinks)
65 Tired of Waiting for You (Kinks)
66 talk (Beatles)
67 I Feel Fine (Beatles)
68 talk (Beatles)
69 She's a Woman (Beatles)
70 talk (Beatles)
71 Baby's in Black (Beatles)
72 talk (Beatles)
73 Ticket to Ride (Beatles)
74 talk (Beatles)
75 Long Tall Sally (Beatles)
76 talk (Keith Fordyce)

https://pixeldrain.com/u/6niBfp48

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/RBH3ooSgczT5hrW/file

When I first posted this album in 2022, I used a black and white photo of the Beatles from the concert that I colorized. But looking at the cover again in 2026, I decided the photo wasn't very good. So I used a different photo of the Beatles from the concert that is zoomed in closer, and has more detail. This one also was black and white, and then colorized by me with the use of the Kolorize program.

I took most of the cover text from advertisements of the show, though I added in the list of some of the artists.