I'm not a huge Lulu fan. I like her music on about a greatest hits double album level. But her BBC material is all currently unreleased, and it's some of her best stuff. I'd guess about half of the songs she did for the BBC were not officially released by her. It often contains her versions of big hits by other artists, so it's better than much of the material that filled her albums. I like her BBC performances so much that I've collected three albums of them. This is the first one.
Nowdays, Lulu is usually dismissed as a musical lightweight. I get that. A lot of her stuff is lightweight. I tend to dismiss everything she did from the early 1970s onwards, because she went full-on into cheesy show-biz mode. But in the 1960s, it was a different story. Her gruff singing style was very soulful compared to what the British public was used to at the time. This album in particular is very firmly in the pop-soul style.
Every performance on this album remains officially unreleased, and all of them are BBC performances. The sound quality is surprisingly good, considering this is all rare bootlegged material. Generally speaking, I don't know much about the recording details except for the dates. If you know more, please let me know so I can add that info to the mp3 tags.
You may notice that five of the songs below have "Edit" in their titles. Those are all cases where BBC DJs talked over the beginnings of the songs. I fixed that using a sound editing program that wiped out the talking but kept the underlying music.
This album is 45 minutes long. The other two in this series are about as long.
01 I Can't Hear You [No More] (Lulu)
02 Bread and Butter (Lulu)
03 Shout (Lulu)
04 It's Gonna Work Out Fine [Edit] (Lulu)
05 I'll Come Running (Lulu)
06 Surprise, Surprise (Lulu)
07 Mr. Moonlight (Lulu)
08 Satisfied (Lulu)
09 Leave a Little Love (Lulu)
10 Cry to Me [Edit] (Lulu)
11 I Can't Stand It [Edit] (Lulu)
12 Don't Play that Song [You Lied] (Lulu)
13 Try to Understand (Lulu)
14 [Love Is like A] Heat Wave [Edit] (Lulu)
15 I Saw Him Standing There [I Saw Her Standing There] (Lulu)
16 Tell Me like It Is (Lulu)
17 Tennessee Waltz (Lulu)
18 That Lucky Old Sun - It's a Good Day (Lulu)
19 Uptight [Everything's Alright] [Edit] (Lulu)
20 Call Me (Lulu & Georgie Fame)
https://www.upload.ee/files/16695543/LULOO1964-1966_BBSssonsVolum1_atse.zip.html
For the cover art, I found a photo of a TV appearance Lulu made in 1966. I added the British Union Jack to her name to give it some extra pizazz.
Not gonna lie, I thought you actually came up with that third Adele rare/unreleased collection you mentioned, as that picture really looks like Adele at first glance...LOL
ReplyDeleteThere's only going to be two Adele albums, unless she does some more stuff.
DeleteThank you, Paul! Lulu's a much under-rated singer. It's a pity that the straight singer/interpreter is so under valued; there's a lot of pleasure to be had listening to the likes of Lulu, Tom Jones, etc.
ReplyDeleteI'm glad someone is digging this. My sense is that Lulu is considered very uncool.
DeleteBowie thought she was pretty cool - his work on her The Man Who Sold The World cover single and B Side were a big mark of approval.
DeleteThis one is revelatory. Thanks so much for all of the hard work.
ReplyDeleteThe repertory of these BBC sessions is a must.
ReplyDeleteMany thanks for these unreleased works.
Thanks Paul!
ReplyDeletea great discovery!
Cheers
BBC recordings are a treasure trove for reconsidering 'uncool' artists - thanks for this!
ReplyDeleteGood mornig. Can you re-up this, please). Surprise surprise is the song of the rolling stones. I don't have it in this version.
ReplyDeleteGiuseppe.