Lulu - BBC Sessions, Volume 2: 1966-1968

My first Lulu BBC album has been surprisingly well received, considering how "uncool" she is regarded these days, so I'm going to post another one sooner rather than later. This is the second of three BBC albums from her.

One of the people commenting on the first Lulu BBC album I posted called it "revelatory." I agree with that. What I said with that one I'll also say with this one: I prefer most of her BBC performances over her studio material. Like that one, about half of the songs here were never recorded by her for any official studio release. A lot of those are the best songs. Many are covers of the hits of the day, such as "(Your Love Keeps Lifting Me) Higher and Higher" by Jackie Wilson and "I Love My Dog" by Cat Stevens. These have well through out arrangements, which makes me wonder why the heck they only were ever done for the BBC.

Also like the previous album in this series, there was a problem with BBC DJs talking over the starts of some songs (the ones with "[Edit]" in their names). I fixed that using a sound editing program that wiped out the talking but kept the underlying music. 

Everything here remains officially unreleased, as far as I can tell. Usually though, the sound quality is excellent. Although the BBC foolishly didn't systematically preserve their master tapes, many pristine copies of the original BBC recordings, usually those sent overseas to radio shows across the British empire.

Unfortunately, this album also contains the start of Lulu's decline. In my opinion, she was at her best when she used her gruff voice to put a British spin on American soul music. But around 1968, she got her own BBC TV show, and the show positioned her as an all-around entertainer, capable of singing any song in any style. That watered down what made her most appealing to me, and she fell into more of a cheesy show-biz mode with each passing year. You start to see this with the last six songs on this album, which all come from her TV show.

This album is 48 minutes long.

UPDATE: On October 28, I updated the mp3 download file. I removed the song "The Letter." That's because I found a different version, with the same arrangement, for Volume 3 that has much better sound quality. To make up for it, when I revamped Volume 3 at the same time, I moved one song, "Morning Dew," from there to here.

01 You'll Never Leave Him [Edit] (Lulu)
02 Leave a Little Love (Lulu)
03 What a Wonderful Feeling (Lulu with Alan Price)
04 I Do [Edit] (Lulu)
05 Blowin' in the Wind (Lulu)
06 I Love My Dog (Lulu)
07 Dreary Days and Nights [Edit] (Lulu)
08 The Boat that I Row (Lulu)
09 A Little Bit Me, a Little Bit You [Edit] (Lulu)
10 Let's Pretend (Lulu)
11 To Sir with Love [Edit] (Lulu)
12 Love Loves to Love, Love (Lulu)
13 [Your Love Keeps Lifting Me] Higher and Higher [Edit] (Lulu)
14 Can't Take My Eyes Off You (Lulu)
15 The Trolley Song (Lulu)
16 Put on a Happy Face (Lulu)
17 Running Wild (Lulu)
18 Suddenly (Lulu)
19 Morning Dew (Lulu)

https://www.imagenetz.de/e6nqQ

The cover art uses a 1979 promotional photo of Lulu holding an umbrella with a British flag design.