Elkie Brooks - BBC Sessions, Volume 1: 1964-1977

I recently got a request from a commenter for a BBC album by Elkie Brooks. I was happy to see that, because I had already made three BBC albums for her. It's just that there's a very big backlog on getting albums posted, generally speaking. So here's the first one. It's a collection of BBC studio sessions.

This is a rather strange album in terms of which years the music is from. Elkie Brooks had a solo career as a singer in the 1960s, without much success. Then she was a part of the band Vinegar Joe from 1971 to 1974. That band had two lead singers, her and Robert Palmer. (I've already posted two BBC Vinegar Joe albums, by the way.) Then she resumed her solo career in 1975. So this album has a big time gap. The first ten songs are from 1964 to 1966, and the last five are from 1976 and 1977.

The first song here, "Nothing Left to Do but Cry," is the only one not done for the BBC. It's from the US TV show "Shindig!" In 1964, they did a rare episode from London, and she was a part of that. The next nine songs are from the "Top of the Pops" radio show. All of these have been officially released, on the obscure various artists album "British Beat Girls Live on Air: 1965-1970." The first six songs are from two 1965 sessions and the last three are from a 1966 session. A bunch of these had BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over the beginnings and ends of songs. So I used the UVR5 audio editing program to wipe out the talking while keeping the music. Those are the four songs with "[Edit]" in their titles.

Brooks had a lot of vocal talent, but she didn't have any hits, so by 1967 she was no longer popular enough to make a prominent BBC radio show like "Top of the Pops." So it wasn't until 1976 when there was another BBC session (or at least one that survived). She performed four songs for DJ John Peel's show. Peel generally liked to promote up and coming musical acts, not those who were stars already. But in 1976, still had yet to be involved with a single hit, so I guess she was still up and coming.

That all changed in 1977, however. She finally had her first hit with "Pearl's a Singer," after more than ten years of failed singles. That made her a star, and many more hits soon followed. But while "Pearl's a Singer" is the last song here, the rest will have to wait for a later volume in this series. 

This album is 45 minutes long. 

01 Nothing Left to Do but Cry (Elkie Brooks)
02 Getting Mighty Crowded (Elkie Brooks)
03 The Way You Do the Things You Do (Elkie Brooks)
04 Yeh Yeh [Edit] (Elkie Brooks)
05 All My Life (Elkie Brooks)
06 Breaking Point [Edit] (Elkie Brooks)
07 I Put a Spell on You (Elkie Brooks)
08 Love's Just a Broken Heart [Edit] (Elkie Brooks)
09 Baby Let Me Love You (Elkie Brooks)
10 Bye Bye Blues [Edit] (Elkie Brooks)
11 Jigsaw Baby (Elkie Brooks)
12 Lilac Wine (Elkie Brooks)
13 Try a Little Love (Elkie Brooks)
14 Where Do We Go from Here [Rich Man's Woman] (Elkie Brooks)
15 Pearl's a Singer (Elkie Brooks)  

https://pixeldrain.com/u/3hQd3mfg

alternate:

https://bestfile.io/en/oEuU29weTGQCjEV/file

The cover photo is from August 1964.