All but three of the songs here are officially unreleased. Those three, tracks 10 through 12, come from a rare various artists compilation called "British Beat Girls Live on Air: 1965-1970." I believe everything else has been unbootlegged until now.
There were many British female singers on the pop charts in Britain in the early and mid-1960s, virtually all of them singing cover songs only. Most had one or two hits, if that, and then quickly faded away. The music blog https://albumsiwishexisted2.blogspot.com/ has put together compilations for many of them who weren't famous enough to have official greatest hits albums. Maughan never got to be an especially big star. She had one big hit in Britain, a cover of "Bobby's Girl," which went all the way to Number Three in the British charts in 1962. She had two smaller hits in 1963. That made up most of her chart success, although she continued to release singles and albums into the 1970s. However, unlike many other singers with a similar amount of success, she had enough BBC sessions survive to make an album.
"Survive" is a key word in that previous sentence. The vast majority of "Top of the Pops" recordings that survive date from the middle of 1964 and after, because that's when the BBC started sending albums of the show to affiliate stations outside of Britain, and most of those survived in excellent condition. Maughan's commercial peak was from 1962 to 1963, so I'll bet more BBC sessions from those years took place but didn't survive. For instance, I couldn't find a worthy sounding version of her big hit "Bobby's Girl," although one or two rough TV broadcasts of it survive on YouTube.
That said, what is included here is interesting if you into 1960s pop music, like I am. All the Top of the Pops recordings date from 1964 and 1965, with one exception, which I will explain shortly. Those make up everything but the final two tracks. Since she didn't have many hits of her own, she sometimes did hits by others, such as "I'm into Something Good," "Downtown," "Yeh Yeh," "It's Not Unusual," and even "Blowin' in the Wind." As far as I can tell, she never released any versions of those songs I just mentioned on record, though I could have missed some things.
The last two songs come from much later, 1971. After putting all her Top of the Pops sessions together, I checked to see if I could find any other BBC performances. I only found one, "You've Made Me So Very Happy," from a BBC TV show in 1971. The final track, "I Saw a Rainbow," is from a Top of the Pops session in 1971 as well. Maybe her career had a minor revival that year.
This album suffers somewhat from the usual problem of Top of the Pops recordings from the era: annoying BBC DJ Brian Matthew talking over the beginnings and ends of songs. Luckily for Maughan, only five of her songs here had that problem, which is a lower percentage than usual. Those are the ones with "[Edit]" in their names. I did my usual thing of using the UVR5 program to remove the DJ talking while keeping the music.
Here's a Wikipedia link, if you want to know more about her:
This album is 43 minutes long.
01 Little Things Mean a Lot (Susan Maughan)
02 I'm into Something Good (Susan Maughan)
03 That Other Place (Susan Maughan)
04 Make Him Mine (Susan Maughan)
05 Downtown [Edit] (Susan Maughan)
06 Yeh Yeh (Susan Maughan)
07 Don't Be Afraid [Edit] (Susan Maughan)
08 You Can Never Get Away from Me (Susan Maughan)
09 It's Not Unusual (Susan Maughan)
10 When She Walks Away (Susan Maughan)
11 Blowin' in the Wind [Edit] (Susan Maughan)
12 That Other Place (Susan Maughan)
13 Poor Boy (Susan Maughan)
14 Here It Comes Again (Susan Maughan)
15 Your Girl [Edit] (Susan Maughan)
16 You've Made Me So Very Happy (Susan Maughan)
17 I Saw a Rainbow [Edit] (Susan Maughan)
https://pixeldrain.com/u/aWdPSgGE
alternate:
https://bestfile.io/lHLnk7g4oicgWcx/file
The cover photo was taken backstage at Earl's Court, in London, in January 1964.
Thanks
ReplyDelete