Alma Cogan - Bellbottoms, Dreamboats, Tangos & Eskimos

Tuotetiedot

• Condition New
• Type CD-Box
• Vendor Acrobat Music
• SKU 824046701321
• Artisti Alma Cogan
• Lyhyt kuvaus 4CDs = 93 tracks. ALMA COGAN (19th May 1932 - 26th October 1966) was Britain’s favourite female singer. Often known as “The Girl With The Laugh In Her Voice”, she is reputed to have been the highest-paid UK female entertainer of her era. Her family encouraged her to go into showbiz and she auditioned for Ted Heath’s band whilst in her teens, before being offered a solo recording contract by HMV Records’ head of A&R, Wally Ridley, who’d spotted her performing in a couple of London stage shows, Sauce Tartare and High Buttoned Shoes. She made her recording debut in 1952 and scored her first hit two years later, when her cover version of Teresa Brewer’s ‘Bell Bottom Blues’ made the Top 5. She got her biggest break when Joy Nichols left the BBC Radio programme Take It From Here, and Alma was invited to take over duties as resident singer. Many of Alma’s 50s records were covers of contemporary American hits, and she would usually find herself in competition with other leading British female singers of the time, like Lita Roza, Petula Clark, Joan Regan, the Beverley Sisters, etc. But when she topped the UK charts in 1955 with ‘Dreamboat’, it was an original song. Alma recorded duets with a number of the leading male singers of the era, including Frankie Vaughan, Ronnie Hilton and Les Howard, as well as appearing as ‘special guest vocalist’ on a couple of singles with the Sid Phillips Band. She liked to appear as a fun-loving, though glamorous, ‘party girl’, frequently wearing hooped skirts, often heavy with sequins, and figure hugging tops. Her gowns were extravagant and her dresses always caught the eye during her many TV appearances (it was often rumoured that she never wore a dress more than once). She exuded a vivacity which comes across in all her recordings, and although she was famous for recording novelty numbers, she was a fabulous ballad singer and also covered a number of US R&R records, enjoying hits with sides like ‘Willie Can’, and ‘Why Do Fools Fall In Love’. She died in 1966 from ovarian cancer, when she was just 34 years of age. Unusually, for a Pop singer, she is commemorated by a blue plaque on her former residence in Kensington High Street. Alma has been the subject of a couple of highly-touted BBC TV documentaries in recent years and is probably more popular now, than at any time since her death. This unique boxed set comprises everything that Alma recorded for the HMV label between 1952-57, including a number of collectors’ rarities which have never previously been available on CD (around twenty titles). It includes her ‘guest appearances’ with the Sid Phillips Band, as well as her celebrated duets with Frankie Vaughan and Les Howard. The 52-page booklet includes comprehensive liner notes from respected Rock historian/journalist Chris White, who was one of the ‘talking heads’ on her two most recent TV documentaries. The unusual title draws together the titles of three of her biggest, most popular hits, ‘Bell Bottom Blues’, ‘Dreamboat’ and ‘Never Do A Tango With An Eskimo’
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