Petula Clark - The other British invasion

Hit after hit after hit (1964-1968) — and still going strong at 91!

Rock ’n’ Roll with Me is an email newsletter presenting one or more of my favorite danceable rock ’n’ roll songs, from the sixties onwards, along with some fun facts and memories.

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Our songs of the day

If you want to forget all your troubles and cares, the place to go is not downtown but straight to the 1960s songs of Petula Clark. They are guaranteed to lift your spirits and reinvigorate your determination not just to survive, but to actually relish and enjoy life even in these confusing and often crazy times.

After all, this is a woman who launched her career at age nine by remaining calm during an air raid on London (during World War 2) and stepping forward to perform a song, first for the gathered audience and then for overseas troops over the BBC Radio airwaves. She went on to do another 500 or so wartime radio performances and also appeared in war films, becoming known as the “Singing Sweetheart” and “Britain’s Shirley Temple.”

Now 91, Petula has never stopped composing and performing, wracking up a series of accomplishments that — I say this in all seriousness — few on this planet can match. Not to mention that she still has the voice. Listen to Petula singing her breakout hit from 1964, “Downtown,” at the age of 80 on Jools’ Annual Hootenanny in 2013:

Petula released that song in four languages and it became a hit around the world. In the US, it went straight to number one, won the Grammy award for Best Rock & Roll Recording of 1964, and was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame in 2004. In the UK, Petula performed it for the BBC celebration of Queen Elizabeth’s Silver Jubilee in 1976, and a disco remix of the song became a Top 10 hit in the UK in 1988. Thirty years on, Petula won the 2007 Film and TV Music Award for Best Use of a Song in a Television Programme for its use in the US TV series Lost. A remake of the song by the Irish rock band the Saw Doctors, featuring Petula in both the song and video, reached number two on the Irish charts in 2011. The next year Petula parodied the song in her sold-out and extended engagement at Feinstein’s Nightclub at the Loew Regency in New York.

Whew! And I don’t even think that’s her best song. She went on to have 15 consecutive Top 40 hits and nine Top 20 hits in the US over the next four years. Move over, Beatles, Petula Clark is in town. Here’s my own personal favorite— love, love, love this — “Don’t Sleep in the Subway”:

Not the highest-quality video, but I enjoyed seeing Petula hanging out in London and feeding a pigeon. And by the way, a ‘subway’ in British English is a passageway under the street, not an underground train system like in New York City. Not a good idea to sleep in an English subway where you are likely to be accosted by street toughs and criminal elements.

That tune was co-written by Tony Hatch and singer-songwriter Jackie Trent. A husband-and-wife team, they wrote many of Petula’s hits, as well as songs for a stellar array of artists, including Frank Sinatra, Shirley Bassey, Dean Martin, and Nancy Wilson. Tony alone accounted for most of Petula’s other hits, in a professional relationship likened to that of Burt Bacharach and Hal David with Dionne Warwick. He also wrote the Searchers’ hit “Sugar and Spice” (as Fred Nightingale) and hits for other early 60s pop notables such as Bobby Rydell, Chubby Checker, and Connie Francis.

Besides “Downtown,” here’s another of his hit tunes for Petula, “I Know a Place,” with some of that crazy sixties dancing in the background and ‘Pet’ doing some moves of her own:

That song won Petula another Grammy, for Best Contemporary (R&R) Vocal Performance of 1965 - Female. (I think she deserves a special award for making our souls soar and flooding our bodies with endorphins as well.)

Last but not least, here’s Petula performing “I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love.” You will recognize this song as soon as you hear it. It has Tony Hatch and Jackie Trent’s soaring melody and highly relatable lyrics in a perfect partnership with Petula’s exquisite songmanship. Not to be missed.

Well, I hope you’ve worked up a sweat grooving to these highly danceable tunes. What, you didn’t get out of your chair? I get it, you’re keen to know more about this wunderkind who gave the Beatles a run for their money on the charts for four years straight — before turning her hand to becoming a film and TV star. Here you go.

Some fun facts

• While Petula was having all those hits, she also composed four French film scores. She’d already had pop hits in France earlier, and had become friends with Jacques Brel, with whom she toured and who gave her the signal honor of being gifted one of his songs, “Un Enfant.” (She put out records in German, Italian, and Spanish as well as French.)

• Petula went on to star with Fred Astaire in the Francis Ford Coppola film Finian’s Rainbow (1968), receiving unanimous praise from critics and a Golden Globe nomination for Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy. She then starred in the Herbert Ross film Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1969) opposite heavyweights Peter O’Toole and Michael Redgrave, again receiving universal praise for her singing and acting, as well as her chemistry with Peter O’Toole.

• She was a backup vocalist on John Lennon’s famous anti-war song “Give Peace a Chance,” which came about when John and Yoko were conducting their Bed-In for Peace at the Queen Elizabeth Hotel in Montreal. Petula was performing in Montreal at the same time and getting heckled for her bilingual performance, and sought their advice on how to deal with it. They asked her to sing on their song, turning lemons into sweet lemonade for the lovely Miss Clark.

• Petula herself had a reputation for encouraging and helping others, especially up-and-coming talent, including Herb Alpert, the Carpenters, and Prince’s collaborator on the film score for Purple Rain, French composer Michel Colombier.

• Besides guest appearances on many variety shows, Petula hosted her own specials on American and Canadian TV and starred on This is Petula Clark on the BBC (1966-1968). She made TV history when she held black singer Harry Belafonte’s arm during a duet and refused the sponsor’s request to excise it from the show as inappropriate physical contact between a black man and white woman. The show went on to receive popular and critical acclaim and a Primetime Emmy nomination.

• After taking a break from film and TV to raise her kids, she returned to the West End stage playing Maria von Trapp in The Sound of Music. Due to extraordinary demand, the run was extended from six to 13 months, and she was nominated for a Laurence Olivier award for Best Actress in a Musical. She later performed in Someone Like You (and wrote the score), Blood Brothers (on Broadway and on tour), and Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Sunset Boulevard as Norma Desmond (US and UK tours and Ireland, in excess of 2,500 performances — from age 63-72). (I’m exhausted just writing this!!!)

• She appeared on the Muppet Show in 1977, a sure sign that you have made it.

• Her dad was a card, it seems. He joked that her name was a combination of Pet and Ulla, the names of two of his former girlfriends. (At least, we think it was a joke.)

Questions for discussion in the comments

1. Should we invent another word beyond wunderkind to describe Petula Clark?

2. Who is that very handsome man sending a kiss to Petula in the “I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love” video?

3. If you starred opposite a Muppet, which Muppet would you prefer?

4. How would you rate the dancing of the guy in the maroon jacket in the “I Know a Place” video on a scale from 1 to 10?

5. Any other thoughts, reactions, favorite dance moves you want to share?