Had a visit to the local 'Unseen 1963' exhibition recently, possibly the most historically-boggling photography collection I've ever seen. Piley's got all the info on it, but in essence, 'Unseen 1963' is over fifty candid, posed and offstage shots of sixties Pop Stars snapped at Southend's Odeon cinema. A mixture of dead-legends and heavy-hitters including The Beatles, the Stones, Cliff, Bo Diddley, Roy Orbison, the Everlys and The Kinks all caught backstage or meeting and greeting local competition winners in our very own Southend cinema .
One of the faces, I recognized was Samantha Jones. Originally one of The Veronons Girls, a group orbiting in shadow of The Beatles early career. Samantha eventually went solo, becoming something of a hit with the Lowlanders in Belgium, the Netherlands and winning the Knokke-Heist music festival. During the seventies she settled into the showbiz circuit of clubs, cruises and occasional TV appearances.
So what does she sound like? Well there's two sides of Samantha on offer today
A cheeky hotpants, Bakers Boy hat and suede boots sounding slinky piece of pop-funk. The sort of tune you'd get during a disco scene in Please Sir
Samantha Jones - Today Without You
And a belting evening-dress and show-closer 'Handbags and Gladrags' type soul ballad
Samantha Jones - Do I Still Figure In Your Life
Morecambe & Wise
Wheeltappers & Shunters (it's well worth watching this clip to the close, for the 'all together now' sing-a-long of Show Me The Way To Go Home)
That's Samantha, sat on Macca's lap..
6 comments:
Lovely stuff. Have to confess I've no memory of her. She'd definitely have got Mr Hedges dancing, don't you think?
I have no clue who she is. This post definitely got me interested in her. Thanks for commenting on my Sharon Tate post. I actually added some photos of some other women in there just a sec ago.
Oh yes Hedges would've been on his toes lively like - I don't remember her either Davy, but stumbled across a couple of Sharon tunes via a fab CD which also has this belter on. But that generic polite pop/showbiz look (and one of those 70s skinny mic's in the M & W clip) is very familiar
She's was an unknown to me too Keith - I was tempted with clonking this clip in from Disco 71 , but though I'd stick with the UK TV spots
Ah. I wondered if she'd come from that. Clearly I needs to git me it, since that Liz Christian has become one of my most played and most loved things. Yeah baby.
Yeah it was a great exhib eh? Shame it's finished now, coulda done with it being around a tad longer. Hope we get a book or something at some point.
Didn't know anything about her either - a great spot there.
M&W clip is a peach!
P
You'll love it Davy ~ winners all the way. I've jus dropped a link to the good stuff on your bloggy.
I checked his box of behind~the~counter bits after your tip, but could see why they didn't make the final exhibition ~ Jagger blinking, and low level celebs etc..
Have a peep at the end of the Wheeltappers vid too, it's from a time as distant as a lost continent
Post a Comment