Brilla, brilla, pequeña estrella

Oh, how we love Mondays. At least the storms seem to be over for the moment, just in time to go back to the office.

To cheer ourselves up, it is to the prodigious Edmundo Ros (whose 114th birthday it would have been last week) we turn on this Tacky Music Monday to provide us with a bit of a wake-up call...

Here he is with frequent collaborator Caterina Valente [RIP] - and a bevy of brilliantly-chosen dance clips from a variety of films and shows [courtesy of Bissenses Swedish Retro Vintage Music and Film Art Production, indeed]:

Edmundo Ros and Caterina Valente - Estrellita Del Sur [Little Southern Star]

Now that's what I call a pick-me-up!

Have a good week, dear reader.

Departure lounge

They're dropping like flies at the moment! House favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers, the marvellous multilingual singer, guitarist, star of 50s/60s variety shows alongside the likes of Dean Martin and Fred Astaire, and schlager legend in Germany, Miss Caterina Valente has departed for the glittering environs of Fabulon, aged 93...

Caterina Valente - Malagueña

Caterina Valente - Bongo Cha Cha Cha

...closely followed by the star of one of my favourite TV shows when I was a kid Randall & Hopkirk (Deceased) - as well as Coronation Street, That Was the Week That Was and Carry On films - Kenneth Cope [above, top left]. Here's the fantabulosa theme tune:

And an old classic:

Kenneth Cope on "the twilight world of the heterosexual" [That Was the Week That Was, 1963]

RIP, both.

Le ore più non contano

Back to the office again... Sigh.

After a rather pleasant weekend of sunshine, blue skies, mild temperatures, a mosey round the garden centre and some therapeutic pottering in the garden, it's time for that "back-to-reality" moment. A working week still beckons.

Hey ho. Just a few weeks to go, and we're off to Benalmadena again!

Courtesy of the ever-wonderful Clare Teal on her Jazz FM radio show, we have something suitably bright-and-breezy on this Tacky Music Monday to wake us up - from the simply faboo Caterina Valente (who celebrated her 93rd birthday on 14th January!):

Caterina Valente - Bongo Cha Cha Cha

Have a good one, dear reader.

With my hips kind of swivelly and swervey

After a faboo "extended weekend" - that included our much-awaited outing to see Anything Goes (yay!), and much pottering in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers [a load of dead stuff cleared, and two window-boxes of daffs and a bowl of Iris siberica planted for Spring] - we face the ultimate disappointment. It's over, and another working week has unfortunately begun.

Never mind. With Hallowe'en impending, let's start the week in a most appropriate fashion this Tacky Music Monday with an unlikely combination of legendary ladies and a most bizarre treatment of a Rodgers-Hammerstein classic:

Carol Burnett, Chita Rivera, Caterina Valente [as Morticia Addams] - I Enjoy Being A Girl

All that, and a snippet of an elderly Boris Karloff, to boot!

Have a good week, dear reader.

---

Footnote:

Both the original performer of this song (in the Broadway show Flower Drum Song) Pat Suzuki (age 91), and the actress who performed it in its screen adaptation Nancy Kwan (age 82) [actually dubbed by one of Mickey Rooney's wives Miss Betty Jane Baker] are, thankfully, still with us...

I think I'll travel on to Avalon

A more rewarding day spent in the garden today - the weather has been generally sunny, we've moved our new bench out of the "firing line" of the bloody wood-pigeons and their elderberry-fuelled purple shit, shifted some of the pots around, and generally pottered around dead-heading and feeding the plants. With everything in pots, getting things in order and watered is a bit of a task - but we'll need to make sure everything's in the best of health for when we're away.

In keeping with the "Sunday mood", here's some "Sunday music" - a delightful meeting of three great voices, in perfect harmony...

Perry Como, Caterina Valente, Ella Fitzgerald - Avalon

Perfection.

Spawn and Spain

The Demon Spawn have not stopped this weekend. Not for a second. From 7am to midnight.

Just two full weeks to go before we'll be rid of them, thank goodness!

Let's have little Spanish moment, methinks - just to remind us that after the dust settles on this arduous move, we have a week in Spain to look forward to in just under three weeks' time...

Here's a gorgeous little number by today's birthday girl Signorina Valente [still with us, thankfully!], accompanied in this clip by the shimmying talents of Signorinas Lollobrigida and Loren and Miss Gardner:

Caterina Valente - Malagueña

Many happy returns, Caterina Valente (born 14th January 1931)

Nothing little about this star!

Where did that weekend go? Hi ho. It's off to work we go. Ohhhhhhhhh.

Among the birthday celebrants today: centenarian Eli Wallach, Bucks Fizz singer Mike Nolan, libertarian Noam Chomsky, Clarence Nash (aka Donald Duck), Victor Kiam (he "bought the company"), former All Saints singer Nicole Appleton, Tom Waits, Harry Chapin, Ellen Burstyn and Louis Prima.

But it is the prodigious Edmundo Ros (who would have been 105 today; and he almost made it! He only died in 2011; and we celebrated his centenary) to whom we turn on this Tacky Music Monday to provide us with a bit of a wake-up call...

Here he is with frequent collaborator Caterina Valente - and a bevy of brilliantly-chosen dance clips from a variety of films and shows [courtesy of Bissenses Swedish Retro Vintage Music and Film Art Production, indeed]:

Caterina Valente - Estrellita Del Sur [Little Southern Star]

Now that's what I call a pick-me-up!

Edmund William Ross OBE, FRAM (7th December 1910 – 21st October 2011)