Of Chocolate, Dame Edna and Birdsong

The gayest Xmas Robin in the world? [Australian Pink Robin (Petroica rodinogaster)]

It's another snippets post, dear reader:

• Chocolate news: If it's not bad enough that one of Britain's favourite historic brands, chocolate manufacturer Cadbury, was taken over by Americans (the conglomerate Mondelez) in 2010 - now there are proposals in the air that Mondelez wants to take over the US brand Hershey's as well. They really shouldn't bother; their "chocolate" is vile, and tastes of sugary earwax. A Yank friend bought us a tin of Hershey's Kisses, and we thought they were so disgusting we threw the lot out and kept the tin!
• Sickest theme park ever? Thanks to a social media video that went viral [geddit?], the world gawped in amazement at the fact that Vietnam has a theme park dedicated to COVID-19!

• Hello, Possums! news: A sale of about 250 items from the personal collection of Barry Humphries will take place at Christie’s in London on 13th February 2025. The auction will include the diamante-encrusted Sydney Opera House spectacles [above] worn by Dame Edna Everage, which are estimated to sell for up to £1,500. We might place a bid!
• It it art? news: A city in Oregon, USA has issued a plea to whoever has been sticking "googly eyes" on its public artworks to stop. I think they look much better, to be honest.
• And finally: Many happy returns to Don Johnson who, scarily, is 75 years old today, and also to the lovely former Supreme Cindy Birdsong, who's 85! Here she is, sparkling away on not one, but two of the group's "post-Diana" hits:

Supremes - Up The Ladder to the Roof

Supremes - Stoned Love

And the weather? Mild again for the time of year - but too cloudy to see any Geminid meteors!

I don't think you are born an icon

Miss Ross. The Boss. The most glittering of stars is 80 years old today!

"With the Supremes I made so much money so fast all I wanted to do was buy clothes and pretty things. Now I'm comfortable with money and it's comfortable with me."

"I don't think getting in and out of a limousine has anything to do with being an icon."

"Icon. What is an icon? When someone is iconic it means they have established a certain kind of legacy possibly, and I think it does come with time. I'm not really sure. But I don't think you are born an icon."

"It takes a long time to get to be a diva. I mean, you gotta work at it."

"In the end, you really just need to believe in yourself."

She certainly does that!

By way of a tribute, let's start with two fine examples of the great lady hitting the dressing-up box as only she can [Bob Mackie, I know you're hiding in there somewhere!]:

Getting It Together - Diana Ross - Mame

Getting It Together - Diana Ross - My Fair Lady

Next up, Miss Ross in full "Disco Diva" mode:

Her biggest-selling hit of all, and arguably the point at which she became a global megastar:

Diana Ross - Upside Down

And, finally, the campest of the lot! [Yes, I know I have played it more than once before, but I never tire of it!]

Diana Ross - Chain Reaction

Many happy returns, Diane (Diana) Ernestine Earle Ross (born 26th March 1944)

Indeed I Do!

Unaccustomed as I am, dear reader, to feature artists like Bruce Springsteen on this here blog [not normally "our kind of music" at all], an article in The Guardian yesterday piqued some interest...

...for @adecadeago, I published this:

RIP Frank Wilson, soul music producer, who died on Friday. Who? You may ask...

Mr Wilson would have been admired for his sterling work in the music industry - but little else - had it not been for the fact he recorded one of the rarest popular music tracks of all time.

The story of how the man's recording of his own song for Motown back in the 60s eventually led this obscure and deleted pressing to be the most expensive 7" single ever is indeed a fascinating one.

Read the story on Soul Source.

Largely revived from obscurity by the fanatics of the Northern Soul scene in the UK in the 1970s, a copy of Frank Wilson's under-rated original sold in 2009 for more than £25,000!

Here is that very song, Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do):

Frank Wilson - Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)

[2022 update: new video featurung the legendary Northern Soul venue Wigan Casino]

Oh, and by the way - Frank Wilson also wrote this rather more familiar classic:

Supremes - Stoned Love

Now, ten years down the line, there are rumours that Mr Wilson's rare record may well have recently changed hands for £100,000...

...and to top it all - "The Boss" has revived this Northern Soul classic for his new single, bringing it a whole new audience in the USA, where it originated yet remains completely unknown:

Bruce Springsteen - Do I Love You (Indeed I Do)

Frank Wilson would have been so proud.

His original remains the far superior version, of course.

Nowhere to run to baby, nowhere to hide

It's been quite the week for famous names "dropping like flies", or so it seems...

... icons such as Dame ONJ, Issey Miyake, Raymond Briggs, and, of course that stalwart of the classic Motown era, Mr Lamont Dozier!

Decades before the likes of the BeeGees or Stock Aitken Waterman, Holland-Dozier-Holland was the true "hit factory" - the songwriting partnership that made Tamla-Motown, and launched the careers of gazillions of household-name artists (some of whom, such as Miss Ross, are stil going today) such as Mary Wells, The Temptations, Junior Walker and the All-Stars, Freda Payne, and this lot - a classic selection of H-D-H creations that don't even begin to scrape the surface of the great man's vast repertoire, nor his legacy to the world of music...

The Supremes - Stop! In The Name of Love [The Hollywood Palace, 1965]

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - Nowhere To Run [1965]

Four Tops - Can't Help Myself (Sugar Pie, Honey Bunch) [1965]

The Supremes - The Happening [The Ed Sullivan Show, 1967]

Chairmen of the Board - Give Me Just A Little More Time

Marvin Gaye - How Sweet It Is (To Be Loved By You)

Kim Wilde - You Keep Me Hanging On

RIP, Lamont Herbert Dozier (16th June 1941 – 8th August 2022)

Missin' several angels

Go, girl! *

It's the final, final countdown - not merely the end of a week, but the end of a year!

Having depressed everyone yesterday by opening the "Book of the Dead 2021", it's time to (sort of) make amends - with a party. We shan't be hosting a real one again this year, more's the pity, thanks to fucking Omicron ["our gang" will be gathering via Zoom/Teams/wotever instead] - but let's get some dance choons lined up for a (solitary) boogie nonetheless!

Every track on this playlist is from someone who has departed for the ever-growing dancefloors of Fabulon this year - so let's raise a glass to the memory of each and every one of 'em, and Thank Disco It's New Year's Eve Friday!!

Tavares - Heaven Must Be Missing An Angel

The Supremes - You're My Drivin' Wheel

Patrick Juvet - I Love America

Kool & The Gang - Celebration

The Gap Band - Oops Upside Your Head

Eartha Kitt & Bronski Beat - Cha Cha Heels

Baccara - Yes Sir, I Can Boogie [Starparade 02.06.1977]

Raffaella Carrà - Do It, Do It Again [Top of the Pops 27-04-1978]

Have a faboo New Year, dear reader! Clink, clink. It can only be better. Can't it?

[* Scary fact: the boy in that classic "meme-y thing" is now 39 and living in Boston]

Tooby ooby walla nooby abba nabba; early morning singing song

Home working. Don'tcha love it?

And so, the wheel turns again - and here we are at the start of another no doubt lovely and rewarding week of work...

It's been a fabulously mild and temperate weekend, and we were able to get some pruning-back and clearing of dead stuff done in the extensive gardens here at Dolores Delargo Towers, after the "big freeze" last week [Oh yes, and I had my first COVID vaccination!] - but, as per usual, over all too soon.

Hey ho; on with the show. Today sees another completely unlikely combo of birthdays, including Kenneth Williams, Dame Julie Walters, Marni Nixon, Sir Bruce Forsyth, Dame Sheila Hancock, the Duchess of Kent, Christine Keeler, George Washington, Sir John Mills, Judy Cornwell, Drew Barrymore, Arthur Schopenhauer, Ellen Greene, Ted Kennedy, James Blunt, Lord Baden-Powell, Steve Irwin, Eric Gill, Guy Mitchell, Chris Moyles, Niki Lauda, Lea Salonga, Nigel Planer, Edward Gorey, General Bokassa, Luis Buñuel, and the artist known as "Oliver", who had a big hit with his version of the classic Good Morning Starshine from Hair...

...which, on this Tacky Music Monday is here artfully performed by what was, by the time this was broadcast in 1969, Miss-Ross-and-her-backing-singers:

Diana Ross & The Supremes - Where Do I Go/Good Morning Starshine

Have a good week, dear reader.

Supreme to the end

Unexpected and sad news - Miss Mary Wilson, legendary co-founder of The Supremes, and quite likely the feistiest of all of 'em, has shimmied off to Fabulon. A trouper of the first order, her battles with Motown big-wigs, the music industry in general, and, of course, Miss Ross have been well-documented - and, having celebrated her 60th year in the music business in 2019, even as recent as this week she announced that she was working on releasing new solo material.

I have, of course, paid myriad tributes to Mary and the girls - with and without the saintly Diana - over the years so, by way of a tribute, I have dug out a real rarity. A song written by the great Northern-Soul-turned-Hi-NRG maestro DJ Ian Levine (apparently about one of his own bitter break-ups), this fabulously camp number sounds like it was written for her - and should have been a huge hit, in my opinion! Take it away, Mary...

Mary Wilson - Don't Get Mad, Get Even

Facts:

• In the late 60s she had a torrid affair with our very own Tom Jones - whose wife Linda, when she found out, threatened to cut his balls off!
• After she walked away from the final iteration of The Supremes (following a concert at the Theatre Royal Drury Lane in London in 1977), Mary found it difficult to make a success of her solo recording career - a fact that wasn't helped when she signed with CEO Records in 1992, which promptly went bankrupt.
• Bitter wrangling about fees and artistic control meant that, despite several attempts by all concerned, Miss Wilson never did reconcile with La Diana to join the "Supremes reunion tour" in 2000.
• In 2009 she appeared on The Paul O'Grady Show - which ended in a special performance with her, Paul O'Grady and Graham Norton as "The Supremes". [I would kill for a video of that routine, but YouTube has no record of this extravaganza.]
• In 2019, Mary was reunited with one of her gowns that was missing from her collection when a British vintage clothing store owner found one at a garage sale in France.

RIP Mary Wilson (6th March 1944 – 8th February 2021)

Totally stoned

A rather substantial timeslip moment today, dear reader - we've hurtled back into the mists of time half a century!

We're actually twice as far away in time from 1971 than that year was itself from World War II, so it's no wonder everything seems so unfamiliar. In January five decades ago, Britain was in its last throes of using the old pounds, shillings and pence currency system (decimalisation arrived in February) and "ready-reckoners" were in the newspapers and given away in shops everywhere [there was even a series of TV programmes] in an effort to get people to understand the new money and the price of their shopping. Strikes, immigration, terrorism, unemployment, the Cold War and the EEC were predominant throughout the year, but then so were prog rock, space flights, colour telly, Mike Yarwood, hot pants, The Generation Game, new motorways (including the infamous "Spaghetti Junction"), Upstairs, Downstairs, the Morris Marina, Dastardly and Muttley, T. Rex and the Blue Peter time capsule.

In the news headlines in January '71: the Ibrox football stadium disaster in Glasgow killed 66 men and boys, the Divorce Reform Act came into force and introduced "no-fault" divorce for the first time, Post Office workers went on strike, Egypt's Aswan High Dam officially opened, the so-called "Angry Brigade" of left-wing terrorists bombed the Secretary of State for Employment's home, infamous dictator Idi Amin came to power after a coup in Uganda, and the Open University was born. In our cinemas: Lust for a Vampire; Murphy's War; There's a Girl in My Soup. On telly: Oh Brother!, The Last of the Mohicans and Softly, Softly - Task Force; and Valerie Barlow was electrocuted by a faulty hairdryer in Coronation Street.

And in our charts all those years ago? To the nation's great relief, George Harrison and My Sweet Lord had booted Clive Dunn's Grandad off the top slot at last, and also present and correct were The Mixtures (Pushbike Song), The Kinks, Jackson 5, Dave Edmunds, the aforementioned T. Rex, Judy Collins, The Equals and Neil Diamond. However, just arrived outside the Top 10 was a number that was - although it never managed to unseat Mr Harrison - soon to dominate the scene for weeks to come...

Supremes - Stoned Love

Now I wanna tell you of a great love
Oh, it will light up
It will surely light up
The world
If you'll just believe

Stoned love
(Stoned love)
Mm-hmm
Mm-hmm
Stoned love
Oh, yeah

A love for each other will bring fighting to an end
Forgiving one another, time after time, doubt creeps in
But like the sun lights up the sky with a message from above
Oh, yeah, I find no other greater symbol of this love

Yeah, don't you hear the wind blowin'?
Mm-hmm
Stoned love, oh, yeah
I tell you, I ain't got no other
Mm-hmm
Stoned love, oh, yeah

Life is so short, put the present time at hand
Oh, yeah, and if you're young at heart, rise up and take your stand
And to the man on whose shoulder the world must depend
I pray for peace and love, amen

Can't you feel it?
Stoned love
I tell you, I ain't got no other
Uh-huh
Stoned love, oh, yeah

If a war 'tween our nations passed, oh, yeah
Will the love 'tween our brothers and sisters last?
On and on and on and on and

Mm, mm, mm
Stoned love, yeah
I tell you, I ain't got no other
Mm-hmm

It's not a song about drugs! Honest, officer...

You better believe...

It's almost the end of another week, and thank heavens for that! It also happens to be the centenary of the influential director Lewis Gilbert (without whom we wouldn't have had classic movies such as Alfie, You Only Live Twice, The Spy Who Loved Me, Moonraker, Educating Rita or Shirley Valentine); other birthday celebrants include Frankie Howerd, Michelangelo, Stephen Schwartz, Kiki Dee, David Gilmour of Pink Floyd, Alan Davies, Dame Kiri Te Kanawa...

...and Mary Wilson (formerly) of the Supremes!

To get the party started with the appropriate level of sparkle, how about a little something from the later stages of the lady's career as part of that esteemed girl-group-sensation? Thank Disco It's Friday!

The Supremes (Mary, Scherrie, Susaye) - I'm Gonna Let My Heart do the Walking

Have a great weekend, peeps!

Mary Wilson (born 6th March 1944)

Scherrie, baby

We are nearing the weekend, my dears - and it is a busy one pour moi, with the annual Peter Tatchell lecture tonight and a visit from Mother tomorrow - but, oh! what wouldn't I give sometimes for a tangerine sequinned jump-suit!

Having shamefully overlooked the 70th birthday of Freda's little sister Miss Scherrie Payne - the first "post-Diana Supreme" - earlier this month, it is time to make amends.

Here are the Supremes (Mary, Scherrie and Susaye) themselves, resplendent in said garments, with a not-quite-live version of I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do The Walking...

Thank Disco It's Friday!

The Supremes - I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do the Walking

Please excuse the Dick in that clip.

Have a great weekend, everyone!

Scherrie Payne interview

Ride, ride, ride, ride

That was another tedious week (in spite of the fab Simon Callow: Being Shakespeare), and I am more relieved than normal it is over. We are in "consultation" (again!) about restructure/redundancies, I have been slogging away on another correspondence course for a professional qualification, and, in addition to that the day job has been just bleurrrgh...

"Thank Disco It's Friday" never seemed so appropriate - especially when it's in the company of yesterday's birthday girl Mary Wilson (70 years old!), the 1976 incarnation of The Supremes, a shitload of hairspray, chiffon and sequins, and their neglected funky classic (and one of Madam Arcati's favourites!) You're My Driving Wheel!

The Supremes - You're My Driving Wheel

You're my driving wheel
Feels good, baby
You take me farther, ooh
Than I've been before
Ride, ride, ride, ride

You're my driving wheel
Feels so good , baby
Just one touch, ow, ooh
Opens up my door

You're the engine that keeps me running
You're the motor that keeps me coming
To the road that keeps on winding
Coming to the love, I keep on finding

Every time you touch me
Starts my motor running
I like the way you keep it humming
Keeps my motor running
I like the way you keep it humming

Hey, you're my driving wheel
You better believe it, baby
You take me farther, whoo
Than I've been before
Than I've been before, yeah

You're my driving wheel
My driving wheel, baby
Just one touch, ow
Opens up my door
Opens up my door

Ain't a road in life I can't travel
As long as I know you're there
Ain't no map, I can't unravel
As long as I know you care

Every time you touch me
Starts my motor running
I like the way you keep it humming
Keeps my motor running
I like the way you keep me humming, oh

You're my driving wheel
I can't hear ya now
You take me farther
Than I've been before
Than I've been before

Hope you have a great weekend - it's going to be sunny here, and I can't wait to get out in it!

Mary Wilson

Baby love

The world has (predictably) gone mad for the new Royal baby boy - our future King.

Here's the Supremes with an appropriate number...

Supremes - Baby Love

Hope they call it Stewie.

Royal birth

Ain't so surprising

I know it is the birthday today of various megastars including Reg Dwight, Aretha Franklin and Richard O'Brien.

However today is Tacky Music Monday, so it is on tomorrow's birthday girl we are going to shine the spotlight instead.

Here's Miss Ross - 69 tomorrow - and her soon-to-be-ex colleagues in the Supremes, with their "Irving Berlin Medley". Look out around 3.30mins in for a very special surprise guest appearance...

Diana Ross and the Supremes - Irving Berlin Medley

...and have a great week, peeps!

Diana Ernestine Earle Ross (born 26th March 1944)

Vamos!

By the time you read this we will be off (not with BOAC, unfortunately)...

Fly BOAC (soft tempo)

...and soon we will be Vamos-ing a la Playa!

Righeira - Vamos a la Playa

Back in a week, dear reader.

FreeCell and Birdsong

The never-ending saga of our internet connection continues, as I got home yesterday to find our service was down - again! So I spent an evening obsessively playing FreeCell like it was 1998.

Never mind, eh? The Virgin Media engineer was at the house when I left for work this morning so hopefully we'll be back to normal later [although judging by previous experience I am holding out no hope of this]. I am posting this in work, trying to avoid being overlooked by the bosses :-)

And so, we have the end of another week to celebrate - in a suitable glittery fashion, of course. And who more glittery than the Supremes? OK, this track I'm Gonna Let My Heart Do The Walking from 1976 is hardly one of their most familiar or most lauded - six years on from the departure of Miss Ross, and five years since their post-Diana chart success - but it captures the spirit of the girls' final lurex-clad, defiantly harmonic days as they succumbed to the excesses of the Disco era.

It is almost a tribute to Miss Cindy Birdsong, too, on the eve of her 72nd birthday. I say almost, for by this stage of the game the feuding between Miss Birdsong and Miss Wilson had reached such a nadir that although Miss Birdsong sings on this single - and on all the tracks on the High Energy album (her last as part of the group) - her replacement Susaye Greene appears on the album cover and in this video.

Enjoy the last dying embers of a legend...

Supremes - Let My Heart Do The Walking

...and Thank Disco It's Friday!

The most expensive obscurity

RIP Frank Wilson, soul music producer, who died on Friday. Who? You may ask...

Mr Wilson would have been admired for his sterling work in the music industry - but little else - had it not been for the fact he recorded one of the rarest popular music tracks of all time.

The story of how the man's recording of his own song for Motown back in the 60s eventually led this obscure and deleted pressing to be the most expensive 7" single ever is indeed a fascinating one.

Read the story on Soul Source.

Largely revived from obscurity by the fanatics of the Northern Soul scene in the UK in the 1970s, a copy of Frank Wilson's under-rated original sold in 2009 for more than £25,000!

Here is that very song, Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do):

Frank Wilson - Do I Love You? (Indeed I Do)

Oh, and by the way - Frank Wilson also wrote this rather more familiar classic:

Supremes - Stoned Love

RIP

It's Gay Icons Day

No internet at Dolores Delargo Towers again - and we are preparing to do battle with Virgin Media once more... Meanwhile, as there are a few anniversaries to mark today, let's have a little compilation of those femmes fatales beloved of we gentlemen who have "a touch of lavender" - all part of this week's countdown to Gay Pride on Saturday!

Opening this selection is Miss Lena Horne, whose 94th birthday it would have been today, with a little twist on a classic - it's the Boy from Ipanema (for a change):

Lena Horne - The Boy From Ipanema

68 years ago, the late Miss Florence Ballard was born. I am not sure, but I don't think she is actually singing about popcorn on this early Supremes number... Naughty naughty!

The Supremes - Buttered Popcorn

How about a little sin? Yes please! And who better to give it to us but the lovely Susan Hayward, who was born on this day 93 years ago?

Susan Hayward - Sing You Sinners

But of course all these ladies are merely an entrée to the real commemoration today. For 42 years ago, that doyenne of gay adoration Miss Judy Garland's star finally fizzled out. The link between this sad event and the subsequent Stonewall Riots is tenuous, to say the least, but suffice to say she remains adored here at Dolores Delargo Towers and still sits at the top of that mystical pantheon of gay icons.

Here is the great lady singing her rarely heard version of a very apt anthem for this weekend's (anticipated) million-strong Pride Parade...

Judy Garland - You'll Never Walk Alone

As the countdown clock ticks on, the campness level cranks ever upwards - enjoy!

I hear birdsong

The legendary Cindy Birdsong celebrated her 70th birthday this week! Having started her career as a member of Patti LaBelle's first singing troupe, it was only when the lovely lady joined the world's most successful girl group The Supremes (following the departure of the tragic Florence Ballard) that her fame and fortune were assured.

Her star only really rose (briefly) however, once the saintly Diana had left the group to pursue her solo career. Here are some of Cindy's shining moments... Happy Friday!

Supremes - Up The Ladder to the Roof

Supremes - Stoned Love

Supremes - Live medley

Cindy Birdsong on Wikipedia

It's like a heatwave burning in my heart

We celebrate this week 50 years of Motown Records, the label that launched (predominately) black music into the mainstream - not just in America, but across the world.

Pioneered by no less than Dusty Springfield over here in the UK, the label spawned huge international success for artists such as Diana Ross, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gaye, Aretha Franklin, Michael Jackson... And the rest is history!

So here are just three of my own favourites from their huge and extensive back catalogue...

Supremes - Where Did Our Love Go?

Martha Reeves and the Vandellas - Heatwave

Aretha Franklin - (You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman

Classic Motown website

Dusty Springfield and the Motown invasion