Petula in the late fifties
Peter Durward Harris | Leicester England | 05/25/2003
(5 out of 5 stars)
"Petula began her career as a singer-actress in the forties - more actress than singer, actually - but the decline of the British film industry caused her to focus more on singing. Her biggest musical influence back then was Peggy Lee, so anybody looking for songs like Downtown can ignore her fifties music.This compilation is made up of Petula's first original album (the first twelve tracks here, all covers of Hollywood movie songs) and a lot of other tracks recorded in the fifties, plus one from 1961. Many of these additional songs are either from the Great American Songbook, or they are contemporary songs that carried on the tradition.Very different from Petula's later music, this collection is likely to be of greatest interest to fans of the thirties and forties. Petula proves here that she could have been a big band singer - just listen to her version of Fascinating rhythm. She could swing with the best.As time goes by, originally from the Broadway musical Everybody's welcome, was a top twenty American hit for both Rudy Vallee and Jacques Renard in 1931. Years later, it was included in the movie Casablanca, enabling Rudy to take the song to number one in 1943.Of the other songs here, perhaps the most famous are Zing went the strings of my heart (Judy Garland), Memories are made of this (Dean Martin), but there are too many great songs here to mention in detail. If you are a fan of the thirties and forties, you will recognise your own favorites. If not, you should ignore this."