Alma Cogan - If Love Were All

Описание: No appraisal of Alma Cogan could be considered appropriate without stating that she was, without question, both Britain's most successful female singer of the Fifties and early Sixties as well as a genuine superstar of her era. So extraordinary was her appeal that, in popularity polls conducted in the mid-Fifties, Petula Clark and Shirley Bassey would fight it out to determine who might achieve second spot! Alma had an eight-year run of British chart hits from 1954 to 1961 and, contrary to the thinking of new, younger musical acts, including John Lennon, that she was nevertheless "irrelevant", she proved that she was anything but! Between 1963 and '65, The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Searchers were the UK's foremost charting groups. In that same period. Stones' manager Andrew Loog Oldham, a longtime admirer, produced three tracks by her, including her first recording of "Now That I Found You", a song she had written with longtime friend, pianist and arranger Stan Foster; Searchers drummer, Chris Curtis, wrote for her the much acclaimed "Snakes & Snails" Alma's recording of which featured musicians Jimmy Page, Joe Moretti, John Paul Jones, Vic Flick and Dusty Springfield on backing vocals; and The Beatles not only became her friends but Lennon, who with his band mates had first met Alma at a 1962 'Sunday Night at the London Palladium' TV show, soon changed his opinion of her, and Paul McCartney famously composed "Yesterday" on the piano in her Kensington apartment!
It was with Alma in mind that songwriter Lionel Bart composed his 'Oliver!' showstopper "As Long As He Needs Me" for the Dickens character Nancy, and whose later recording he stated was sung exactly as he had intended. Sir Noel Coward had offered similar praise for Alma's 1962 interpretation of "If Love Were All", written by the maestro for his 1929 operetta 'Bitter Sweet'. He had actually gone one step further by declaring it to be the finest interpretation of his song. High praise indeed for Alma's recording of this number, described as "self-deprecating" and that many consider to be an autobiographical song by Coward