One of the UK’s most successful singers Elkie Brooks will release a new hits compilation on 2nd June ’17 on the Virgin EMI label. Entitled ‘Pearls – The Very Best Of Elkie Brooks’, it features all of the hits that made her name, including ‘Lilac Wine’, ‘Fool If You Think It’s Over’, ‘Sunshine After The Rain’, ‘No More The Fool’ and her signature hit ‘Pearl’s A Singer’. In addition Elkie has recorded two new songs that stand shoulder to shoulder with anything she has ever committed to tape in her extraordinary career. First up is her rendition of ‘Love Ain’t Something You Can Get For Free’, an undiscovered gem written by Ray Parker Jnr & Wah Wah Watson, and originally recorded by Bobby Womack in 1975. A second new track, ‘Forgive and Forget’, written by Bryan Adams and Phil Thornalley, boasts the slow motion groove of Motown at its peak, and Elkie makes it hers, and hers alone.
Says Elkie: “If you are a good singer, you should be able to sing anything. I’ve always looked to great artists like Aretha Franklin, Ella Fitzgerald, Sarah Vaughan - people who could adapt so much because they had the voice. And that’s what I’ve striven to do throughout my career with my voice: adapt. I suppose it’s been my passport.”
The full tracklisting of ‘Pearls – The Very Best Of Elkie Brooks’ is:
1. Pearl’s A Singer
2. Fool If You Think It’s Over
3. Don’t Cry Out Loud
4. Sunshine After The Rain
5. Lilac Wine
6. No More The Fool
7. Nights In White Satin
8. Love Ain’t Something You Can Get For Free
9. Only Love Can Break Your Heart
10. Forgive And Forget
11. The Runaway
12. Superstar
13. Mojo Hannah
14. Just An Excuse
15. Gasoline Alley
16. Warm & Tender Love
17. We’ve Got Tonight
18. Our Love
Elkie Brooks began singing professionally in 1960. Born Elaine Bookbinder to a Jewish baker in Manchester, at 15 she won a talent contest at the Palace Theatre, Manchester judged by the infamous Don Arden (manager of Jerry Lee Lewis, Little Richard and The Small Faces, and father of Sharon Osbourne). The next few years were an education. She sang in cabaret clubs up and down the country, and found herself supporting the Beatles at their 1964 Christmas shows at Hammersmith Odeon. Her first hit, in 1964, was a version of Etta James’ ‘Something’s Got A Hold On Me’, on which a pre-Led Zeppelin Jimmy Page played guitar; she toured with The Small Faces, The Animals. By the end of the 60s, she was singing jazz with Humphrey Lyttelton’s band and a few short years later had channelled her inner rock chick, and was now co-fronting the band Vinegar Joe alongside Robert Palmer.
At Vinegar Joe’s dissolution, she found herself joining southern American boogie band Wet Willie. But this was a temporary diversion, because shortly after she was back on home turf, a newly minted, grownup solo singer. Her solo debut album ‘Rich Man’s Woman’ was banned in some quarters because of its raunchy sleeve but it was her 1977 album ‘Two Days Away’ that saw the blue touch paper truly ignite on Elkie’s career. The album featured her monster hit and signature song ‘Pearl’s A Singer’, which was co-written and produced by Elvis stalwarts Leiber & Stoller. The song lit up the charts and gave her her first timeless classic. It wouldn’t be her last.
The hits kept coming: ‘Fool If You Think It’s Over’, ‘Lilac Wine’, ‘Sunshine After The Rain’, ‘Warm And Tender Love’, ‘Don’t Cry Out Loud’ and her highest charting hit ‘No More The Fool’. Her 1981 album ‘Pearls’ was in the charts for 79 continuous weeks and went on to sell over a million, making Elkie Brooks the biggest selling female album artist in the history of the British pop charts at the time. And the work rate didn’t let up: over the course of the next 25 years, she has released some 20 albums. By 2012, she had more chart albums under her belt than any other British female artist. Not only has she been prolific in the studio she has also continued to tour, performing live in almost every major UK theatre with sell out runs at such prestigious venues as the Palladium, the Royal Albert Hall, Wembley Arena, Ronnie Scotts and she even shared the bill with the Beach Boys and Santana at Knebworth in 1980. You can catch Elkie and her band live in the coming months at the following shows:
APRIL
29 LONDON Cadogan Hall
MAY
12 SOUTHAMPTON Concorde Club
19 FARNHAM The Maltings
JUNE
10 SOUTHEND Cliffs Pavilion
16 BASINGSTOKE The Anvil
18 SALFORD The Lowry
JULY
2 BRIGHTON Theatre Royal
8 LLANDUDNO Venue Cymru
15 ST ANDREWS Byre In The Botanics
20 YORK Grand Opera House
SEPTEMBER
22 GUILDFORD G-Live
24 CHELTENHAM Town Hall
OCTOBER
5 FOLKESTONE Leas Cliff Hall
14 COVENTRY Albany Theatre
NOVEMBER
9 SCUNTHORPE Baths Hall
11 PRESTON Charter Theatre
24 WIMBORNE Tivoli Theatre
Listening to ‘Pearls – The Very Best Of Elkie Brooks’, her magisterial version of Rod Stewart’s ‘Gasoline Alley’, the operatic drama of ‘Lilac Wine’, the way she turns Neil Young’s ‘Only Love Can Break Your Heart’ into something resembling a waltz - you are reminded once again of the astonishing range of her voice. This woman can sing!
