Elkie Brooks: Lilac Wine

Like The Man with the Child in his Eyes by Kate Bush, this is a song that reminds me of my sixth-form Saturday job in a second-hand bookshop. Being young and ignorant, I had not heard it before. I now know that it had been made famous by Nina Simone in the sixties and it was recorded more recently by Jeff Buckley. Wikipedia has an article on the song's history.

Elkie Brooks has been around in the sixties and was a member of Vinegar Joe with Robert Palmer in the early seventies, but she did not enjoy much chart success until this era. Lilac Wine made no. 16 in 1978.

She is in full diva mode on this live performance from German TV, but someone should have told the pianist that you don't have to press that hard.