Sunday, August 26, 2012

Jackie Trent: Where Are You Now, My Love?



This morning I listened to an edition of The Reunion in which Sue MacGregor brought together five women from the pop scene of the 1960s:
Petula Clark, the child star of the 1940s whose career went stratospheric in the 1960s; Sandie Shaw, the barefoot pop princess who won the Eurovision Song Contest; Helen Shapiro, Britain's first teen pop star who was supported by The Beatles, Jackie Trent, singer and songwriter who wrote hits for Petula Clark, Scott Walker and many others; and Vicki Wickham, the legendary producer of Ready Steady Go who went on to manage Dusty Springfield.
This seems to be one of those programmes that are archived on the BBC iPlayer, so it should still be available. Helen Shapiro and Petula Clark have already featured here.

One of the song excerpts played in the programme was from "Where Are You Now, My Love?" This took Jackie Trent to number one in May 1965 - she wrote it with Tony Hatch, to whom she was married for many years. Their suburban take on Bacharach and David is very effective here.

The song owed part of its success to its use in the television series It's Dark Outside, which featured Oliver Reed among its cast.

But the footage in the video above does not come from that but the film Four in the Morning. This ominous downbeat piece of late kitchen-sink suggested it could be grim in London too - Billy Liar might have been no better off if he had caught that train. It starred Judi Dench in a rare early cinema appearance. This was years before it was made compulsory for her to appear in every British film.

Four in the Morning had a notable John Barry score in its own right. Elsewhere on Youtube you can find the main theme and some of this river footage with the correct music.

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