One byproduct of all this jet-setting? Their three adult children all sound nothing like one another. She was the most popular female artist to emerge during the British musical invasion, creating a long string of now-classic hit records that have a style all their own.
With its hummable melody and Clark's reassuring vocals, you really do believe the lights are much brighter there, for three minutes at least. That recording set the pattern for a series of hits that followed. Clark usually worked with writer-producer Tony Hatch; in terms of creating great radio hits, their partnership rivaled Dionne Warwick's pairing with Burt Bacharach.
Still, Clark emphasizes, don't go to her concert expecting her to skip out on stage like a '60s dolly bird who has just flown in from Carnaby Street. Her live show is about much more than that. Perhaps I don't sing them the way I did, but you wouldn't expect that. I'm not stuck in an era. The idea of going onstage and having it be about nostalgia? I just couldn't do it. She usually includes most of her American hits, plus other songs from her wide-ranging career.
Sometimes audiences can underestimate the sheer vastness of Clark's work, which is pretty imposing. At the height of her U. Chips" with Peter O'Toole. John knows how to handle me: tea and biscuits. But, when she sings, well, best let her explain. I think singing must be who I am. As soon as I walk on stage to sing I feel free. Freedom is a word that crops up time and again in this surprisingly personal interview. Indeed, she tells me that when she thinks about a life beyond this one she likes to imagine flying free as a bird.
I watch birds all the time. I open the window and hear the birds at night. A child star at the age of nine and managed by her overbearing father, Leslie, her film career began after she sang at the Royal Albert Hall as a year-old.
I had to tie a band around my breasts and they kept me young for a long time — until about In , after a string of hit records and films, she went to perform in Paris and ended up living there. I could never figure out who I was talking to, my father or my manager, we were disagreeing on so many different things. Eventually they talked me into it and I went. I just wanted to go home and go to bed. Claude, who was the PR man, came in to change the bulb and, when the light came on again, I took one look at him and that was it.
A coup de foudre [a bolt of lightning]. It was so totally unexpected. I was living in Paris and was liberated not having this thing over me — Little Pet, that stuff. Eighteen months after the lightbulb incident we were married. Her eyes are back on the picture. Petula and Claude Wolff on their wedding day 55 years ago. They no longer live together. Throughout the forties and fifties Petula was a regular guest on a vast number of British radio shows.
She appeared on experimental TV in the forties. In , she was invited to sing at the famed Olympia theatre in France. After one song the French crowd went wild, and an entirely new career was launched. In answer to the rock-and-roll craze of the late fifties, Petula was back on the charts again in England when she recorded Alone and Baby Lover which were more upbeat than the sweet earlier ballads.
Asked to record in French, Petula declined at first but was quickly persuaded to do so by Frenchman Claude Wolff with whom she fell madly in love - they were married in June By the early sixties, Petula found herself reinvented as a French chanteuse, even rivaling the legendary Piaf--during Piaf's own lifetime. She was always classified as a "French" singer on the shelves in French and French-Canadian record stores.
Petula would work with many of the French legends including Charles Aznavour, Serge Gainsbourg, Dalida, Claude Francois, Johnny Hallyday, and Sacha Distel, and host many of her own television specials live from Paris, as well as her own French variety series. In addition to her newfound French pop star status, Petula also began to enjoy success with the songs that she had begun to record in German and Italian. By the mid-sixties she'd established herself as superstar throughout Europe with Number One tunes sung in different languages in different countries all across the Continent.
Interesting to note, each of her early European hits were with entirely different songs--a feat not duplicated by any other singer since! Urged by her friends in Britain to record something in English, Petula allowed Tony Hatch to visit her in Paris where he presented his new song, Downtown.
Petula recorded it in Although it was kept off the top spot by the Beatles in the UK, it reached Number 1 in the USA in early without her promoting it at all. Petula's own recorded version features guitar work by, then studio musician, Jimmy Page! Internationally, Petula Clark has charted in the top 40 somewhere, sometime, with over recordings! Her first American television special with her guest Harry Belafonte is still remembered today for combatting racism when she insisted a duet of her song On the Path of Glory , was broadcast with her naturally touching Harry's arm, which in was seen by the sponsor to be unacceptable: a white woman touching a black man.
But grow up she did, pursuing a singing career all over Europe, and then marrying a French PR representative for a record company. They had two daughters. And of course as soon as they heard it, the audience just went crazy.
As a child star who became an international pop sensation, it's a little jaw-dropping when Petula Clark starts name-dropping. She sang for Winston Churchill "I don't think he came to see me.
It was one of those big shows for charity" ; was besties with Julie Andrews "Julie had the same sort of career as me when she was a child and we used to travel on the troop trains together" ; danced with Fred Astaire "And he takes me in his arms, and it was the easiest thing in the world. We just took off and it was wonderful, he was that good" ; and acted with Alec Guinness "I gave Alec Guinness his first movie kiss; the Earth didn't move for either of us!
Miller said, "The all-American, beautiful voice, Karen Carpenter. All-British pop star. He had the best of both worlds! So, I'm not going to talk about that any more. And he went crazy.
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