Motown Treasures

Was surprised to note that Sandie hit the Number One spot three times in her career. By comparison, Dusty got there once, Petula twice, Cilla twice, and Lulu just once (with a yucky remake of a Dan Hartman classic by Take That).

If I recall correctly, wasn't Sandie the beneficiary of the writing and producing skills of Chris Andrews (he of Yesterday Man fame). He did very well trying to emulate that Bacharach & David sound. Whatever happened to him?

Sandie cut quite a few foreign language versions of songs and I used to have two CDs of that material. Was she big on the continent?

Sandie had 8 songs in the Dutch Top 40. The best score was for "Puppet on a string". It was the #1 song for three weeks.

In 1965 Sandie had 3 songs in the Dutch charts  with peaks at 7 (‘Long live love’) , 18 and 40.
In 1966 also 3 songs at 23, 32 and 39.  In 1967 ‘Puppet’ at #1.
Finally in 1969 she reached # 21 (‘Think it al over’).

Dusty Springfield scored only twice in the sixties. In 1966 ‘You don’t have to say you love me’ at # 27.
And of course “Son-of-a Preacher Man’ at # 6 in 1968.
In the late 80’s she had 3 hits:  # 2 with ‘What have I done’,  # 9 with ‘In Private’ en # 18 with ‘Nothing has been proved’.

Petula had 5 entries in the Dutch charts. The best score for ‘This is my song’, which was # 1 for 4 weeks.
So, the Brit girls in the 60’s did well in the Netherlands.

Thanks Henk. What about Cilla, Marianne & Lulu?

John

The Dutch Top 40 charts from the mid '60s onwards are available on-line, and searchable too ..

It looks like none of the ladies you mentioned were particularly big, though they all had a handful of hits, with Lulu looking to be the most successful.

Cilla Black …

Marianne Faithful …

Lulu …

Roger

Thanks Roger. I wonder if the lack of success was due to their hits being covered by Dutch artists?

There may be an element of that John, but I used to occasionally listen to the Dutch offshore "pirate" stations (Veronica & later RNI) in the 1964-74 period and from what I recall about 75-80% of what they played was Anglo-American English-Language "Pop"/"Rock" music, with the other 20-25% comprising of a mixture of English-Language recordings by Dutch/German/Scandinavian groups (I think that the notion that a "Pop"/"Rock" song could be sung in anything other than English was totally alien in those parts of the world), plus a handful of Dutch Language tunes that didn't follow the "Pop"/"Rock" format and the occasional French or German language song that presumably had been a massive hit in France or Germany.  I don't recall hearing many "local" versions of the big UK/US "Pop"/"Rock" hits, they tended to record their own songs.

Having said that I see that the Dutch Chart for 20th March 1965, which has "You've Lost That Loving Feeling" at its peak of #8 has Cilla sharing the position with The Righteous Brothers original and a version by a Dutch singer called Trea Dobbs.  I believe that the chart in question was actually Radio Veronica's chart so how much it was sales-based as opposed to being based on what Veronica was playing I really don't know. 

Here is the chart …. 

And here is the Trea Dobbs version of "YLTLF" ….



Roger 

'Don't You Count On It' is a classic Chris Andrews composition which was wasted on the 'b' side of 'Message Understood'. I wore it out!