I had planned to subject you to a new series today but I have now decided to save it for Sundays.
Instead you are getting a couple of tracks from the recently acquired ...And Then He Kissed Me by Rachel Sweet.
She shot to fame in 1978 as a 16 year old on the Stiff label with her version of Carla Thomas' B-A-B-Y. When I say shot to fame it got to number 35 in the UK singles charts. She was also part of the Life Stiffs Tour.
After two albums on Stiff she was signed by CBS with this being the first released in 1981. She only released one further album prior to returning to her studies.
She returned to music sporadically before becoming a successful writer and TV producer.
While she clearly had a great voice it would appear that CBS didn't really know how best to market her .The album has only 8 tracks but is a mixture of 60's pop and Maria McKee style ballads.
It would have been interesting to see in which direction her career would have gone had she hung around a little bit longer.
Rachel Sweet - Then He Kissed Me/Be My Baby
Rachael Sweet -Party Girl
I was unaware of Rachel Sweet until the Stiff box set in 1992. My favorite piece of Sweet trivia is her brief appearance as George's cousin Shelly in perhaps Seinfeld's most famous episode:
ReplyDeletehttps://youtu.be/u0GuecuiOH8
Rachel Sweet was probably the most mis-managed act in the late 70's. She had the talent, but they could never find the right genre for her to sing...they tried country, pop, new wave, and rock...If they would have stuck with the new wave songs she could have made it big...but management never gave her a chance to stick with it. "Protect the Innocence" is her best album. There are great songs sprinkled on all of her catalog...Check the cover of Spyder's song "Little Darling" on the "Then He Kissed Me" album...one of her best
ReplyDeleteAlmost forgot her and so it great to see her on this pages. AS RMS said, she had the talent and the voice to start a big career. Sadly this kind of songs didn't fit to other Stiff's output.
ReplyDelete