Elkie Brooks once opened for the Beatles. A lot happened in the next 65 years …

Elkie Brooks was on a package tour aged 15, supported the Beatles and the Animals, made a single when she was 19, joined the jazz-rock Dada, then Vinegar Joe (with Robert Palmer) and has since made 20 albums. She’s now out on her ‘Long Farewell Tour’ and looks back with us here from her home in Devon at …

 

… supporting the Beatles in ’64 and an audience already screaming for the headliners.  

 

… memories of Dusty, Cilla and Maggie Bell and how few girl singers there were in the ‘60s and ‘70s.

 

… singing Cliff Richard’s ‘Pointed Toe Shoes’, aged 15, at the Don Arden talent show that won her a tour with Conway Twitty and Wee Willie Harris.

 

… supporting the Animals at the Paramount, New York.

 

… the male-weighted music world and how long it took to win any respect.

 

… seeing Ella Fitzgerald when she was 12 and being fired up by the range and phrasing of Billie Holiday.

 

… what she learnt from Humphrey Lyttelton and Eric Delaney.

 

… life on the scampi-in-the-basket cabaret circuit as a teenager.

 

… trying to keep Vinegar Joe together after Robert Palmer left.  

 

Book tickets to the Long Farewell Tour here: https://www.elkiebrooks.com/

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