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The Most Of: EMI Australia 4380062
 

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The most successful female vocalist on the British charts has been Shirley Veronica Bassey, born in Cardiff on 8 January 1937, Elvis Presley's second birthday. Shirley Bassey's chart career began a month after her 20th birthday, when her version of Harry Belafonte's Banana Boat Song entered the charts. Although beaten by the original version, she nevertheless scored her first top ten hit.

Miss Bassey's greatest chart achievement is to have had a bigger hit with a song the Beatles put out as a single than the Beatles did themselves. Her version of Something reached number four, which is the same position that the Beatles climbed to, but Shirley Bassey's record stayed for 22 weeks on the chart, compared with only 12 weeks for the Beatles. There have been many other versions of songs the Beatles recorded as singles but only Shirley Bassey has come up with a bigger hit than the original.

In the early seventies Shirley's efforts won an even wider audience than in the previous decade. She appeared at the New York's Waldorf Astoria and the Royal Variety Performance at London's Palladium, a guest spot on the Ed Sullivan Show and her own special on BBC-TV.

This wonderful Lady is best described by a review in the Los Angeles Times following a performance at The Pavilion of the Los Angeles Music Centre: "Shirley Bassey had one convinced she is the most deliciously dangerous, engaging evil, utterly exciting popular vocalist in captivity."

This CD contains twenty of her greatest recordings.
 

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