This started out as one of those Google-powered rabbit burrows, beginning with Norma Waterson, the folk singer, who died at the end of January. She was born in ‘ull (American and non-Yorkshire: Hull). Mr YP mentioned her recently, and also, not so long ago, David Bowie’s collaborator Mick Ronson, who was also born in ‘ull. What other singers were born there, we wondered.
It sent me back to my mother’s Light Programme on the wireless in the nineteen-fifties. You would hear Ronnie Hilton singing about a mouse in a windmill with triplets and twins in, going clip-clippety-clop on the stair. He was born in ‘ull. David Whitfield too, the first British singer to have a number one in both Britain and the U.S. with the magnificently emotional Cara Mia.
Dickie Valentine was another of that era. What about him? Well, no, he was from London. What did he sing, then? Finger of Suspicion and Christmas Alphabet. But I thought Christmas Alphabet was by a female American group.
Yes: The McGuire Sisters. I remember them more for Sugartime. It’s on YouTube. Listen to those counter-melodies. Weren’t they good!
What about the Beverley Sisters: that’s near ‘ull. But they weren’t from Beverley; they were from London. Joy, Babs and Teddie. They were good too, and pretty, with distinctive harmonies. Here they are aged 20 and 23 (with 1947 cultural sensibilities):
The matching qualities, the timbre, of family group voices can make pleasant listening, especially sisters. Take the Dale Sisters: Betty, Hazel and Julie Dunderdale, one of many sister acts that almost made it but not quite. They weren’t quite from ‘ull, but near enough to count. Their dad was a local butcher and Julie married our Geography teacher. They got off the ground in 1959 by winning a talent contest at Butlins holiday camp in Filey. They were also known as the England sisters: