Surely Brassy

 

Shirley Bassey - Light My Fire

Another Sunday, another superlative superstar birthday!

Look at her, she can even make a COVID mask look stylish.

She has three James Bond songs. Three. Who even has more than one? Lulu? Come on.

Today she turns 86. Eighty-six!!!! And she still even performs, and when she does the place goes ballistic.

She's been around since before most of us were born, too.

One of the last of the true, done-it-all divas, if she were to announce a concert five minutes from now at the North Pole, it would sell out in six minutes from now. Santa Claus wouldn't even be able to scalp tickets for resale.

So yeah, she started at the start of the 1950s, and her first Number One happened in 1959.

But it was in 1965 that she really exploded globally, with the theme to Goldfinger, the first really great Bond film with the first really great and definitive song playing over the titles.

Later on she sang the songs for Diamonds Are Forever and Moonraker, making her the Rickey Henderson of Bond themes: the holder of a record that will never be broken.

Anyway she has never really stopped or disappeared, and a career with that sort of longevity and consistency deserves ample tribute any day of the year.

Especially on her birthday, which we will celebrate with this BBC Electric Proms gala from 2009.

Shirley Bassey

BBC Electric Proms

The Roundhouse

London, UK

10.23.2009

01 Diamonds Are Forever

02 I'm Still Here

03 Kiss Me Honey Honey Kiss Me

04 Almost There

05 What Now My Love

06 Big Spender

07 After the Rain

08 The Lady Is a Tramp

09 The Performance of My Life

10 As Long As He Needs Me

11 Light My Fire

12 The Girl from Tiger Bay

13 I Am What I Am

14 Goldfinger

Total time: 56:28

Dame Shirley Bassey - vocals

with the BBC Concert Orchestra, conducted by Barry Wordsworth

audio from a 384/48k Sky Digital BBC HD broadcast

extracted, converted to 16/44 CD Audio, tracked, edited & remastered by EN, January 2023
320 MB FLAC/direct link

I'mma return in eight days with something suitably ricketty-racketty for your sinking Titanic, barring The End Times or, should I say, the further acceleration of them.

But the magnificent Dame Shirley Bassey was born this day in 1937 -- you could say she really Wales --  and it would be the kiss of death not to acknowledge that occasion!--J.