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Biography

“It’s no wonder that I knew I wanted to be a professional singer from a very early age, because I was surrounded by music in our house. My father played the mouth organ, my mother and aunts used to sing, and it wasn’t unusual for families to get together and make their own music in the fifties.”

During her late teens, a sheer drive to become famous made her adamant that she would not be labelled as just another girl “suitable for office work”. Understandably, she wanted more from life and could regularly be found escaping to the trendy haunts of The Iron Door and The Cavern clubs, the latter of which was where she worked as a coat-check girl. She also served coffee at The Zodiac, another clubbers’ haven, where, incidentally, she met her husband-to-be, Bobby Willis. Perfectly placed amongst the up-and-coming stars of the day, she wowed them with her singing and confidently convinced the powers that be to let her share the spotlight on stage.

Thanks to a lot of support from her friends, she quickly became a mini-celebrity in her neighbourhood, performing alongside so many legendary acts that were fundamental in establishing the ‘Mersey Sound’, such as The Beatles, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Fourmost and Rory Storm and the Hurricanes.

Then, due to a twist of fate, Priscilla White, known around the Liverpool music scene as ‘Swinging Cilla’, almost overnight received a new stage name, when the music paper the ‘Mersey Beat’ misprinted her surname. So, as if by magic, she became Cilla Black, a name that she favoured and happily kept.

It wasn’t long before Cilla came to the attention of Brian Epstein, a local talent scout and manager of The Beatles. Epstein was introduced to her by none other than John Lennon, who persuaded him to arrange an audition at The Majestic Ballroom in Birkenhead. Unfortunately, the combination of nerves and singing to The Beatles’ accompaniment, who played in their own key, made the audition a flop. All was not lost as, to her surprise, she was later spotted by Epstein while singing ‘Bye, Bye Blackbird’ in the jazzy surroundings of the Blue Angel club. This performance finally convinced him to sign her, so on the 6th September 1963, she became his only female vocalist!

There was an immediate bond between Cilla and Epstein. From the moment he met his starlet, he wanted to nurture the 'Judy Garland' qualities he believed she possessed, having high aspirations of creating a British icon who, in his prophetic words, would become “...one of the biggest stars in this country for thirty or forty years”. His faith, combined with Cilla's talent, effortlessly convinced George Martin, the renowned producer of Matt Monro, Shirley Bassey and The Beatles, that she was worthy of signing to Parlophone Records (a subsidiary label of the EMI Group).

Shortly afterwards, Cilla Black made her debut on the British singles charts with one of the first of many songs given to her by John Lennon and Paul McCartney. ‘Love of the Loved’, a song she’d often heard The Beatles perform at The Cavern, made a modest impression on the British charts when it was released on the 27th September 1963.

This was soon to be overshadowed by her next release, which Brian Epstein discovered on a trip to the USA. ‘Anyone Who Had a Heart’, a song by Hal David and Burt Bacharach, had already proved to be a massive hit for Dionne Warwick which Cilla, then a keen follower of the US Top 100, had already admired prior to it being suggested by Epstein. Her knockout rendition, recorded in January 1964, went on to become not only her first 1 but still, to this day, the biggest selling single of all time by a British female recording artist.

As luck would have it, George Martin then acquired the perfect follow up, an Italian ballad, ‘Il Mio Mondo’, which, with an English lyric, became ‘You’re My World’. This epic ‘torch’ song went on to become her second 1, paving the way for an influx of other Italian songs such as Dusty Springfield’s ‘You Don't Have To Say You Love Me’. Furthermore, it broke Cilla into the tough US market as well as gaining her massive support across Europe and Australasia, culminating in hundreds of sell-out concert dates throughout her time at EMI (1963-1978).

“When I reached 1 in the charts with ‘You’re My World’, it made me the second British girl to ever have two successive 1 hits. I heard the good news just days before my 21st birthday. Two 1 hits in a row!”

During the sixties, Cilla sustained her place at the forefront of the Brit-Pop music scene, with one of the most impressive starts for a British female recording artist, including 17 consecutive Top 40 triumphs on the singles charts. To put this unprecedented success into perspective, it happened during a decade when achieving a Top 20 single meant that you had to sell in excess of 100,000 copies a day in the UK alone!

By August 1967, only days before his premature death, Brian Epstein had engineered Cilla's switch to television. It proved to be a shrewd career move as, through her own eponymous variety show for the BBC, she regularly commanded staggering audience figures of between 18 and 22 million until the show’s eventual demise in 1976. This immense popularity continued throughout the seventies into subsequent decades through an array of successful concert tours, situation comedies, pantomime performances, summer season shows, West End productions and prime-time entertainment shows, which have more recently included ‘Surprise!, Surprise!’ (1983-1997) and ‘Blind Date’ (1985-2003) – the latter earning Cilla an award from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts.

In 1997, Cilla was notably honoured with an OBE (Order of the British Empire) by Queen Elizabeth II for her achievements in the entertainment industry.

In December 2008, after a 17-year absence, Cilla made a triumphant return to the stage to star in the pantomime 'Cinderella' at the Empire Theatre, Liverpool. The £2 million sell-out production brought to a close Liverpool's year as ‘European Capital of Culture’.

The Cilla Black of today, although so often heralded by the press for being “the highest paid female entertainer in British television history”, has gone on record as saying that she ultimately wishes to be remembered for her accomplishments as a popular recording artist.

On the 7 September 2009, EMI Records (UK) release a 3-disc set 'The Definitive Collection', along with a series of other titles which are a testament to that musical legacy of which Cilla is so proud. These projects include the afore-mentioned multimedia compilation set featuring all of Cilla’s chart hits as well as her very first music DVD of rare BBC performances, plus digital-download releases of all of her original EMI studio albums, a specially commissioned album of club remixes ‘Cilla All Mixed Up’ and a remixed single version of her biggest hit of the seventies ‘Something Tells Me’.

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