Top 60 female singer/songwriters ....

Our "Daily Telegraph" compiled a list of the top 60 (that many?) female singer/songwriters and I was pleased to see Joni Mitchell came out on top ....

1: Joni Mitchell. Canadian Roberta Joan Anderson (aka Joni Mitchell) began her career busking in Toronto but went on to become one of the leading figures in folk music in the Sixties and Seventies. For her pure vocals and thoughtful lyrics, which range from socially conscious to deeply confessional, Mitchell is seen as one of the voices of her generation. Her 1971 album BLUE often ranks well on lists of the greatest albums of all time.

The others? In order from Nr 2 onwards:

Kate Bush / Patti Smith / Dolly Parton / Carole King / Kirsty MacColl / Chrissie Hynde / Nina Simone / Adele / Amy Winehouse / Bjork / Janis Joplin / Madonna / 

14: Peggy Lee. Arguably America's first female singer-songwriter, Peggy Lee entered the public consciousness at a time when it was highly unusual for commercial singers to write their own material. Born into a poor North Dakota family in 1920, Lee began her career at a local radio station, where she sang in exchange for food. She would collaborate on original songs with Duke Ellington and Quincy Jones, but is best known for her equally inventive cover-versions. Lee heavily rewrote Little Willie John's hit song, Fever; her lyrics are now more famous than those of the original. Lee later wrote the co-songs for Disney's The Lady and the Tramp. With her blonde hair and outspoken manner, "Miss Peggy" was reportedly the inspiration for The Muppet Show's Miss Piggy.

Stevie Nicks / Taylor Swift / Sandy Denny / Lady Gaga / Barbra Streisand / P J Harvey / Edith Piaf /

22: Joan Armatrading. Born in Saint Kitts in the Caribbean, 64-year-old guitarist and singer Joan Armatrading moved to Birmingham with her family when she was three. She left school at 15 and was sacked from her first job at a tool manufacture for playing her guitar during tea breaks. Armatrading released her first album in 1972, and went on to have hits in the Seventies by blending jazz and folk, and in the Eighties with a more commercial pop sound. She won an Ivor Novello Award for her songwriting in 1996.

Joan Baez / Billie Holliday / Rickie Lee Jones / Loretta Lynn / Debbie Harry / Sinead O'Connor / Kate and Anna McGarrigle / Cyndi Lauper / Carly Simon / Lauryn Hill / 

33: Aretha Franklin. Soul legend Aretha Franklin began her musical career as a gospel singer in church, and was later taken on tour by her preacher father. The Tennessee native became a star in the Sixties singing jazz and Motown standards. Her 1967 re-working of Otis Redding's Respect - which was adopted as an anthem for change by the civil rights movement - gave her a number one in the US in 1967, and she followed this with further hit singles Chain of Fools and Say A Little Prayer. In the Seventies, Franklin began to write more of her own songs, including Call Me and Rock Steady. The 70-year-old became the first woman to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1987.

Patty Griffin / Lucinda Williams / Tori Amos / Siouxsie Sioux / Tracy Chapman / Regina Spektor / Erykah Badu / Bonnie Raitt / K D Lang /Gillian Welch / Emmylou Harris /  

45: Sade. British-Nigerian singer Helen Folasade Adu is better known as Sade, the lead singer of the Grammy and Brit Award-winning soul, jazz and R&B band of the same name. As the group's chief songwriter, Adu was the driving force behind hit singles Your Love is King and Smooth Operator. The band have sold over 110 million albums worldwide, making Adu one of the most successful British female musicians ever. In 2002, she received an OBE for services to music and dedicated it to "all black women in England".

Roberta Flack / Gretchen Peters / Alicia Keys / Aimee Mann / Dar Williams / Laura Marling / Shania Twain / Ani Difranco / Odetta / Cat Power / Norah Jones / Judee Sill / Beth Orton / KD Tunstall / Sarah McLachlan.

Phew! I know and like most of these of course - ok, there are a few I am not familiar with - but it almost seems a list of 60 female singers, but of course Peggy Lee wrote a lot of songs, and singers like Barbra and Aretha have song-writing credits too.  The only omissions I can think of are Laura Nyro, Janis Ian and Francoise Hardy. Has Annie Lennox written songs? 

The full list can be explored here:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/music/artists/the-60-greatest-female-singer-songwriters-of-all-time/joni-mitchell/

1955 musicals: Tony & Janet, Ella, Peggy Lee, Jayne + Eileen and Lola Diamond !

Two rarities from 1955: IT'S ALWAYS FAIR WEATHER may be my favourite musical from that year (as per post on it recently), I had not seen PETE KELLY'S BLUES before but its a fascinating oddity now, not a musical as such as its a gangster drama about a jazz band with musical interludes, nice that it captures Peggy Lee and Ella Fitzgerland at their '50s peak - Peggy actually is very effective as the gangster's moll who sinks into alcohol and mental illness. Janet Leigh is somewhat wasted as the rich flapper who inexplicably falls for band leader Pete - Jack Webb at his most mono-syllabic. I never saw his DRAGNET series but he plays it so impassive and deadpan here, his directing is interesting too - dialogue scenes are long takes with no cutting or editing to closeups, so the actors have long scenes to get right.

The 20s atmosphere is nicely evoked and the drama is provided by racketeer Edmond O'Brien wanting a take of the band's money and imposing his singing girlfriend on them - but boy can she sing! Pete (Webb) has a nice insult to the gangster - that he had rubber pockets so he could steal soup! Lee Marvin is also in the band and plays a nice guy for once, one is glad when he returns and Martin Milner is the young hothead whom one knows will end up in a hail of bullets in the rain! There is a terrific shootout at the end in a deserted dance hall where the glitterball plays a major role!

Interestingly, the next year 1956 saw O'Brien sending up his gangster persona as another hood with a blonde girlfriend he wants to turn into a singer, she is Jeri Jordan (Jayne Mansfield) in Tashlin's riot THE GIRL CAN'T HELP IT - Jayne also has a small part here as the (brunette) cigarette girl ... but hardly registers here. Great Warner Bros production values too.

SO THIS IS PARIS: Janet next went on to another favourite musical of that year: MY SISTER EILEEN (musicals label) so she and husband Tony Curtis were both singing and dancing that year! One hardly thinks of Curtis as a song and dance man but his brash enthusiasm is admirable in SO THIS IS PARIS - a studio bound musical from Universal and it comes across now as ON THE TOWN for simpletons as its a grotesquely simple-minded show about 3 sailors on the loose, also with touches of AN AMERICAN IN PARIS (cue cute kids...) Tony, in his bio, says it was made in 21 days!

Tony, Gene Nelson and Paul Gilbert (the Jules Munchin role here) are the three gobs who dock at Le Havre (a quaint little village here) and after wrecking a taxi end up in a studio Paris, where Tony falls for chanteuse Gloria De Haven and Gene for playgirl Corrine Calvet, while Mara Corday takes care of whatshisname. Nelson also choreographs and hoofs in the style of that other Gene ... its all simple-minded fun as Tony ascended the ladder to TRAPEZE, SWEET SMELL OF SUCCESS etc. Janet of course is totally enchanting in MY SISTER EILEEN where Bob Fosse and Tommy Rall fight over her - directed too by Richard Quine, also also directs this PARIS farrago before going on to the likes of BELL BOOK AND CANDLE with his muse Kim Novak.

A question: what do the 3 sailors dancing in their underwear/shorts by the pool wear underneath to hide any suggestion of genitalia - its like everything must have been strapped down (ditto Randolph Scott in MY FAVOURITE WIFE), as a jockstrap would suggest a bulge.... and of course there is no chest hair, just like Holden had to shave his for PICNIC! (and of course navels were not allowed either - all those gals like Joan Collins, Anita Ekberg etc had to have a jewel glued on down there. That's the '50s - a decade later it would all be hanging out!

and Lola:

thanks to my pal Jerry for reminding me that Paul Gilbert (the third sailor) re-appeared as that terrifying butch drag queen Lola Diamond in the 1965 opus SYLVIA - one of Joe Levine's trash classics ....(review at Carroll Baker/Trash labels).