'Can She Sing? Does It Matter?' Documentary from 1967

Fascinating look at 'the star-maker machinery behind the popular song' - and proof that only the names and faces change: the process remains (largely) the same

Watch out for Steve Rowland of Family Dogg fame: he actually talks a lot of sense.

The song is good and could/should have been a hit.

 

Good post. Many people here would like for us to believe that pre-MTV, all popular musical artists were supremely talented and looks didn't matter. That's a crock of you know what!

 

Yep - the BGT/Idol franchises associated with Simon Cowell have made the process more visible to the public but this kind of thing is as old as the hills, almost.

I'd say the girl singer featured in this docu is supremely average in every department. With a 'dirtier' vocal, the song could well have been a hit.

 

Very interesting, thanks. This is the kind of documentary you don't see much of these days. I think by the end she understands she's essentially a commodity, and she's committed to getting by on whatever talent she possesses. The record might not have hit for many different reasons, but I bet she had some interesting stories to tell.

Any idea who the American record producer was?

 

Good find Siegmund! I always enjoyed the 'Man Alive' documentaries: the BBC at its best...

Any idea if the song was covered by anybody else? Or indeed, what happened to Judith Powell?

 

Steve Rowland (Family Dogg, etc) - still going today.

 

I could tell from the get go she wasn't gonna have any success. Just a pretty face doesn't do much. And the song just didn't have the "thing" that grabs you.

 

I thought he looked familiar. I remember seeing him on the german Beat-Club show.

 

No idea what happened to Judith - back to 'real life', I suppose. Presumably, she's a great-granny by now.

Can't locate any covers of the song, either.

 

I like the song - the problem, as Steve Rowland pointed out, was that the singer couldn't sing it like she meant it. A singer with more personality - Dusty Springfield, say - could have done a lot more with it.

As a personality, she came across as nice but somewhat vapid and obviously over-awed by the madness surrounding her. People like that don't stand out unless they've got incredible songwriting/performing talent which, on this evidence, she didn't have.

 

Thanks for that, Siegmund: definitely half an hour well spent to watch that.

Of course, there's a double irony: on the one hand we feel more sorry for her because we know that she isn't going to make it, and on the other hand the we feel derision for the publicist who is talking up his own abilities but clearly isn't going to get the job done. As people have already said, the song is fine, but in the end the voice did matter.

Interesting to see Alan Freeman in his prime, reading the situation very shrewdly.

Some of the "franker" conversation is horribly sleazy though, and the documentary itself feels unpleasantly complicit in it. Although you'd expect the programme to be shot through with the "gentility" of the period, it's anything but.

 

I wonder what she thought when the programme was transmitted? Maybe some of the others seen might also have later regretted their participation.

The song 'Greener Days' was written by David Gates (later to form Bread) and was first recorded by the US group the Gants -


There was a later version by Peter & Gordon
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wYBE54Vk8og

 

That's what took me (somewhat) by surprise: we think of the sixties as a kinder, gentler age - yet it's clear that she's going to be dropped and the people around will move effortlessly onward, not bothering to return her phone calls.

 

Thanks for that: I had a feeling the song was the product of a 'name' writer.

 

great find, what an interesting doco.

 

I think that's a point worth remembering even today when people slag off contemporary pop stars -- it takes more than just the machinery to make a star or have a hit and certainly years of hits. Yeah, good management, sufficient promotion, a sympathetic producer, all the stuff of the business help, but the performer has to be up to the task and be in possession of certain special qualities or there's nothing to market.

Someone like Britney Spears may be mentally troubled, she may not be among the most talented performers to ever make it to the top, but in order to maintain a 20 year career of her scale, the performer needs to bring more to the table than just a pretty face -- she needs to be able to take the show on the road, have some kind of vocal presence that people connect with on record that sells a lyric and an attitude, have some kind of performing personality that people connect with on stage and in interviews, etc (and I know people who have worked with her who tells me she can sing a little bit and she certainly has a distinct style). There's some mix of talent, skill, hard work and dumb luck that goes in to that level of success that's hard to define (if you could define it and make it happen no artist's management or record label would ever fail). And you might be able to have a singular fluky, Milli Vanilli style success on some artist or another, though even that's not so easy, but you can't keep it up. If anything I think a documentary like this shows that trying to second guess the market and machine manufacture a hit record and star performer is not the kind of easy, automatic, road to success that people aways accuse pop hits of being the product of. You need a certain kind of committment and a quality throughout the whole enterprise, first and foremost starting with the performer.

 

D

Didn't Britney Spears have a pre-pop star career in the Mickey Mouse Club? I'd think you'd have to be exceptionally dogged and tough to make the transition from child star to adult pop star - it needs more than 'good 'management, it also needs - as you suggest - personality.

 

Yeah, I mean she wasn't a star of that show, it wasn't like Miley Cyrus who freakin carried an entire media franchise on TV, records and concert stages from the age of 11, but that latter day Mickey Mouse Club cast included appearances by Keri Russell, Justin Timberlake, Christina Aguilera and Ryan Gosling as well as a couple of dozen other child performers who did not become giant stars. The ones who went on to major careers didn't just have better handlers and machinery around them. I mean you see this woman in this documentary, even if she had had first-rate hitmakers around her, they weren't going to make her a star.

 

Some of the most fascinating moments are the ones when you see her handlers assessing her willingness to go along with a sexual image, or her ability to withstand a tough interview. The people around her are certainly not fools: they see her weaknesses as potential "product" even more clearly than we do with the perspective of time. That said, I defy anyone today not to shudder when they refer to her as too fat for a mini-skirt.

 

Yes, the 'fat bit' shocked me, too. I'm still not convinced that everyone was necessarily 'slimmer' in those days - but since Twiggy ('the face of 1966') had redefined everyone's idea of 'thin' in the previous year, the game had changed.

 

So, did any of my fellow rock geeks note the Mike Stuart poster behind the publicist interviewed right at the beginning and completely lose faith in this team's ability to break an artist?

 

Her voice was way too thin for the material. She might've done better singing folk IMHO.