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
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.
