Tweet
There happens to be just four weeks to go before this year's Eurovision Song Contest but one has to say that it has not been a very good week for the British nostalgia market of the Contest. First of all, we have lost the great Colin Berry (his 1979 catchphrase: "Israel: 12 points!"), and now we have lost our 1971 entrant Clodagh Rodgers who has died at the age of 78. She had a huge profile during the late 1960s and early 1970s - she was born in Warrenpoint in County Down in March 1947, and I suppose that the excellent Dana (who shares my birthday, don't y'know?) who won the contest for Ireland in 1970, the contest was hosted for the first time in Dublin, and so Rodgers fitted in quite well, just travelling south of the border into the Irish Republic, and performing her entry, Jack in the Box (not to be confused by the 1977 song performed by The Moments).
I have to admit that I wasn't very fond of her 1969 hit Come Back and Shake Me which sounds rather too feminist and impersonal; listening to the song and the lyrics in particular, it does feel unique but distant to my ears. The song has always felt like some protest anthem about how women are treated back then; in many ways it was rather like a late 1960s anti-misogynist "Me Too movement" feel to my own ears, especially the "uneasy-worded" lyrics in which a male singer would never had had a hit with it: "my sleeves are all torn; my buttons are loose; my make-up is staring to fade away", etc. I felt that it could have possibly been a response to the then recent Flower Power and the first wave of late sixties' feminism, and I am almost glad in some ways that even Pick of the Pops programmes often skip it in 1969 charts to go to the next song in the chart list. One just cannot imagine Sandie Shaw, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, etc, singing a similar song.
Saying that, it does reflect the closing months of the 1960s like most songs do which made the charts at the time. Jack in a Box seemed to me too much of a novelty song, a la Sandie Shaw's Puppet on a String, and probably capitalising on it. Laura Thorn representing Luxembourg this year in the contest could easily be the 2025 answer to Clodagh Rodgers! No doubt than a Northern Irish act would have some interest in the Republic and so one wouldn't have been surprised if she had been deliberately chosen back then, and not to mention that the Troubles were only around the corner, and that the IRA were the Just Stop Oil of its day - almost. Northern Ireland had brought the UK Frank Carson; Roy Walker; Dennis Taylor; Eamonn Holmes; Gloria Hunniford, and Rodgers could easily be added to that portfolio of Ulster entertainers, although unlike those mentioned, I feel that her fame was stronger in the late 1960s and early 1970s rather than in later decades, but unlike her make-up in her 1969 song, she didn't quite start to fade away later on.
Jack in the Box was one of the songs in my late parents' record collection on a "three-to-a-side" seven-inch 33 1/3 mini-album; the equivalent of a spring 1971 That's What I Call Music album of its time, "rubbing shoulders" with Lynn Anderson's Rose Garden and Perry Como's It's Impossible. Remember the Avenue record label? (I remember playing it at 45 rpm circa 1986 and wondered why the singers sounded like Pinky and Perky!) Roy Plomley interviewed Rodgers for Desert Island Discs in 1971, the same year as her Eurovision appearance, and she revealed that she started singing at the age of 12 after her father too a job promoting concerts - the story goes that not long after she left school at the age of 15, her father gave her a record contract and thus started the ball rolling. She moved to England where her career became more prominent: Tommy Cooper's Christmas show in 1973 had Rodgers and Sacha Distel perform together and individually on Cooper's show, singing You Are The Sunshine of My Life, performed by Stevie Wonder earlier on that year. She still made appearances on TV appearances in the 1980s, such as a Christmas edition of 3-2-1 where she was seen with her almost namesake with out the D - Ted Rogers. I believe that she did the panto circuit in the 1980s and perhaps later, and was probably someone in which the public often confused with entertainers such as Anita Harris.
Rodgers had battled illness for the final three years of her life and had passed away on Friday morning - her son Sam Sorbie announced her passing on social media. In later years, she was still there, but in the background, and I will always associate her with that late 1960s and early 1970s movement of chart music. She might not have done 78 rpm records, but we had her for 78 years. A sad loss.
I have to admit that I wasn't very fond of her 1969 hit Come Back and Shake Me which sounds rather too feminist and impersonal; listening to the song and the lyrics in particular, it does feel unique but distant to my ears. The song has always felt like some protest anthem about how women are treated back then; in many ways it was rather like a late 1960s anti-misogynist "Me Too movement" feel to my own ears, especially the "uneasy-worded" lyrics in which a male singer would never had had a hit with it: "my sleeves are all torn; my buttons are loose; my make-up is staring to fade away", etc. I felt that it could have possibly been a response to the then recent Flower Power and the first wave of late sixties' feminism, and I am almost glad in some ways that even Pick of the Pops programmes often skip it in 1969 charts to go to the next song in the chart list. One just cannot imagine Sandie Shaw, Lulu, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, etc, singing a similar song.
Saying that, it does reflect the closing months of the 1960s like most songs do which made the charts at the time. Jack in a Box seemed to me too much of a novelty song, a la Sandie Shaw's Puppet on a String, and probably capitalising on it. Laura Thorn representing Luxembourg this year in the contest could easily be the 2025 answer to Clodagh Rodgers! No doubt than a Northern Irish act would have some interest in the Republic and so one wouldn't have been surprised if she had been deliberately chosen back then, and not to mention that the Troubles were only around the corner, and that the IRA were the Just Stop Oil of its day - almost. Northern Ireland had brought the UK Frank Carson; Roy Walker; Dennis Taylor; Eamonn Holmes; Gloria Hunniford, and Rodgers could easily be added to that portfolio of Ulster entertainers, although unlike those mentioned, I feel that her fame was stronger in the late 1960s and early 1970s rather than in later decades, but unlike her make-up in her 1969 song, she didn't quite start to fade away later on.
Jack in the Box was one of the songs in my late parents' record collection on a "three-to-a-side" seven-inch 33 1/3 mini-album; the equivalent of a spring 1971 That's What I Call Music album of its time, "rubbing shoulders" with Lynn Anderson's Rose Garden and Perry Como's It's Impossible. Remember the Avenue record label? (I remember playing it at 45 rpm circa 1986 and wondered why the singers sounded like Pinky and Perky!) Roy Plomley interviewed Rodgers for Desert Island Discs in 1971, the same year as her Eurovision appearance, and she revealed that she started singing at the age of 12 after her father too a job promoting concerts - the story goes that not long after she left school at the age of 15, her father gave her a record contract and thus started the ball rolling. She moved to England where her career became more prominent: Tommy Cooper's Christmas show in 1973 had Rodgers and Sacha Distel perform together and individually on Cooper's show, singing You Are The Sunshine of My Life, performed by Stevie Wonder earlier on that year. She still made appearances on TV appearances in the 1980s, such as a Christmas edition of 3-2-1 where she was seen with her almost namesake with out the D - Ted Rogers. I believe that she did the panto circuit in the 1980s and perhaps later, and was probably someone in which the public often confused with entertainers such as Anita Harris.
Rodgers had battled illness for the final three years of her life and had passed away on Friday morning - her son Sam Sorbie announced her passing on social media. In later years, she was still there, but in the background, and I will always associate her with that late 1960s and early 1970s movement of chart music. She might not have done 78 rpm records, but we had her for 78 years. A sad loss.
Comment