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| 62-year old LULU |
The fat lady sang and it was all over. Obama became the forty-fourth president of the the United States of America as George Bush, bent, scuttled away from the White House.
Aretha, the fat lady, who sang at BO's inauguration, was a dish around 1970, singing 'Say a Little Prayer for Me'.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=STKkWj2WpWM
Tamla time was very much a positive era. Good old staid Cliff having her on his show (he had a show?) I suppose gave her a mark of approval, belatedly, because the Tamla time began in the early sixties. But then, Cliff was a little behind, and still has, for his age.
Lulu did the same for Jimmie Hendrix who incidentally tried to run the show by breaking off halfway though a standard number that everyone knew to perform a wild version of Dylan's 'All Along the Watchtower.'
The show was live! And little Lulu rushed on to the studio floor, microphone in hand, and hastily and breathlessly thanked him for his time. The only thing missing was the Monty Pythonesque shepherd's crook on his collar.
Was there really a group (The Wild Things?) queuing up outside a cubicle in the gents' toilet somewhere in the west end of Glasgow waiting for a shot of her? I doubt it, but the story became a bit of a legend in Glasgow.
"Aye, she wis a wee super groupie. But how she came on!" we were wont to say at the time.
Once, visiting her mother in Denistoun for some reason, probably to get a shot at Lulu, she wasn't there. Her mother, floral apron and a midday glass in one hand, opened up this gramophone cabinet and inside was a pile of scattered banknotes covering the turntable.
'Aye, my wee lassie's doing weel,' she said, or words similar.
Back to BO and Aretha. There is a Time Line interview in which she's having a conversation with a reporter and she excuses herself for eating. 'I'm starving,' she says. Well, not as much as Some of your African brothers and sisters.
Anyhow, she sang 'My Country 'tis of Thee' to the tune of 'God Save the Queen' with this amazing womanly voice that she has: and that was the redeeming act that saved her from ridicule. Did you see the outfit?
So BO now has plans to scupper
The shameful prison on a Cuban Bay
On this the night of a Burn's supper,
'Best laid plan gang aft agley'.
