1964 Cilla Black: Anyone Who Had A Heart

I've always noticed that whenever some of the young Hitler's watercolours are discovered or come up for auction there are no end of art critics lining up to tell us exactly how rubbish they are. 'Amateur', 'bad composition', 'poor perspective', 'childish use of colour' - they can't wait to stick the boot into the one time Chancellor, just to make sure there's never a virtue identified or a good word written about him anywhere in polite society (ironically, I think Adolf would have been more upset at this legacy of being branded a crap artist than he would about the one that labels him a Dictatorial architect of world war and racist genocide).

I come to anything bearing the name 'Cilla Black' with much the same ideology. The date may be 1964 on the label, but I find it hard to divorce anything Ms Black did 'then' with the shrill, everybody's annoying Auntie harpy she went on to become and who managed to make my eighties weekend television unwatchable via a series of programmed diarrhea like 'Blind Date' or 'Surprise Surprise'. Brrrrrr. What doesn't help is the fact that even in her sixties prime, Black was always the runt of the litter when compared to other female vocalists carving out a pop career. Never a great interpreter of songs, and never that great a singer (even less so after the nose job), Black always rode the 'poor girl made good' tide of goodwill to the max with her subsequent career tarnishing any credibility she may have once possessed.

A Bacharach and David song originally written for Dionne Warwick (and covered relentlessly since), I'm man enough to grit my teeth and declare, despite my misgivings above, that I've always regarded Black's version as definitive. There's no denying that Warwick can sing rings around 'ar Cilla, but her version is too smooth and too sophisticated with the heartbroken longing sounding more like an inconvenience for Dionne than anything to cause a sleepless night. "Anyone who had a heart would simply take me in his arms and always love me. Why won't you?" - Black's rough and ready vocal adds the necessary touch of common vulnerability to bring to life the lyric of a hard case brought to their knees by someone who doesn't care. While Warwick's classiness hints at a 'plenty more fish in the sea' scenario, Black's vocal creaks with the misery of a girl seeing her one shot at the title slipping away with no Plan B to fill the void.

Warwick apparently hated Black for this, accusing her of plagiarising her own version, but that could just be sour grapes at hearing an inferior singer getting greater success (Warwick's version stalled at number 42). Legitimate grounds for upset maybe, but in this case at least Black's hardwired personality and talent gave the song a far more honest and earthy interpretation that cuts Dionne in two and beats the soul singer at her own game. Few people managed that and, by god, it's the last time Cilla ever would.