REMASTERED CLIP (1967 Bassey and Basie TV Special). Count Basie and his Orchestra performed all the music on this TV Special)
The song, 'I've Got A Song For You' is the title track of Shirley's 1966 LP with same name, "I've Got A Song For You." The second song on this clip, 'Strangers In the Night' is also a track on this LP.
ABOUT the LP:
I've Got a Song for You is a 1966 album by Shirley Bassey. Bassey had left EMI's Columbia Label, and this was her first album for United Artists, a label she would remain with for approximately 14 years. This album and the following release And We Were Lovers were produced by Bassey's former husband, Kenneth Hume. (Their marriage had ended in divorce in 1965, but he continued to act as her manager, and for these two albums, her producer.) The album entered the UK Albums Chart at #26, but only remained on the chart for one week, and failed to chart in the US, despite her having received outstanding reviews for live engagements in New York and Las Vegas that same year, and the fact that the album was recorded in New York. It was an inauspicious start for her at UA, as none of her albums would chart either in the UK or the US until 1970 (save one EMI/Columbia album issued after she left for United Artists, most likely previously recorded material, and one compilation album).[1][2] In that year, 1970, Bassey would begin to produce more contemporary pop-oriented albums, but here in 1966, despite scoring her biggest hit with Goldfinger a year or so earlier, she was still firmly in the traditional pop genre.
SLEEVENOTE from LP:
In April of 1966, SHIRLEY BASSEY opened a two-week engagement at The Royal Box of the Americana Hotel in New York City. Shortly thereafter, she headlined at the Sahara Hotel in Las Vegas. The reviews that greeted these engagements were absolutely fantatstic. One veteran Vegas scribe compared the dynamic vocalist to Lena Horne, Helen Morgan, Ella Fitzgerald and Barbra Streisand, and closed his column by shouting to the rooftops that he hadn't been so completely devastated by a lady singer since Judy Garland in 1956.
These raves are certainly not new for SHIRLEY BASSEY. She has long scintillated as an international star of the first magnitude. However, the lovely Welsh miss will always remember 1966 as the year in which she truly conquered America. Offers from major television shows in the U.S.A., night clubs and hotels are pouring in with increasing regularity, and it has now become a delightful fact to Americans that Miss Bassey's considerable talents will be on lavish display there several months per year for the next few seasons.
There are very few who throw the emotion into a song that Shirley does. There are even fewer who offer the animal-like vitality that she presents. There may be nobody who possesses a golden set of pipes like our songstress has. Put all these qualities together and a conclusion is reached, Shirley means Bassey, just like Frank means Sinatra and Perry means Como.
Our album, I'VE GOT A SONG FOR YOU vividly shows why Shirley means Bassey. In it SHIRLEY BASSEY runs through a completely new programme of great songs, chanting as she has never done before.
PROGRAMME NOTE:
"I've got a song for you" says Shirley.
It was in Las Vegas in April this year that Shirley Bassey and manager Kenneth Hume decided to make this album. They wanted to show a new side of Shirley's talent and have deliberately included many up-tempo numbers along with the ballads.
Ralph Burns - American arranger famous for his orchestrations with the Woody Herman and for top singers Lena Horne, Sarah Vaughan, Johnny Mathis and Barbra Streisand, as well as for a score of Broadway musicals including FunnyGirl - flew out to Las Vegas and prepared and rehearsed the numbers ... no easy task for Shirley, who was doing two long shows a night, seven nights a week, at the Sahara Hotel.
As soon as the season closed they all flew to New York, to the studios of United Artist Records, and within one week had recorded this exciting new album.
United Artists Records in conjunction with Kenneth Hume worked non-stop to get this album ready for sale in time for the opening of Shirley Bassey's new show at the Prince Of Wales Theatre, London on July 19th, 1966.
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