Cilla

She was a working class girl, and she warmed our hearts. I feel I grew up with Cilla Black, the English singer and television star, who died today.

Her real name was Priscilla Maria Veronica White and she was born in Liverpool in 1943, the daughter of Irish Catholics. Her father was a docker; her mother ran a market stall. Yes, she was a Scouse girl. She started her career as a typist, occasionally working as a cloakroom attendant in the Cavern Club, where the Beatles and others played; and occasionally singing with the bands who played there (John Lennon used to introduce her as “Cyril” sometimes, with his usual offbeat humor).

Cilla dancing with her friend Gerry Marsden (of Gerry and the Pacemakers) in the Cavern Club in the early 1960s. Gerry had a mega-hit in 1963 with “You’ll Never Walk Alone.” Does that sound familiar, Liverpool Football Club fans? (Photo: Liverpool Echo)

Priscilla White grew up above a hairdressers’ shop on Scotland Road in post-war Liverpool. (Photo: Liverpool Echo)

Humor was a large part of what Cilla was about; it is a Liverpudlian trait. I recall going to see the Beatles’ first film (“A Hard Day’s Night”) with my mother, who was born not far from that city; I remember her chuckling at the “lads from Liverpool,” goofing around. Cilla was comfortable with all that, and perhaps it suited the optimistic mood of England during the sixties.To me as a teenager, Cilla in her twenties was a real charmer. She was composed, and cool, had a funny northern accent. Most of all, she was friends with the Beatles (who gave her career a strong nudge) – and any friend of the Beatles was a friend of mine. Lucky thing! I thought. Lennon and McCartney wrote her first song, “Love of the Loved,” which only made a slight impression. By 1964, though, she had two number one hits (being Number One was big in those days) including a cover version of Bacharach’s “Anyone Who Had a Heart,” a beautiful song – though I think Dionne Warwick did it better.

A toast to success: Cilla launches her career with (l-r) Patti Boyd, George Harrison and (far right) the Beatles’ manager Brian Epstein. Note the smile. (Photo: Express Newspapers)

Yep, Cilla could handle the power ballad; if she had been doing them in the nineties, Jamaicans would have loved her, I’m sure. She would probably have headlined the so-called Jazz and Blues Festival. A superior power balladeer, who started off singing at talent contests at the age of thirteen.

The movie poster for “Alfie” with Michael Caine and Shelley Winters.

I have a particular favorite from this era: “Alfie.” The song was released in connection with the classic 1966 film, starring Michael Caine as the womanizing limousine driver (don’t bother with the highly inferior 2004 remake with Jude Law, by the way). It’s a slightly wistful, sentimental, searching-for-happiness-and-not-finding-it kind of song, and Cilla did it to perfection. Another Bacharach/David song, recorded at the famous Abbey Road studios in London with Bacharach himself playing piano, it was also done by Dionne Warwick in 1967. I prefer Cilla’s version.

Cilla married her personal manager, Bobby Willis in 1969; he stayed in the background, apparently always pushing her forward at the expense of his own career. They had three sons. Sadly, Bobby (whom she first met when he was working in a Woolworth’s store) died of cancer at age 57, in 1999. They were a devoted couple and she did not remarry.

Cilla and her husband Bobby Willis, hands held tight. 

So there was the music. Now back to Cilla. When she launched her career, she had auburn hair (which I have always loved, though I don’t think it was her natural color), carefully coiffed into that smooth sixties-style helmet shape. She also had that classic sixties “leggy” look and a touch of the “girl next door.” Yet her warm smile was a knowing, witty smile, too; she was much more than a cute singer with a husky voice.

It was this “much more” that launched her lengthy and enormously successful television career in the UK. From 1968 to 1976 she had her own television series. Then the eighties arrived, and  television was big in England – very big. Cilla Black moved effortlessly from one hugely popular, long-running prime time show to another (from “Surprise, Surprise” to “Blind Date.”) The latter, although considered a bit “naughty” by some, ran for eighteen years, by which time Cilla had become the highest paid woman on British television.

Cilla with one of her many awards, and close friend Paul O’Grady.

What else did I like about Cilla? She had that television style of sitting down like a good friend in your living room and just chatting (a bit like Oprah, perhaps). I found her rather corny at times, but then I have never been a huge fan of that particular television genre. Yet, she was “natural.” She was herself. She was not afraid of her ego; she was a little over the top, laughed too loudly, laughed with her mouth wide open. She wasn’t a simpering little woman. She always had ambition. The Liverpool accent that her earlier managers had tried to suppress resurfaced in later years; it was her, after all. And I did like her voice – perhaps not as soulful as her contemporary Dusty Springfield (a greatly underrated singer, by the way) – but it had something, a scratchy kind of power and a great sense of drama. In its tribute to her today, the “Liverpool Echo” calls it “a voice to tremble the stars and scare the angels.”

Cilla Black and her contemporary, comedian Jimmy Tarbuck, having a laugh during the inaugural Scouse Day in 2000.

Cilla died in her pretty villa in Spain, apparently in her sleep. She suffered from arthritis, according to reports, and had become hard of hearing, but was otherwise fine. She told one newspaper she thought “Seventy-five is a good age to go…” 

Well, it was seventy-two, but none of us know when our time will come. I will miss Cilla.

Good night, Cilla. Quite a girl.