| Please forgive the writer
of this piece for its accompaniment of gaps and question marks, because
I really don't know as much about this under-rated and neglected singer
as I ought. Julie Grant must have had fewer words written about her than
almost any other artist that reached the UK chart during the 1960s. So
if anyone out there can fill the gaps, correct or expand on what I've put
here then please let me know.
Julie's show business ambitions grew while she was still at school, and she had learned to tap dance and sing while still in her childhood. Upon leaving school she began to enter talent contests with the objective of becoming a professional singer. Julie even managed to win a contest in which one of her rivals was a very young Helen Shapiro. |
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Although Julie managed to record a respectable number of singles, this EP (Pye NEP24171) is her only original output, that I've so far found, to be contained within a picture sleeve. This disc contains four of the 'A' sides from her first five single releases. It is probably now easier to find these singles than this EP. |
| Julie Grant's perseverance gained her sufficient notice to gain her TV work and a recording contract with Pye was then forthcoming. At Pye she became one of the first singers to benefit from the skills of their young A&R wizard Tony Hatch who had recently returned there after completing his National Service. Julie's first three releases failed to chart. She did much better with "Up On The Roof" which suited her powerful young voice admirably, but this almost certainly suffered from too much competition from the popular Kenny Lynch whose version hit the market earlier. Her next song "Count On Me" did better, but even this stalled just outside the top twenty. Despite one further minor chart success Julie never quite managed to consolidate herself as a major recording star and the flow of singles stopped at the end of 1965. | |