Chart entered : 27 January 1966
Chart peak : 1
Number of hits : 10
Nancy was the first second generation pop star to top the charts and the first person to get over the line here due to hits this side of the Millennium.
Nancy was born in 1940 in New Jersey to a quite popular singer and his first wife, also called Nancy. Her first brush with pop music was pre-chart as the subject of Frank's 1945 song, Nancy ( With The Laughing Face ) . She studied music , dance and voice at the University of California but dropped out after a year to get married to Tommy Sands. Her first public exposure was on a TV special made by her father to celebrate Elvis's return from the army in 1960. She welcomed him at the airport and later did a duet with her dad,
To no one's surprise she got a deal with his record company Reprise in 1961. She released her first single "Cuff Links And A Tie Clip" that year, a typical piece of teen fluff save for Nancy's cool dry vocal placing her outside the song. It didn't register anywhere. The following January she released her version of Phil Spector's "To Know Him Is To Love Him". It's an inexpert reading which deserved to fail but Nancy was in luck when the Italians picked up on the B-side, Bob Manning's "Like I Do" ( a number three UK hit for Maureen Evans later that year ) and took it to number 2 in their chart. Nancy's vocal is perfectly suited to the arch girl-pop but apparently she hates it.
"June, July and August" released in the middle month of that trio is a drowsy ballad with eerie undertones that seems like it should be on a David Lynch soundtrack with Nancy sounding not unlike Julee Cruse. The same goes for "You Can Have Any Boy" with its Jolene- style message though Nancy's languid vocal suggests cool curiosity rather than desperation.
"I See The Moon" from February 1963 is a straight Brill Building version of the Stargazers' 1954 chart-topper, competent and pleasant but rather disappointing." Cruel War" is much more interesting. The song originates at least as far back as the American Civil War but the lyrics have been adapted through the years and Nancy was covering the Peter Paul and Mary version which took the point of view of a war bride wanting to join up herself to stay with her Johnny. Their version is a textbook example of worthy but murderously dull folksiness; Nancy's single is more interesting because the arrangement has more ideas and Nancy's close-miked vocal gives the verse about cross-dressing and the death wish sentiments of the final verse more of a frisson than Mary Travers's pure tones.
The admonitory "Thanks To You" from November 1963 anticipates the sound of The Shangri-las with its slow building drama and spoken phrases. By 1964 Nancy was moving into films , albeit superficial teen movies, and might have given up on pop had these singles not been selling steadily in Japan. "Where Do The Lonely Go" sounds like a lesser Burt Bacharach number ( it isn't ). "This Love Of Mine" which Nancy had a hand in writing is really odd with a scratchy, almost funk, rhythm guitar running through the song but seemingly unconnected to the wan teen pop Nancy is singing. Towards the end it seems to fall out of time and becomes an amateur-ish mess.
By 1965 it was time for taking stock. Nancy's marriage had crumbled and Reprise were on the point of risking the big man's wrath by dropping her. Nevertheless they teamed her up with a new producer Jimmy Bowen who produced her Spectoresque version of Cole Porter's "True Love" which was released as a single in January. It's not very good with Nancy sounding barely interested but Bowen had an ace up his sleeve. He lived next door to Lee Hazelwood , writer of Duane Eddy's Rebel Rouser and persuaded him to come on board and work with Nancy. He in turn brought in an experienced arranger in Billy Strange.
Their first collaboration was "So Long Babe", a Hazelwood song about moving on to pastures new with some melodic similarity to When You Walk In The Room. Nancy was persuaded to sing in a lower register and though she doesn't sound entirely in tune , the single finally gave her a foothold in the US charts peaking at 86. It was also her last single as a winsome brunette; an image makeover turned her into a blonde bombshell. Nancy later allowed her earlier singles to be unsentimentally compiled under the title Bubblegum Girl which is something of a slight on an interesting body of work.
Her next single was this one. Here's the Popular linkNancy S, the first time it's really worth the effort.
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