Originally Posted by
soren1974
Thank you both, Lakeside and Carlo, for the kind words. I still see Pearly and the two other Flirtations, Earnee & Shirley, a couple of times every year, and I'd love to record them again as they still look and sound good. It's just the money-side of things as it is so hard to make ends meet with nobody [[apart from a few loyal guys like yourselves) buying records these days. I never say never though, but I haven't got the funds I used to have. I don't regret spending the money on it as it was a very special experience to have been able to write my own music, getting it recorded and a dream come true to hold an album in my hands with my name on it.
It is mentioned in the booklet, but I literally met Pearly by complete chance. I was actually staying at Ian Levine's house at the time, but had gone to see a Jocelyn Brown concert in Camden [[London) in 2006 when, after the show, I spotted this beautiful black woman stood in the crowd. I thought: "Oh my god, she looks exactly like Pearly Gates" but dismissed the thought because I only knew her from images from the 1970s and 80s and of course believed she would have aged since then. Also, I thought she lived in America. She then noticed I was eyeing her up, lol, and I became embarrassed and looked away. I then looked back, and she looked again, and I thought: "This is too silly!" and walked up to her and said: "I am so sorry to be staring, but you just look exactly like a singer called Pearly Gates." She then gave me the eye and said: "How the hell do you know who I am?" and gave out a loud laugh. She couldn't believe I had recognised her. She was 60 at the time and looked 20 years younger.
Fast forward six months, and Ian Levine had invited me to attend a recording session of his. And who turned up for it? Pearly did and cried out: "You're the guy from the Jazz Café" when she saw me. I was so excited to attend a recording session [[Ian recorded three artists that one day) that a while after I finally mustered my courage to play Ian my demos and said to him that I wish I could record them properly. I then called Pearly and asked if she'd like to record a few tracks with me, and that got the ball rolling, and they snowballed into recording Roulette with the group and then finishing this album throughout 2009. I'm sorry the DVD doesn't work for you though. We only have that one version.
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