Alma Cogan
biography
Alma Cogan was one
of the most successful and tragic figures in English pop music of the '50s and
early '60s. Her 18 chart hits were a record for a female singer at the end of
the '50s in
The daughter of a
haberdasher, Alma Cogan was born in St. John's Wood and educated at St. Joseph'
Convent School. It was Cogan's mother who pushed her toward a career as a
singer and onto the stage. In 1948, at age 16, she was spotted in the chorus of
High Button Shoes by EMI staff producer Walter J. Ridley (also
responsible, a decade later, for signing Johnny Kidd & the Pirates),
who subsequently signed her to the HMV label. Around this same time, she began
appearing with cabaret at the Cumberland Hotel. Cogan began her career doing
ballads, but her first hit was a novelty tune called "Bell Bottom
Blues" (not the Derek & the Dominoes song), which got
to number five on the British charts in 1954. A year later, she topped the
charts for the first and only time with "Dreamboat." She also covered
several American hits, including "The Birds and the Bees" and
"Why Do Fools Fall in Love," which was a hint of the range she would
show in her later career. By the turn of the '50s into the '60s, she was also
the star of her own television program, and she reached the apex of her success
when Lionel Bart (whom, at one point, she apparently intended
to marry) cast her as
During the '50s,
Cogan attracted press attention as a personality beyond her singing, for her
sense of humor and for her collection of luxurious
clothes -- it was said that she never wore the same dress twice -- and her home
was filled with an extraordinary array of fashions. By the mid-'60s, she was
much more celebrated in the gossip columns for the all-night parties she threw
at her Kensington High Street home, where guests included such diverse figures
as Stanley Baker, Paul McCartney, Roger Moore, Noël Coward, Ethel
Merman, and Lionel Bart, among many others. If she was no
longer a chart-topping star, Cogan was still a much-loved figure to her peers,
and remained in touch with the cutting edge of the popular music business,
recording the music of Burt Bacharach when he was still getting
established, and befriending McCartney, who must've loved making
the acquaintance of EMI's biggest female pop star from the period in which he
was growing up. McCartney contributed percussion to the B-side
of one of her mid-'60s singles, which resulted in her covering "Eight Days
a Week," as well as "Yesterday," "I Feel Fine," and
"Ticket to Ride." There's no telling where that friendship might've
led -- Cogan could easily have been another, more mature Cilla Black,
her voice serving as an outlet for McCartney songs that
weren't suited to the Beatles. If her version of "Eight Days a
Week" -- a most startling re-thinking of the song, transforming it into a
gloriously lyrical torch number -- is any indication, she might've done
wonderful, glorious things with "For No One," "Your Mother
Should Know," and "When I'm Sixty-Four." Alas, it was not to be.
Cogan had just proved capable of making the transition to a more rocking sound,
or at least of embracing some components of the last few years of changes in music,
when tragedy struck. In 1966, she was diagnosed with cancer. She received
treatments and planned to continue her career, even writing several songs
(under the name "Al Western") that were recorded by other singers.
She kept working during the year, and an album was intended. Cogan continued concertizing, and while touring
Her final album,