Reviews

Dee Shipman is perhaps best known as a lyricist and her collaborations with Charles Aznavour (Lautrec) and Petula Clark (Someone Like You).

In fact she began her career with her feet very much on the stage and in 1970 she created 'She Isn't Me' produced by the legendary Norman Newell, only to remain unreleased. Whilst this oversight is never really explained - Shipman herself refers to this CD release as a resurrection rather than a release - this is much to value in the quality of this recording.
There are some lush, even idiosyncratic arrangements that ooze a seventies louche glamour, particularly 'The Way You Look Tonight' and a Cy Coleman standard 'The Best Is Yet To Come', that would not seem out of place in an Austin Powers movie.

Shipman gives a particularly touching rendition of 'One Hand, One Heart', the Bernstein / Sondheim standard that here retains the childlike innocence intended by the composer. 'What Is A Youth' is something of a surprise, perhaps best known as the theme song for Simon Bates' Our Tune, it is originally from Zeffirelli's 'Romeo And Juliet' with poignant poetic lyrics by Eugene Walter.

The title of the album comes from a taster of Shipman's latest work, a duet with Sadie Nine called 'She Isn't Me' and taken from the musical 'Emma', a collaboration with Roger Webb, based on the life of Emma Hamilton. As a bonus track it does little to enhance the album and only serves to highlight the clarity, texture and sheer magic of Newell's earlier recordings.
- THE STAGE

Best known today for her work as a lyricist with Charles Aznavour and Petula Clark, Dee Shipman began her career as a film and TV actress, singer, radio presenter, and pop columnist. This previously unreleased album, recorded in London in October 1970, and now digitally remastered from the original master tapes, gives us the opportunity to explore Shipman as a song stylist, here in tandem for the first time with another long-time collaborator, Roger Webb. 

It’s a lifetime ago for Shipman, who confesses in the liner notes, “a collection of tracks I’d recorded over 30 years ago, at first seemed more like a reincarnation than a release!” It must be eerie to be offered the opportunity to revisit one’s earlier life. This blast from the past is an idiosyncratic journey in a time machine, both in repertoire and orchestrations. This is definitely a curio, but it’s always interesting to listen to a songwriter perform. 

Produced by Norman Newell (legendary record producer, long-time A&R manager for EMI, and a lyricist himself), the 11-track set features an intriguing mixture of pop standards and evergreens, in luscious period arrangements by Roger Webb which are now unmistakeably 1960s. Highlights are André and Dory Previn’s “You’re Gonna Hear from Me”, from the film Inside Daisy Clover (a great opener); Cy Coleman’s swinging “The Best Is Yet to Come”; Lerner and Lane’s lament “What Did I Have I Don’t Have Now”; and a touchingly simple “One Hand, One Heart” (West Side Story). However, we’re distinctly in time-warp territory in “What Is a Youth” from Zeffirelli’s Romeo and Juliet, and Michel Legrand’s “What Are You Doing for the Rest of Your Life” and “Watch What Happens” (The Umbrellas of Cherbourg). The most surprising track is “My Life Belongs Only to You”, from Ivor Novello’s The Dancing Years, which is done completely straight. 

The prize for one of the oddest interpretations ever must go to “The Way You Look Tonight”, which is completely deconstructed. It’s bold and adventurous, but what Jerome Kern and Dorothy Fields think? 

The album concludes with a bonus track bringing us up to date, with a new recording by Shipman and Sadie Nine of the duet “She Isn’t Me”, from the unfinished Dee Shipman-Roger Webb musical Emma, based on the life of Lady Emma Hamilton. 
- WHAT'S ON STAGE