With a career spanning seven decades, Dame Shirley Bassey has now released her grand finale album entirely dedicated to her fans and career.
The new album, 'I owe it all to you', which she recorded during lockdown, includes both brand new material which were written especially for Shirley, as well as tracks which the world-renowned singer has handpicked to reflect her incredible life and career.
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Dame Shirley wants this album to act as a ‘thank you’ to her fans, who have supported her all these years, and to the music – which has remained a constant throughout her life. Shirley explains: “My new album is a celebration of 70 years in showbiz. 70 years of support from my fans and 70 years of music! I’ve trodden the boards of many stages and kicked up many a diamante heel!"
“I listened to many, many songs and I chose the ones I connected with and liked best. They all feel very personal,” she says.
One of those tracks is the epic Who Wants To Live Forever? by Queen. “Roger Taylor actually suggested this song for me a year or so ago. It’s emotive, I love it. And Almost Like Being In Love was a song that my friend Bruce Forsyth performed regularly.”
Songwriter Don Black wrote the title song, I Owe It All To You.
“Don has a gift of writing beautiful songs. The lyrics mirror exactly how I am feeling. It’s as if he found a way into my mind! This song is for my fans. I hope that somehow in my life, through my words and my music, I have made a difference to someone’s life.”
Buy Shirley's new album
A diamond in the rough
When the wireless boomed out Shirley Bassey’s thick, honeyed voice singing As Long As He Needs Me from the musical Oliver in 1960, no one could believe where this incredible new voice had come from.
It wasn’t Shirley’s first hit, but the one that got her noticed, staying in the charts for a staggering 30 weeks. At the age of just 23, what was most remarkable was not just the power of this voice, but the sense of age, experience and life-weariness.
But then Shirley Bassey wasn’t your typical 23-year-old, wide-eyed and just finding her way in the world. Instead, by then, Shirley Bassey had already lived through more sadness than many people have in a lifetime.
Where do I begin?
Shirley Veronica Bassey was born in 1937 - the last of seven children born to Eliza Metcalfe, a Yorkshire woman who was on the run after giving birth to a black daughter, Shirley’s sister Ella, whose colour revealed she wasn’t fathered by her husband, Alfred.
In the violent, brothel-filled streets of Tiger Bay, Eliza had met Nigerian seaman Henry Bassey whom she married in 1927.
For many years, they scraped by in Cardiff's docklands, until a scandal no one could ever forgive tore this family apart at the seams.
Shirley was just two when her father was arrested, accused of raping a 15-year old girl. He was found guilty of abusing her for a period of six years and served five years in jail before being deported to Nigeria. Shirley would never see her father again.
The disgrace brought total shame on the Bassey family and her mother quickly moved her brood to neighbouring Splott where fewer people knew their name, less their past.
Here the mixed-race Bassey family stood out in a largely-white community but the main problem was grinding poverty as Shirley later told journalists: “Being coloured was never my problem. In Cardiff, our problem was more basic. A four-letter word: food.”
Teenage dreams
At 15, Shirley left school to support the family. She found work in a factory, packing pottery into delivery boxes, before switching to a better-paid job making sausages. On the side, she also brought in the pennies by overcoming her inherent shyness to sing in pubs. She soon became notorious for making even the most hard-nosed grown man cry with her singing.
She learned how to hold her own and knew what she wanted in life. But at 16, her dreams looked set to be dashed when she discovered she was pregnant. The timing couldn’t have been worse – she was just getting noticed. So when Shirley’s daughter, Sharon, was born, she made the ultimate sacrifice, asking her sister Ella to raise the baby as her own, which she did for many years until the more liberal Sixties when the truth outed.
Determined to succeed, by the age of 17, Shirley had been signed by a music agent, had a recording contract and was headlining the West End stage. She had an act that felt itchingly new and just right for a Britain that was changing fast. There was a sense of glamour, salaciousness and mischief that wasn’t afraid to flash a little leg.
As a result, what followed was one of the most dramatic Cinderella stories of all time, as Shirley stepped away from her impoverished past and into a world of shimmering gowns and knockout luxury. Here she sang about the diamonds and gold she’d never known, providing the theme tune for the James Bond films, Goldfinger, Diamonds are Forever.
But for all the jarring irony of the materialistic wealth she sung about, Shirley made the diamond-encrusted shoe fit until it became her and the glamorous sex symbol Shirley Bassey that we know today was born.
Diamonds aren’t forever
Underneath the sparkling persona and for all the new wealth she found, Shirley never did quite shake off the sense of tragedy that clung to her past. For a start she always regretted leaving behind Tiger Bay, saying to journalists “I was happy until success entered my life, and then it was all downhill. My success became a barrier with my family. They couldn’t relate to me and I couldn’t relate to them.”
“Diamonds never leave you… men do”
There was also the sadness of her failed relationships. Her first husband Kenneth Hume turned out to be gay and tragically died of a drug overdose while her marriage to second husband, hotelier Sergio Novak, ended in acrimonious divorce after 13 years.
Dame Shirley has lamented in the past that her enduring success has come at a price as she has not found lasting love, with two marriages ending in divorce. But it’s one she seems resigned to.
She says: “Maybe I’m not meant to find love. But then I had the voice. Maybe I’m going to find love one day and then I will never sing again!”
Then there was the heart-break of her second daughter, Samantha, who in 1985, at the age of 21 was found dead in the River Avon near the Clifton suspension bridge. It’s never been clear whether it was an accident or suicide but her death left Shirley in pieces.
Get the party started
Today Shirley is one of the most successful female solo performers of all time. From her first UK TV appearance with single Burn My Candle, to cinematic theme songs and headlining festivals, the welsh singer has secured her place firmly in our hearts.
Shirley is proud to be in an elite group of women honoured by the Queen, and in 2000 was honoured with the title of Dame Commander of the Order of the British Empire for services to the performing arts.
Dame Joan Collins, 87, has been a great friend since the pair were young, and she was also close to the late Dame Cilla Black and both Joan and Cilla helped celebrate Shirley’s 70th birthday at Cliveden House.
As the years have gone by, Dame Shirley’s career has gone from strength to strength and there has never been any thought about retirement.
Who can forget her being helicoptered in to a soggy Glastonbury Festival in 2007, in a pink Julien Macdonald dress, feather boa and £3,000 diamante-encrusted wellies.
So are there any standout memories? “I have so many. Singing at the Oscars in 2013 to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the James Bond movies was a dream.
"But the real stand-outs have to be when the Queen presented me with my Damehood, when France gave me the Legion D’Honneur, and when Cardiff honoured me with the Freedom of the City. They all meant so much to me.”
Did You Know
Shirley has had two UK No.1 singles: As I Love You (1958) and Reach For The Stars (1961)
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