So there I was humming this song as I walked along the wet and windy pavements of Edinburgh when I paused to ask myself a question. What song was I actually humming? With but a few hours of (actually enjoyable) YouTube research, it turned out to be “(It's Like A) Sad Old Kinda Movie” by a band called Pickettywitch. A further dig through the vinyl collection unearthed a couple of albums and a few singles by the singer of said band. Her name is Polly Browne and it is her album “The Blues Collection” that inspired these words.
Being thorough in matter soft research, “The Blues Collection” appears to be a reissue of her 1994 album “Freedom” (WITCH POL 7) with an additional song – “Blue Night” - but even my finely honed vinyl junkie detection skills could not locate an actual physical copy of said album. That is something of a shame for the album does highlight Ms Browne’s abilities both as a singer and a songwriter and, while a download is better than nothing, it is but a substitute for the real thing.
Polly Browne is something of a mystery. She had some degree of commercial success in the seventies with the aforementioned Pickettywitch and Sweet Dreams and seems to have released a good few singles right into the eighties but perhaps the record industry, then as now, had commendably little respect for talent and let her slip into obscurity. Her voice, often compared to Dionne or Diana, has that all important involving quality that brings you into the song rather than making you outside as a bystander so she should have been, or might well have been, more than the footnote that the Internet thinks she is.
“The Blues Collection” is a satisfying album mixing standards with entirely convincing self penned songs by Ms Browne. The title track, “Freedom”, shows remarkable class. Its subject may well be escape and emancipation but this is more, far more, than a girl’s night out anthem like “I Will Survive”. That sense of realism is furthered in the dignified suffering of “Blue Night” that reflects on the effects of the dark disease of cancer. It’s not all downbeat though. A dry sense of humour is evident in “Bluesy Old Woman” and “Home Cooking” and either of those two songs will surely bring a knowing smile to the face of many.
For fans of the conventional, the should be a blues standard if it isn’t already “Don’t Go Messing With My Heart” stands out as an object lesson of how to do it with an elegant guitar solo balancing Ms Browne’s straight down the line vocal to perfection.
Available as a download from Amazon or iTunes, “The Blues Collection” is an album to enjoy and provides more than ample evidence of the talents of Polly Browne. You are duly advised to indulge yourself for class is class. It’s as simple as that.