Billie Davis

In 1962 a sixteen-year-old singer named Carol Hedges won a talent contest while supported by Cliff Bennett’s backing band, the Rebel Rousers. The victory introduced her to producer Joe Meek, who cut several sides with her and his regular group the Tornados, none of which gained traction. Music manager Robert Stigwood, still new to the business, had also caught her performance and decided to take her under his wing, removing her from Meek’s roster. He was drawn to the white soul quality of her voice—comparable in style, though less forceful, than Beryl Marsden’s—and to the fact that her chief inspirations were Billie Holiday and Sammy Davis Jr. Stigwood rechristened her Billie Davis, paired her with another of his artists, Mike Sarne, and the duo scored a novelty hit in 1962 with “Will I What.” For her first solo single he chose a song he had encountered on a trip to America. Although the Exciters had already recorded “Tell Him,” Davis’s cover, issued on English Decca, climbed into the U.K. Top Ten in early 1963 even as the original American version simultaneously reached number one on the British charts. She continued to record for English Decca and Pye Records through the early and mid-1960s without matching that success; her closest later chart appearance came in 1968 with “I Want You to Be My Baby.” Several of her tracks later surfaced on compilation albums, among them her reading of Burt Bacharach’s “The Last One to Be Loved,” which appears on Sequel Records’ Trains & Boats & Covers. In Britain she is still remembered fondly for her pre-Beatles pop and rock achievements.