Jackie Trent

Jackie Trent came into the world as Yvonne Burgess in 1940 and took her performing name at the age of fourteen. Although her robust voice would have carried effortlessly across the largest Broadway houses, it found little traction in soul or rock idioms, so she instead hovered at the outer margins of British pop alongside belters such as Cilla Black, albeit with an even stronger middle-of-the-road bent. Her sole major success on disc arrived in mid-1965 when the single “Where Are You Now (My Love)” topped the British charts; no other release reached the Top 20. Any resemblance to Petula Clark fused with Shirley Bassey is readily explained by her association with Clark’s producer, Tony Hatch, who later became both her regular songwriting collaborator and her husband. Trent and Hatch supplied Clark with several hits, yet the same team achieved far less commercial traction when shaping Jackie’s own material, apart from the aforementioned number one. She cut a steady stream of sides for Pye throughout the 1960s, occasionally joined by her husband Tony on duets, yet her lasting reputation rests chiefly on her work behind the scenes as a songwriter.