Lorraine Silver’s discs command devoted interest from enthusiasts of girl-group sounds and Northern soul, an impressive legacy for the London-born Jewish teenager who entered the world in 1951. While on school holiday in 1965, the already seasoned talent-show performer strolled through the Oxford Street shopping area and stepped into a Woolworth’s booth, where she spent two shillings to lay down an unaccompanied version of “Sealed with a Kiss.” She left the resulting acetate at Pye Records’ London headquarters, and within eight weeks the label had signed her; her first release was a brisk, upbeat cover of Shelley Fabares’s “Lost Summer Love.” Bass duties fell to Beatles collaborator Klaus Voorman, and the track’s driving dance-floor energy meshed perfectly with Silver’s strikingly strong, soul-infused voice, propelling the single onto the British charts and granting the young artist a short-lived burst of attention.
Momentum soon faded. Though slated to perform on Ready, Steady, Go, her managers substituted another act on their roster, the Overlanders; the follow-up release “The Happy Faces” received minimal promotional support, prompting a disheartened Silver to step away from the spotlight and resume her studies. She re-emerged in the 1970s, performing cabaret dates under her married name, Lorraine West. Meanwhile, Northern soul devotees had embraced her original “Lost Summer Love,” which Casino Classics reissued without her knowledge, moving more than 12,000 copies. Silver remained unaware of this renewed interest until 1988, when her husband noticed a feature about the record in Blues & Soul Magazine. Throughout much of the 1980s she had toured as part of the vocal ensemble Mixed Feelings, and in subsequent years she became a regular guest at the Northern soul events held at Caister Holiday Park. In the new century she joined the Edwin Starr Band for U.K. dates and, in January 2018, issued the single “Standing at the Intersection.”
