“My Love” (Petula Clark)

Todays’ classic song recorded by a Brit in America of the day is “My Love” by the lovely Miss Petula Clark. This hot little slab of wax was released in December of 1965 and, early the following year, went all the way to #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It also hit #1 in Canada and Singapore and made the Top 10 in Australia, Ireland, Malaysia, New Zealand, South Africa, Switzerland, and the UK.

Ms. Clark normally recorded in England, under producer/songwriter Tony Hatch, using the cream of London’s session musicians, including Jimmy Page on guitar and Bobby Graham on drums. For a change of pace, however, Mr. Hatch wanted to record some tracks in the U.S., using L.A.’s top session players—those cats later known as the Wrecking Crew. (This included the immediately recognizable Hal Blaine with those propulsive backbeats on his Ludwig Supraphonic snare drum.) The result was a more driving and energetic sound than on Ms. Clark’s previous records—and a super big hit.

“My Love,” like most of Ms. Clark’s hits, was written by Tony Hatch. He was working on this one on the plane ride to Los Angeles, with the original title of “The Life and Soul of the Party.” The American sitting in the seat next to him, however, advised him that that title would be fairly meaningless to American artists. Mr. Hatch then changed the title to “My Love” and wrote the rest of the lyrics to match. That was a wise move.

Ms. Clark recorded three tunes during that L.A. session at Western Studios. Of those, “My Love” was her least favorite. Here’s how she remembers it:

“We recorded three songs on that session…I liked the two other songs quite a lot, but I really didn’t like ‘My Love’…I thought it was a bit ordinary. I had got so used to these wonderful songs that Tony had been writing with all these different moods and I thought ‘My Love’ was just a bit flat.”

It turns out that Ms. Clark’s normally unerring instincts were just a bit off on this one. “My Love” was one of her biggest hits, right up there among fellow Top Ten singles “Downtown” (#1, 1964), “I Know a Place” (#3, 1965), “I Couldn’t Live Without Your Love” (#9, 1966), “This is My Song” (#3, 1967), and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway” (#5, 1967). Among all these tunes, “My Love” had the most distinctive beat and feel—thanks primarily to Hal Blaine and the Wrecking Crew.

And here’s your daily bonus of the day, Petula Clark singing “My Love” live (at an accelerated tempo) on the November 28, 1965, episode of The Ed Sullivan Show, accompanied by Ed’s house orchestra. (They’re a little square but they tried.)