Cilla Black

Who was the second biggest selling music star to come out of Liverpool after the Beatles? It wasn't Gerry & the Pacemakers or Billy J. Kramer & the Dakotas, nor was it the Searchers. It was Cilla Black, a one-time coat-check girl from the Cavern Club who was still learning to sing with confidence, forget developing a technique, just about the time that the Beatles were cutting their first EMI record. Cilla Black holds a unique position in the history of pop music, and the British invasion. As Brian Epstein's discovery and protégé, she was the first and only important female performer to emerge from Liverpool in the heyday of the British beat boom. In conjunction with Epstein's management and George Martin's production skills, she became a formidable ballad singer, her hits lasting longer than any Epstein clients other than the Beatles. And she became one of the most beloved pop-rock performers in England during the late '60s and '70s, and one of the country's most popular television stars. She was the third Brian Epstein-managed performer to emerge from Liverpool in the wake of the Beatles' success. A one-time coat-check girl at the Cavern, her name was Priscilla White when she worked there on lunch-breaks from her job as a typist. She began singing as a nervous amateur on a Liverpool underground scene in which the Beatles, with Pete Best still on drums (and Brian Epstein a long way removed from knowing them), were considered one of the more promising bands. By the summer of 1961, she gotten good enough to appear as a guest singer with such established local talent as the Big Three trio and Rory Storm & The Hurricanes, and was a favorite of Bill Harry, the publisher of the music paper Mersey Beat. Brian Epstein's discovery of the Beatles and the Cavern Club opened...