SHIRLEY BASSEY and ME

Bahaichap

New member
Dame Shirley Bassey(1937- ) is a Welsh singer now 75 years old. She found fame in the mid-1950s when I was a famous baseball player in a small town in Ontario inthe pee-wee and midget leagues. She was one of the most popular female vocalists in Britain during the last half of the 20th century as I went from childhood to late adulthood. She was born near where my father was born in Wales just as the Baha’i teaching Plan was about to be launched in 1937, a Plan I have been associated with in a wide variety of ways for nearly 60 years.

Bassey began her career in 1953, the same year as: the celebration of the centenary of the birth of Baha’u’llah’s revelation, the dedication of the Baha’i House of worship in Chicago, the launching of the Ten Year Crusade, and the year my mother joined the Baha’i Faith.

In the biopic I watched tonight[SUP]1[/SUP] the role of Shirley Bassey was played by Ruth Negga, an Ethiopian-Irish(1982- ). My daughter-in-law(1980- ) is Ethiopian and for this reason, among others, I took an interest in Negga who won the IFTA best actress award for this performance as Bassey. This 70 minute biopic[SUP]1[/SUP] on ABC1 was entitled Shirley.-Ron Price with thanks to BBC, 29 September 2011>ABC1TV, 15 April, 9:25-10:35 p.m.

It was impossible not to have
heard of this most popular of
singers Shirley Bassey…But,
until tonight, I must confess
I hardly knew her. Our time,
our world of entertainment, is
so mixed with a myriad forms
of culture and knowledge that
it is a veritable explosion. TV
has been on the periphery of my
life since the 1950s. I missed-out
on much that was popular in that
evening-time when, as the critic
of culture, Gore Vidal notes,[SUP]1[/SUP] we
have laughing gas pumped into
billions of our lounge-rooms on
the planet. I was reading books,
marking & preparing lessons, as
well as sleeping and listening to
radio-news, going to meetings:
wall to wall people from the ‘50s
to those ‘90s.

But I’m making up for it now in the
2000s. A little television is now on
my agenda at two hours a day in my
life’s evening---70 around the corner,
time’s winged-chariot running near
and old-age about to ring my neck
eventually as I go into one of those
holes for those who speak no more[SUP]2[/SUP]
and watch no more TV, and sing no
more songs, Shirley: who knows?!!

[SUP]1 [/SUP]Gore Vidal(1925- ) is arguably the finest essayist of the last half century. Newsweek called Vidal the best all-around American man of letters since Edmund Wilson(1895-1972). Wilson was an American writer and literary and social critic and noted man of letters.
[SUP]2 [/SUP]The Bab(1817-1850)

Ron Price
15 April 2012
 
Last edited:

John Watt

Member
You don't have to sell me on Shirley Bassey, and thanks for all the information.
When those hot electronica dance guys in England wanted a singer for a production,
they called Shirley Bassey, and she came through with enough modern attitude to make it a top ten hit.
 
Top