After Dinner Speakers: Elkie Brooks, Nelson Mandella, Phil DeFreitas

Elkie Brooks is one of the most successful singers the UK has ever produced. Since her career began in the early 1960s as a support act to The Beatles and Jimi Hendrix, she has won over a legion of fans worldwide. She has had over a dozen UK hit singles, is officially recognised by the Guiness Book of Records as the most successful UK female album seller of the past 20 years, achieved countless silver, gold and platinum awards and is the recipient of the British Academy of Composers coveted Gold Award which recognises her outstanding contribution to the music industry. Elkie Brooks was born Elaine Bookbinder in 1946. A bakery owner’s daughter from Salford she was almost certain to follow many of her family members into the music business. Her brother Tony was the drummer with the then well known group The Dakotas whilst her other brother Ray had a quartet and her uncle Nat Bookbinder was a bandleader in Manchester. She adopted the stage name Elkie Brooks in the 1960s to make her way as a singer of jazz and rhythm and blues music around the North West of England and later joined the Humphrey Lyttelton and then Eric Delaney big bands. After a further solo single in 1969 she joined a jazz-fusion rock band called Dada who recorded one album before changing their name to Vinegar Joe as Robert Palmer joined to share lead vocals with Elkie. Over the next couple of years Elkie was a ‘wild woman of rock’ and often posed for photos revealing more than a little flesh. The band split in 1974 after 3 albums. Robert and Elkie both started solo careers. Elkie went on to release her own solo debut album ‘Rich Man’s Woman’ which show-cased some of her own compositions, quickly followed by ‘Two Days Away’ which produced 2 top ten hits ‘Sunshine After the Rain’ and ‘Pearl’s a Singer’. From then on she continued having hits at varying intervals until her last ‘No More the Fool’ at the beginning of 1987. By the ‘90s Elkie had established herself as an act with staying power and could afford the luxury to diversify and experiment with different styles and sounds of music. Elkie has been busy working on several projects all due for release this year under Jam’s own label Slave To the Rhythm Records. Her new album ‘Shangri-La’ will be available through www.jamrhythm.com Elkie has also recorded ‘Trouble in Mind’ a jazz/blues album with Humphrey Lyttleton. Both albums will be available through the above website. Elkie has also recorded a duet with American crooner Andy Williams ‘Sunrise Sunset’ the Perry Como classic which will be released later this year.