Summary: | This thesis examines the way in which four British female performers, Dusty Springfield, Cilla Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, forged a relationship between pop music, television and fashion at a key moment in time, the period 1963-75. The intention is to discover what was new about the image for British women popular musicians that they constructed and the means by which they did so. The period studied was important for the convergence in Britain ofpop music with television and fashion. The thesis considers the women's role in this convergence in tenns both ofshaping and exploiting it The investigation was pursued through a range of primary source data, principally the viewing of the rare surviving recording of a programme from each of the four women's BBC television series. The use of the four programmes as case studies provides the main focus. Archival research using the two television listings publications of the period, the Radio Times and the TVTimes, provided the majority of the information locating the four programmes within the 1963-75 British television context; as well as demonstrating the way in which each was promoted for television and the range of television genres with which the four women were involved. Interviews with television cameramen associated with the programmes provided personal recollections uskd to complement and supplement the research. Popular music, television and fashion literature enabled the study of the interrelations between the three areas as evidenced in the four programmes. The findings demonstrate the active agency ofeach of the four women in the creation of her individual persona around which her eponymous BBC television series was constructed as a 'star vehicle', utilizing the convergence ofpop music, television and fashion. The findings reveal a fonnerly 'hidden history' of four British female pop music performers who brought their music perfonnance, with its key fashion component, to the pre-existing systems of British television light entertainment. In so doing each formulated for herself a new kind of career which transcended pop single achievement, at a particularly significant moment in time for British pop music, television and fashion. Dusty Springfield, CilIa Black, Sandie Shaw and Lulu, each in her own way changed, strengthened and enhanced the status of the British female pop perfonner according to the results of this research. The four women did so through fusing their awareness of British pop music and British fashion with an awareness of the audience for their British television performance. This thesis has thus investigated, evaluated and presented the evidence for this hitherto undocumented achievement.
|