Sandie Shaw's Italian recordings

Our pick of the pops

Beat babe Sandie Shaw was one of the UK’s most successful singers of the 1960s, with three number one hits in Britain. She also recorded many translations of her material in Italian and enjoyed a string of hits with the results.

She was born Sandra Goodrich in Dagenham, Essex, east of London, on 26 February 1947. After leaving school she worked at the nearby Ford factory and did some part-time modelling. However, as a result of coming second in a talent contest, she got to appear at a charity concert in London at which singer Adam Faith was singing. He spotted her potential and introduced to his manager, Eve Taylor.

Within a fortnight, the singer had a contract – and a stage name – with the Pye record label.

Keen to increase Sandie’s sales throughout mainland Europe, her record label, Pye, had the singer record many of her English songs in French, German, Italian and Spanish.

Girl don’t come was her first British hit chosen for reworking into Italian. Released as E ti avrò – with Viva l’amore con te, a version of Long live love, on the B-side – the song was launched with an appearance on the Studio uno television programme and made the Italian top 20 in 1966.

For the follow up, she released Domani, a version of her UK hit Tomorrow, and it sailed into the Italian top ten – peaking at number nine – later that year.

An EP was issued featuring all four songs from her first two singles, and at the end of the year, she released an album, consisting mainly of translations of her English-language material, such as Che ragazzo matto (Message understood) and Pochi sorrisi (Nothing comes easy). It also included the Italian original Guardo te che te ne vai.

In 1967, Sandie became the first British winner of the Eurovision song contest, with Puppet on a string. The song was translated into a variety of languages, including Italian. La danza delle notte proved a hit, reaching number 11 in the Italian charts and helped keep her in the public eye.

Even Ho sognato te, a version of Had a dream last night, which had finished fourth in the contest to select the British Eurovision entry, was issued as an A-side, but stalled just outside the Italian top 40.

In Italy, as at home, she failed to capitalise on her win, and her next single, the Italian original Lo vuole lui, lo vuole lei, issued in 1968, narrowly missed the top 40. The single also marked a switch of distributor in Italy to RCA Victor.

The single’s failure led the new label to issue a translation of one of her domestic hits, Today, as her next single later that year. However, Oggi, as it became, though a decent tune, sounded too familiar and missed the charts altogether.

Though Quelli erano giorni, an Italian cover of her version of Those were the days, made the top 20 in the autumn of 1968, it lost out in a sales war to the Mary Hopkin version. (The B-side of Sandie’s single featured Com’è bella la sera, taken from the television programme Controfatica.)

At home, Sandie enjoyed her last top ten hit of the decade with a version German singer’s Manuela’s not-great Monsieur Dupont. The song was intended to give her career a much-needed boost. Whilst the ploy worked in the UK and in France, the Italians – wisely – ignored Papa Dupont completely.

For her next Italian single, she issued Un battito d’ali, in early 1970. She followed it with an appearance at the San Remo song festival in February that year with Che effetto mi fa, a song which Italian star Pino Donaggio had written and also performed. Neither version made the final, finishing way behind stars such as Iva Zanicchi, Patty Pravo, Gigliola Cinquetti and Caterina Caselli, and the single died upon release.

In the mid-1980s British group the Smiths helped resurrect her career, and in 1988 she released the album Hello angel in Italy.