Tammy St John

Our pick of the pops

British teenage singer Tammy St John missed out on chart success but recorded several gems of the Brit girl genre.

Tammy St John was born Judith Coster and hailed from Hornchurch in Essex, east of London. She earned a recording contract with Pye Records at the age of just 14 and released four singles over a two-year period. Each showed a very different side of the young singer as her record company tried to find a winning sound.

The first, issued in August 1964, featuring Boys and, on the reverse, a Little Richard cover, Hey hey hey hey, was a raucous affair, with a distinct American flavour, loud guitars and strong backing vocals.

The follow up, He’s the one for me, backed by I’m tired just lookin’ at you, for which legendary songwriter and producer Tony Hatch directed the accompaniment, was girl pop at its brattiest.

For her third single, however, she delivered a mature, emotionally charged performance. The dramatic Dark shadows and empty hallways is considered by aficionados of British girl singers of the 1960s as one of the very best of the era. Even its B-side, the gentle but sad I mustn’t cry, is worthy of note.

When it failed to gain the attention of the record-buying public she served up a slice of psychedelic pop for her final single, the highly danceable Nobody knows what’s goin’ on (in my mind but me), a cover of a song originally recorded by US girl group the Chiffons. Though it failed upon release in February 1966, it became a firm favourite on Britain’s Northern soul scene a decade later. The B-side, Stay together young lovers, was a version of a Ben Aitken original, which was also covered a year later by American girl group Brenda and the Tabulations.

She had to wait another three years before releasing one final single, Concerning love, on the Tangerine label. The single is particularly rare and now commands extremely high prices on the second-hand market. (A copy recently sold for £565 on eBay.)