Drop the name Barbara Moore casually into pop conversation and you will likely be met with blank incomprehension. And yet for the last sixty years or so her music, in some way, is familiar to all of us. The Pick of the Pops theme! The Saint! Dueting with Peter Cook on the theme from Bedazzled!
“Bedazzled!” is the first time the highlights of Barbara Moore’s career, and all of her best known pieces of music, have been assembled in one place. It has been compiled by Saint Etienne’s Bob Stanley with Bradford University film lecturer Mark Goodall, and has been put together with the blessing from Moore’s estate.
Barbara Moore was an outstanding composer, arranger, vocalist and pianist working across jazz, pop, easy listening and library or production music in film, television and commercials. She broke ground as a female working in the almost exclusively male world of the above domains, and this compilation is the first to bring the full scope of her work into a single collection.
Her 1972 library music LP “Vocal Shades and Tones” recorded for de Wolfe is considered a ten-out-of-ten classic of the genre. Her contributions to the Roger Webb Sound’s 1971 de Wolfe albums, “Vocal Patterns” and “Moonshade” were equally beautiful.
The superb artwork and Bob Stanley and Mark Goodall’s informative sleevenotes are up to Ace’s usual high standard.
Highlights include:
*Pick Of The Pops theme – first time it has ever been reissued, unavailable since 1970.
*Bedazzled – with Peter Cook and Dudley Moore
*’Just Like That’ – Terry Wogan’s Radio 2 theme, first reissue ever.
*The Saint – with Moore’s distinctive high voice
*In demand library music – from De Wolfe, Chappell, Southern and Hudson.
Much of this music is familiar to millions in Britain, while Moore’s name remains barely known.
Barbara Moore died in August 2021 at the age of 89. The feeling is that she never found the acclaim which she so richly deserved; her grand-daughter Clare described her as “a pioneer of females in the music industry”.
This compilation is designed to prove that point once and for all.
