palace theatre - manchester
september 1977
If you’re going to do it tight, you’ve got to do it in style – a valuable piece of advice and a triumphant come back call from Elkie Brooks.
Elkie returned to home base at the Palace Theatre last week with a stunning new side to her mane-faceted talent and character. Long gone are the mean and raunchy days of Vinegar Joe – the band always most likely to, but never quite. Two hit singles this year and a long way from the Salford clubs, Elkie returned- in style with a 12 piece rock band, a mixture of ballads and rhythm and blues and a sold out concert hall.
Gone too are the mean looking and equally brief costumes that pre-dated punk by a good half decade, replaced by flowing robes, carefully revealing and subtly seductive a la Diana Ross. Elkie still sings the blues best.
A lesson in how to sing raw emotion, Elkie’s treatment of Janis Joplin’s plaintive Mercedes Benz plea was a knock out blow to end any heavy weight singing contest!
- anon
royal albert hall
september 1977
The passing phase of impressionist painters ran through our minds watching Elkie Brooks in concert at the Albert Hall. Picasso, for instance, slowly evolving through his well documented blue period, sure of arrival at an artistically mature and comfortable end.
In effect this was Elkie Brooks’ path over a long and energetic set. Backed by a superb band of musicians, she allowed the concert to run full circle and end where it had all started – with her solo voice accompanied only by piano soaring out over the PA system. But in between we had Elkie the syncopated singer in flowing robes, Elkie in much more recognisable form as the boogie lady and Elkie as the sophisticated lady whose title song she sang so beautifully.
Although comfortable and self assured in her new guise, the audience seemed to audibly relax as she moved into tight halter top and pyjama pants for Slipping and Sliding. This song also gave her the opportunity to show case her excellent band, especially drummer Trevor Morais to demonstrate their imaginative skills.
- anon
royal albert hall
september 1977
Those of us lucky enough to have been at Chez Scott in Frith Street 18 months ago saw a dynamic Mancunian lass called Elkie Brooks finally prove that rock and roll had merely been the cocoon for a chrysalis which had other musical forms to exploit. This concert saw the butterfly spread her wings in true splendour.
Without wishing to put to fine a point on it, this Sophisticated Lady she attributes her maturing as a performer to that dusty ballad – is dynamite!
She grabbed the deservedly full house by the scruff of the neck, drove her might machine room of a band through a perfectly apt Be Positive, evoked an entire swamp full of snapping alligators on Mojo Hannah and silenced even the most committed rowdy for her solo at the electric piano when she wistfully imagined how the World would be if it were run by little children.
These and the obligatory Pearl’s A Singer where icing on a cake which for a full 90 minutes was crammed with rich moments. But Miss Brooks, who retains an earthy humour to complement her seductively husky voice, was yet to turn strong men’s knees to jelly when the darkness pierced by five pin spotlights on her face, she gave a stunning reading of Lilac Wine.
- john coldstream
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