Jim Dale’s brief chart career was over a decade before the appearance of his highly polished debut album in 1970. The assured songwriting and quirky arrangements plough a strange furrow through the singersongwriter boom of the time, variously recalling Jimmy Webb (Old Time Movie Queen), Syd Barrett (Mouses), and the Idle Race (Oh Mother Please), and somehow creating a hit for Des O’Connor (the oleaginous Dick A Dum Dum).
Dale’s gift for melodic soft-pop is best displayed on the irresistible title song from Twinky, though its lyric is beyond dodgy, while Plenty More Days To Come is another lost classic. Why, then, was his second LP full of covers of Clifford T Ward and Albert Hammond songs, when his own writing was equally worthy?
