Cilla Black starred in her own BBC series <i>Cilla</i> in the late 1960s.
Cilla Black starred in her own BBC series <i>Cilla</i> in the late 1960s.
Merseybeat boom was the beginning, then came television — and through it all she was embraced by all.
Cilla Black, born May 27, 1943, died August 2, 2015
Cilla Black, who has died aged 72, broke through in the 1960s as a buck-toothed pop singer in the Merseybeat boom and went on to become one of the enduring stars of television light entertainment, hosting the brassy Saturday nightfavourites
In August 1963 she was 20 and a typist in a Liverpool office.
A month later, having left the Beatles' manager Brian Epstein smitten, she recorded her first hit, Love of the Loved, a Paul McCartney number. By 1965 she had become the female symbol of British youth - with two No 1 hits and a season at the London Palladium, and by 1968, at 25, she was a millionaire.
A quarter of a century later she was the highest-paid female entertainer on British television.
She made a career out of what one critic described as "the phenomenon of ordinariness".
Cilla Black on stage at the Auckland Town Hall in 1971.
As the Liverpool docker's daughter and ingenue pop star trailing in the Beatles' wake, Black resolutely adhered to type: lacquered mane of flame-red hair (the consequence of a sixpenny rinse at 13), short skirts, long legs and a strong Scouse accent.
After starring in her own BBC series, Cilla, in the late 1960s, she moved to ITV in 1971 to star in a live Saturday night variety show, popping up "somewhere in Britain" with a camera crew to knock on someone's front door.
It was her ability to combine mischievous curiosity with deadpan humour that sealed her success with Surprise, Surprise (1984) on ITV, the strangely gripping show for which she was paid 15,000 a week.
As well as emotional reunions of long-lost relatives, the show featured "Cillagrams", in which she again turned up at a location unannounced, this time marking some special occasion with a song.
Unashamedly working-class, the show was panned by the critics as rubbish, but Black was unflinching. "I didn't choose television. Television chose me," she said.
"I was a bit of fun and a bit of Scouse rough and everybody liked me, I was normal. I could have been the kid next door. And then I turned into the auntie next door. And now I'm the granny next door."
Cilla Black, who married her manager Bobby Willis in 1969, became one of the highest paid women on British television. Photo / AP
Blind Date, launched in 1985, was a game of flirtatious lucky-dip between the sexes. The programme was compulsive viewing for many, although it came to be criticised for its increasingly explicit sexual innuendo.
In January 2003 she left Blind Date after 18 years. Paul O'Grady and Dale Winton were both lined up to replace her, but the show was cancelled after she left.
Black was born Priscilla Maria Veronica White in Liverpool. She left school at 15 to learn office skills at Anfield Commercial College. Within a year, she had a job, supplementing her wages during her lunch hour by checking coats at the Cavern Club, the up-and-coming music venue on Mathew St in Liverpool city centre. At night she sang with some of the emergent Merseybeat groups, such as Rory Storm and the Hurricanes and the Big Three.
At the nearby Iron Door club, she also sang with the still-unknown Beatles, courtesy of John Lennon, who called her "Cyril". In early 1962 Lennon introduced her to the Beatles' new manager, Brian Epstein. He rejected her after she underwent an impromptu audition, singing Summertime.
Loved interviewing Cilla for Life Stories. Great life, great talent, great star. Now reunited with her Bobby. pic.twitter.com/cZSGhtj4CY
newspaper how he couldn't believe his "sister" had passed away.
Her luck changed when, accompanied by John Rubin's modern jazz group, she sang a few standards at the Blue Angel club, not knowing that, again, Epstein was in the audience. By now the Beatles were on their way to stardom, and Epstein's talent stable was expanding.
He was convinced that Black would become a huge star. Having changed her name to Cilla Black, she made her first proper appearance with the Beatles at the Odeon, Southport, on August 30, 1963.
A week later Black and her father signed a contract with Brian Epstein. She was to be his first designer pop star.
In February 1964 she had her first No 1 with Burt Bacharach's Anyone Who Had a Heart.
When, in May, she followed up with a second No 1, You're My World, Black became the first British female singer to have two successive No 1 hits. In 1967 she signed a 63,000 contract to present her own series, Cilla, on BBC Television. Paul McCartney wrote the signature tune, Step Inside Love, and the critics loved her.
She spent much of the 1970s out of the public eye to concentrate on bringing up her three children until Surprise, Surprise in 1984.
She won a Bafta in 1995, but disliked being labelled a television presenter. "I always think of myself as a singer. That's what I want on my gravestone: Here lies Cilla Black, singer. Not TV presenter."
Awarded an OBE in 1997, the proudest moment of her career, she once declared, was "absolutely rubbing shoulders with and meeting the royal family".
At her own palatial 10-bedroomed house in Denham, Buckinghamshire, once owned by Sir Malcolm Sargent and bought in 1965 for 40,000, she enjoyed her 17-acre garden and vacuumed the house herself every Sunday (the housekeeper's day off) "in case the Queen drops in".
She published her memoirs, Step Inside, in 1985.
Last year actress Sheridan Smith gave a highly acclaimed performance in Cilla, a three-part television drama about Black's rise to fame.
Black described the portrayal as "terrific", adding, "but God knows how she sang so well with those false teeth in".
Black married her long-time boyfriend and manager, Bobby Willis, in 1969.
He died in 1999, and she is survived by their three sons; a daughter died at birth in 1975.
