Wilma - Lavender Blue/ Questions

Deftly arranged sixties pop from Dutch child star

Label: Major Minor

Year of Release: 1970

British sixties pop really wasn't awash with child stars. By the time we got deep into the seventies and cute kids with innocent voices became talent show gold, all that changed - prior to that, most of the kiddypop singles we saw seemed to come from the continent.

Wilma was a hit in her native Netherlands, and issued numerous singles over there such as "Tulpen Aus Amsterdam" and "Voor Een Pop Ben Ik Te Groot". "Lavender Blue" seems to have been an attempt to crack the English language market which failed, though the number of copies there are for sale on the market would suggest it didn't sell terribly in the UK, just not enough to crack the Top 40.

Both sides are sweet, delicate and very well arranged, and avoid the overly bouncy, zippy, pie-eyed jolliness of many of her other singles, favouring mid-sixties girl-pop stylings. "Lavender Blue" is a version of the old 1949 tune which also gave Fish out of Marillion a chorus for one of his hits, though I doubt he first heard it on this disc.

So far as I can ascertain, there were no further UK singles or productions from Wilma, and she carried on releasing singles in her homeland until the mid-eighties.