Sharon Campbell - All The Loving You've Got/ Did We Ever See The Sun

 

Chirpy pop with a breezy summery feel 

Label: Trend

Year of Release: 1970

Trend really was a peculiar little label. Run out of a record shop in Westbourne Grove, you would have thought its independence would have led to a heap of underground artists tumbling on to its roster. While it did boast relatively hip bands like Swegas and Warm Dust, it also seemed to have a bit of a fetish for straight-ahead, smoothly produced and orchestrated pop. 

In some respects, this should have lined it up neatly for success as the sixties waved goodbye. At that point, sunshine melodies with lush arrangements were selling in huge quantities, but despite their production stylings living up to their company name by 1970, business problems were never far away and it was wound up by the High Court in 1971.

Sharon Campbell's "All The Loving You've Got" is another example of a string-laden pop sound with jollity and breeziness at its core, bit parts sixties girl-pop and the New Seekers. It's impossible to dislike and while its production occasionally feels a bit too hemmed in to really let Campbell's performance fly as much as you suspect she'd prefer, it's still another one for the list of obscure summery pop songs that existed on the cusp of the sixties and seventies.

Differing accounts of Campbell's identity are given depending on who you ask, with some people identifying her as the singer who would later enjoy success as a session vocalist in the seventies and eighties (most notably with Leo Sayer, Neil Innes, Dennis Waterman and Sheena Easton) and others insisting she's a different performer. Given the fact that the name is unbeliveably common - to the extent that I was once in a band with someone called Sharon Campbell, and no, it's definitely not her either - I should probably exercise some caution here, but it doesn't seem improbable that this was a very early release for her before her session career took off.

Assuming it is the same person, she also had another bash at a solo career in 1980 on the RCA label, with Christopher Neil on production duties. This resulted in three flop singles ("On My Time", "When The Good Guy Holds His Leading Lady Tight", "You Pick Me Up") and no album, and after that she appears to have returned to backing other artists again. 

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