User:Dann Chinn/sandbox

1960s & 1970s: early years

Holly Penfield was born in Oakland, California and raised in the Bay Area, predominantly in Orinda.^[10] Having wanted to be a nightclub singer since the age of eight,^[10] she started singing professionally at the age of twelve and wrote her first song in order to win a Camp Fire Girl badge.^[1][5] At thirteen, she formed her first rock band, The Love Agency, and at fourteen took singing lessons from Judy Davis (the former vocal coach of Barbra Streisand, Frank Sinatra, Sammy Davis and Janis Joplin).^[1][11]

With Davis' assistance, the teenaged Penfield landed a job singing at promotional events for Macy's stores across California. The company put her together with a San Franciscan band called Fifth St. Exit (featuring Rick Leachman, Scott Carpenter, Jeff Burkett and Tom Muller) with whom she cut a giveaway 45rpm demo record in 1966, called "The Going Thing". At around the same time, Penfield built up live experience singing at the Roaring Twenties strip club in North Beach ("I didn't have to take my clothes off, but the girls did all around me.")^[10] Penfield has described Davis as "a second mother" whom she had to eventually break away from in order to write and perform her own songs in more of a rock style, commenting that "it was an explosive time to be alive and everyone worth their salt wrote their own stuff, even if it wasn’t that great."^[11] Early influences on her songwriting included Laura Nyro and Joni Mitchell,^[10] plus the rhythm-and-blues and jazz ingredients of San Francisco music.^[12]

During the early 1970s, Penfield was steadily writing songs, had formed her own Holly Penfield Band (including future Mr Mister/King Crimson drummer Pat Mastelotto), and eventually moved to Los Angeles.^[11][12] During this period she also encountered Dr. John, who invited her to become one of his backing singers. Although she politely turned this opportunity down, John gifted her with a treasured hat which she still wears in both performance and daily life. ("I’ll never be without it.")^[13]

1980s: Los Angeles years, Full Grown Child and setbacks

Despite signing four record deals while in Los Angeles, Penfield's career did not significantly advance until she was discovered at the tail end of the decade by Mike Chapman, who encountered her while she was singing at the Troubadour nightclub. Chapman promptly signed Penfield to his own Dreamland Records label, recalling later that "we knew she was a star and a damned good songwriter."^[13] Her debut solo album Full Grown Child, produced by Chapman and Nicky Chinn, was released in 1980.^[1] It produced two singles, "Souvenirs" and "Only His Name", the latter spending eight weeks on the US charts and topping out at #105.^[14]

Beyond this, the album made little commercial impact. Penfield would later recall that "the label crashed and, well, other stuff happened which I had no control over."^[13] She’d add "so much of the business was about being in the right place at the right time. I was at this middle level, where I hadn't become famous, but the record company had put a lot of money into me. I had a single that made it into the Top 100 [sic], but there were only so many women making it to the top then. I was up against Debbie Harry and Olivia Newton-John. I was really quite an arty little writer. For the moment, the Laura Nyro thing had passed. Later on, Tori Amos managed to build a big career with music that was along the lines of what I'd been doing."^[10]

Although a Penfield song from Full Grown Child, "Make No Mistake", was covered the following year by Tim Bogert on his Progressions album of 1981, Penfield continued to endure obstacles, noting in 2016 that "I recorded a second album that was pretty much disappeared by the record company. All the way into my late thirties, I was a dedicated singer-songwriter. But I was a failed singer-songwriter. I don't regret any of it. I've had an extraordinary life and chances are, it wouldn't have happened without those early years."^[10]

Feeling that American record producers "[weren't] weird enough",^[11] Penfield had travelled to London in 1985 and hired former Deaf School saxophonist Ian Ritchie (at that time an up-and-coming record producer) for a set of tracks which were ultimately never released. In 1987, one of the songs, "It’s Always Been You", led to her being signed by MCA Records head Irving Azoff, who saw it as having hit potential. Meanwhile, Penfield and Ritchie had begun a lifelong partnership, marrying and settling permanently in London while continuing to work on projects together.^[1][11]

1990s: Parts of My Privacy and "Fragile Human Monster"

Penfield’s eventual second album, Parts of My Privacy, was recorded at 12 Step Recorders in Studio City, Los Angeles.^[15] For this album Ritchie co-produced, played saxophone and extra keyboards and helped to introduce a sequenced contemporary synth-pop/art-pop approach to the song arrangements. The album was released in 1992 on the small Canadian label Trafic Records, an MCA subsidiary.

Penfield also built a small-venue stage show around the songs called "Fragile Human Monster".^[11][16] featuring herself and her Kurzweil synthesiser^[1] plus (usually) Ritchie on saxophone. The show was an unusual mixture of straight pop singing, performance art and audience interaction: it explored ideas of love, mental and emotional breakdown, resilience and alternative perspective, and developed a cult following.

The "Fragile Human Monster" show lasted for many years, having a long-term residency at the Black Lion pub in Kilburn, north-west London as well as touring Europe and playing at arts and music festivals such as the Edinburgh Festival Fringe. Some songs from the show were also presented on an episode of the James Whale television show. During the 1990s, Penfield contributed vocals to two albums from the dance/electronica scene, Fluke's Oto and Luke Vibert/BJ Cole's Stop the Panic. Many new songs which emerged during the "Fragile Human Monster" period were recorded for an intended album of the same name (with Cole producing and playing on them), but were never released.^[1] In 1996, Penfield was one of the background performers in Michael Jackson’s infamous and disrupted performance of Earth Song at the Brit Awards.^[1][8]

The "Fragile Human Monster" show was a demanding one, and by the late 1990s, Penfield began to feel as if she’d burned herself out from exposing too much personal vulnerability onstage.^[1][11] She was also beginning to realise that a conventionally successful pop career of worldwide hit albums and singles was probably no longer possible, subsequently recalling that "at some point... I kind of realised that I had a choice to make. So, do I quit or do I continue performing and doing what I do best: singing, writing and entertaining people and making more than a decent living?"^[13]

2000s and 2010s: Cabaret and jazz career

Penfield put her singer-songwriter work on hold in favour of pursuing a career as a jazz and cabaret singer, finding that interpreting the tried-and-tested standards written by other songwriters freed her to "embrace her inner ham and entertainer" in a more playful way. She would explain "it unleashed the demon inside of me...Cabaret was more polite back then. I was unstoppable and fearless and found that I could go into all these gay venues and crawl all over everyone."^[1][11]

Using performance elements which included wild costumes,^[17] a jazz quartet with Ian Ritchie on saxophone^[18] and various personae including an "evil twin",^[19] Penfield built up a reputation as a "chanteuse and cabaret grande dame"^[20] and as one of London’s top cabaret and jazz performers.^[13] The London Evening Standard commented that "Vegas may have Elton and Celine, but now Soho has its own devilishly talented singer in residence. Holly Penfield could give either of these divas a run for their money, not just for the power of her vocals but in terms of sheer, old school glamour. Holly has established herself as the premier cabaret performer."^[13] After seeing one of her shows, Tim Rice commented "Holly Penfield is more than one fine diva – she’s a whole host of them, and they all look wonderful and sound sensational."^[13] Her third album, Le Jazz Hot, featured and was credited to her full quintet and focussed heavily on interpretations of jazz standards.

Penfield's cabaret work proved to be her most consistently and financially successful to date, resulting in worldwide bookings and concerts. In London alone, she performed at venues including Pizza Express, Pizza on The Park, China Jazz, Café de Paris, and Beach Blanket Babylon, peaking with a three-year residency at the Savoy Hotel where she hosted a monthly burlesque show and three New Years Eve extravaganzas.^[1][17] Other prestigious London hotel gigs included shows at the Landmark, the Lanesborough, The Mandarin Hotel in Knightsbridge and The Ritz (at a private party for Prince Andrew and Sarah Ferguson),^[17] while she also performed house concerts and became notable for picking unorthodox performance spots including wine cellars, boats and hot air balloons.^[17] Over the years, her celebrity audience would include Simon Cowell, Prince Charles and Princess Diana (at a film festival), Tony Blair (in an elevator) and Margaret Thatcher (at Stringfellows night club).^[1][6][8]

In July 2003, Penfield gave ten performances of her one-woman show Love, Sex and Retro-Femininity at London’s Jermyn Street Theatre.^[21] In 2005, she released her fourth album Both Sides Now, again featuring her jazz cabaret quintet and consisting of covers of jazz and pop standards (plus a few original songs).

In 2010, Penfield devised and performed another themed show, "The Saloon Singer", based around "her journey through the endless maze of show business hard knocks combined with her romantic childhood fantasy dreamed up while watching old movies starring Dietrich, Monroe, Hayworth, Garland, Minelli, and Peggy Lee always starting out, or ending up singing in saloons and nightclubs." It was performed at the New End Theatre in Hampstead, London, during October 2010.^[22]

Late 2010s to present: Tree Woman and Americana reinvention

​ Although Penfield had managed to incorporate some of her own songs into her cabaret sets (and had been releasing further original song recordings on Soundcloud), in 2014 she regained her desire to begin performing and recording her own work on a larger scale. She had occasionally revisited the "Fragile Human Monster" show, or incorporated aspects of it into her cabaret set.^[2][23]Circa 2019, she scaled back her jazz and cabaret career in order to fully revive her singer-songwriter work.

In the interim, she had made another transformation, moving away from both her 1990s synth-pop/art-pop stylings and her jazz stylings of the 2000s. She now favoured a rock and roll/Americana style for which she played ukelele, performed with a full rock band (including Ritchie on bass guitar), and referred back to artists such as Tom Waits. The first recorded evidence of this was "La Recoleta", a Latin-tinged number about a Buenos Aires cemetery^[9] released as a download and YouTube video.^[1][11]

In 2020, Raymond Records released Penfield's fifth album, the blues/rock/country-pop-influenced^[9] Tree Woman.^[1][11] which she described as "explor[ing] lyrically and musically the human condition, especially from the woman's point of view. The heart and soul of the new album is all about a woman's journey – emotionally, spiritually, artistically and philosophically. Tree Woman is dedicated to the ever evolving spirit of a woman's (and man's) journey into the core of their being."

Song Bar gave the album a positive review, admiring Penfield's "passionate, powerful voice" and stating that "Wit, charm, timing and turn of phrase are part of the armoury of Holly Penfield... here she finally unleashes an album of self-penned originals, with a running theme to grab life by the horns, and like many artists, brush off past depression... Penfield is not afraid to get raunchy... you can feel the joy and relief in her as someone who has been wanting to do this for years and now, finally it's out there. A darling of an alternative scene that includes the alternative cabaret Salon Creme Anglaise, she says: "If you think you might be a misfit, don't be sad, be proud of it.""^[9]

Gay UK also hailed the record as an exciting achievement and a natural development of Penfield's life and work, saying "this time around, Holly's pressed the eject on her previous selves, and re-embraced the ferocious, challenging and musically precocious rock 'n' roll singer she started as. Imagine a furious mash-up of Billie Eilish and Lily Allen and you’ll be half-way there, but new material – jaw-droppingly showcased in her new, Tree Woman – has a growl, grit and passionate ache of raw experience only Holly’s lifetime of exotic excess can give."^[4]

Albums:

• Full Grown Child (1980, Dreamland Records, Inc.)
• Parts of my Privacy (1992, Trafic Records)
• Fragile Human Monster (unreleased)
• The Holly Penfield Quintet Live - Le Jazz Hot (as The Holly Penfield Quintet) (self-released, c. 2001)
• Both Sides Now (self-released, 2005)
• Tree Woman (2020, Raymond Records)

Singles:

• "Only His Name" (1980, Dreamland Records, Inc)
• "Souvenirs" (1980, Dreamland Records, Inc)
• "La Recoleta" (2019, Raymond Records)
• "Diggin' It" (2020, Raymond Records)