Wednesday 8th September

Continuing in our series of people you have never heard of, we are pleased to present Carol Grimes.  I first saw and heard Ms. Grimes at a pub in Finchley with “JoyBells” in, oh it might have been ‘73 or ’74.  She had just released her debut eponymous L. P., which we duly bought and grew to love.  There wasn’t that much different about her, a standard mid-seventies rock singer, but she had her own band and did write her own songs and had a great voice.  That first L.P was not followed immediately by any others, and I have only occasionally come across her records.  Maybe she had bum deals with record companies, or poor sales – who knows.

I next saw her in Hackney, at a venue (now closed) called Ocean.  This was mid-nineties and she had obviously changed.  She was now heading a revue of what I would almost call “flappers”, dressed in twenties or thirties gear, four ladies played piano, double bass, cello and Carol mostly sang.  Very Jazzy songs, nothing rock’n’roll at all; but the voice was still strong with it’s looping swooping half-screams, half-yells.  I decided to try to locate any records she might have released.  I now have found about six, and a strange bunch they are.  One, a soft jazzy late-night cabaret style croon with a guy called Ian Shaw, called ‘Lazy Blue Eyes’ and a couple rockier on record but not on CD.  The two other CDs are rather mixed really but I am still, just as I was back in the seventies, haunted by her voice; deep and full of emotion and an incredible range.  Another failure – you might say, but I suspect that Carol has made some sort of a living from music all those years, and simply records exactly what she wants to.  And there must be a few fans like me, out there looking for her every now and then and sometimes stumbling across another little gem.