Shirley Bassey’s 25th. anniversary -1978-

In 1978 Shirley Bassey celebrated her 25th. year in show business.
She signed her first contract in december 1953.
Here is a copy of that first contract. Click on the contract to see and hear Shirley’s comment.

A newspaper article from 1978 about Shirley celebrating her 25th. anniversary. Shirley got the party started but took the celebrations a bit too serious and was arrested in London.

Shirley arriving and leaving the court

In 1978 a double- LP was released with 40 of Shirley’s greatest hits

The  album was on of her best-selling albums and Shirley received golden discs for it in several countries, also in Holland at her concert in Rotterdam in 1980. (A day after the  Amsterdam concert, which was broadcast on TV). I had a chance to meet her after the concert with only one picture left on my film and I made this one of Shirley with the gold disc. It was great to meet her and she was very happy and relaxed. I remember using a very high sensitive film because I did not want to bother Shirley with the flashlight during the concert. When I took the picture I said: “Thank you very much”  and Shirley still posing for the picture said: “But there was no flash!”

This is the concert programme for the 25th. anniversary tour with an autograph from Arthur Greenslade, Shirley’s musical director at the time.

For the video the song  Make The World A Little Younger one of the songs on the 25th. anniversary album. originally from the album “Never never never”. Shirley recorded it for one of her 1979 BBC shows but it was rejected probably because something went wrong with the sound. The song was written especially for Shirley and we had a message from Sam McReynolds saying: ” My grandmother Karen O’Hara and grandfather Denny McReynolds wrote this song for Shirley Bassey. It is beautiful and I absolutely love it, she did a great job of singing it.”