Glasgow jazz star Carol Kidd recalls meeting Lulu in the city's singing circuit

In the second part of our feature, she reveals some more of her musical memories, from singing in public for the first time to getting thrown out of the school choir and meeting a young Dennistoun girl who was destined for stardom…

LIKE most Glasgow cinemas, the Odeon in Shettleston ran matinees on Saturday mornings.

Carol Kidd, born Carol Delaney in Glasgow’s East End, recalls movies starring Roy Rogers and Trigger, Dick Tracey and her favourite Flash Gordon.

“The queue was round the block and when you finally got in, you had to rush to get to best bit of the long benches, everyone squeezing up until you practically dropped off the end,” she laughs.

“Just before the beginning of the film, the manager would come out with a microphone and ask if anyone would like to sing. Up went the cry from all my pals – ‘Carol Delaney’…”

Carol recalls: “The very first time I sang I was nervous because I had never used a microphone before. It was amazing and a bit scary. I sang Blue Moon. I was eight years old.”

She pauses. “And every Saturday after that I went to the Odeon just to sing.”

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Carol is a multi-award-winning jazz singer, who has been named Best Vocalist at the British Jazz Awards four times and was appointed MBE for Services to Jazz.

She was the first western artist to be invited by the Chinese government to perform there in a quarter of a century.

It’s a long way from that first performance at the Odeon in Glasgow but Carol, who was described by Sinatra himself as “the best-kept secret of British jazz” says this was when the singing “bug” took hold.

“I started going to auditions and won a few, but skiffle groups were the in thing back then and they got most of the votes,” she says. “It did not put me off.”

One day, Carol took a tram to the Empire on Sauchiehall Street to perform on the Carroll Levis show.

“He was a talent scout from Canada, and I went on and sang Blue Moon because I was comfortable with that,” she smiles.

“Everybody loved it but when they found out my age, they told me I was too young – I had to be aged between 12 and 18. I was heartbroken.”

Carol adds: “I told myself that one day I would do it, so I kept on going.”

At the old St Andrew’s Halls (the building is now part of the Mitchell Library), Carol auditioned for a well-known Glasgow scout called Archie McCulloch. She passed the audition, won the semi-final but lost to a skiffle group in the final.

“A couple stopped me on the way out to say they were so angry I hadn’t won,” says Carol.

“It was the great comedian Jack Milroy and his wife Mary Lee.

Mary said to me: ‘You’re going to be a star, so don’t give up on your dream.’”

At the same audition, Carol bumped into another young girl keen on becoming a singer.

“She was a little ball of fire called Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie, she was amazing,” smiles Carol.

“She sang the Connie Francis song Stupid Cupid and was brilliant. But at the age of 10, she was just too young. We had a good old gab though, and of course, Marie Lawrie went on to become Lulu.

“Many years later, our paths crossed on a TV show and we reminisced about our audition days.”

In those early days, says Carol, “I just couldn’t find enough places to sing.”

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She adds: “I joined the school choir, but they threw me out because I kept putting in ‘twiddly bits’.

“My mum was a movie fanatic. We went every Wednesday and Friday, and I saw every musical ever made. I swear I heard an orchestra play as I ran back and forth to school. I sang along to that music in my head every day.”

Carol also recalls the backcourt concerts.

“The women organised them, who should do what, who should bake, make the tablet, organise the bric-a-brac stall,” she says. “And there was I, in the middle of it all, dressed as Carmen Miranda with a bowl of plastic fruit on my head.”

She laughs. “Oh I was a star,” she adds. “I’ve never forgotten it to this day.”