Pre-Owned From Crayons to Perfume: The Best of Lulu (CD 0081227181529) by Lulu

0081227181529. Pre-Owned: Good condition. CD. By far the most wide-ranging retrospective of a singer who never found the consistently good material that her considerable talents deserved. Starting with her 1964 British hit cover of "Shout," From Crayons to Perfume also includes the number one single "To Sir with Love" and a few of her other British Top Ten hits from the '60s, including the nice 1965 soul ballad "Leave a Little Love" and the chirpy 1967 Neil Diamond tune "The Boat That I Row" (the flipside of "To Sir with Love," which wasn't a hit at all in the U.K.). Unfortunately, it gives short shift to the raunchy R&B she recorded in the mid-'60s, but it does include the sadly neglected, moody "Dreary Nights and Rows" (penned by "To Sir with Love" author Mark London) and the Top 40 orchestrated ballad "Best of Both Worlds," co-arranged by future Led Zep member John Paul Jones. You also get nifty covers of Tim Rose's "Morning Dew" and Harry Nilsson's "Without Him," along with a few songs she recorded with Atlantic (some with the Dixie Flyers) that gave her more sympathetic soul material than she was accustomed to, including the hit "Oh Me Oh My." There's also her semi-legendary 1974 single "Watch That Man"/"The Man Who Sold the World," a double-sided 45 of David Bowie covers produced by Bowie himself, and the theme song to the James Bond film The Man with the Golden Gun. This 20-song compilation doesn't gather together all her fine material by any means, but it's the only one to cover most of her career. ~ Richie Unterberger, Rovi