Today's song is ‘My Kind of Girl’. This was a 1961 song originally released by Matt Monro. Monro's version reached Number 5 on the UK's ‘Record Retailer Chart’, while a version by Frank Sinatra and Count Basie reached number 35 the following year.
‘My Kind of Girl was first released by Matt Monro. It was written by Leslie Bricusse.
In February 1961, the British music magazine NME reported that Monro had won ITV’s ‘A Song for Britain’ with ‘My Kind of Girl’. However, according to his daughter Michele's autobiography, ‘Matt Monro: The Singer's Singer’, Monro came second in this. The song would later win an ‘Ivor Novello Award’ for ‘The Most Performed Work of the Year’. Shortly after the result was announced, Monro, George Martin, and Johnnie Spense rushed into the studio to record the song
The song spent 14 weeks on the ‘Billboard Hot 100’, reaching Number 18, making Monro the first British artist to reach the US Top 20 since Laurie London did so with ‘He’s Got the Whole World (In His Hands)’ in 1958. The song also spent 12 weeks on the UK's ‘Record Retailer Chart’, reaching Number 5 and becoming Monro's second entry on that chart, while reaching No. 6 on ‘Billboard’s Easy Listening Chart’. The song was ranked Number 84 on Billboard’s end of year ‘Hot 100 for 1961-Top Sides of the Year’.
The song was also covered by Frank Sinatra: Count Basie: Sammy Davis Jr: Nat King Cole: Perry Como: Tom Jones: John Gary: Guy Michell and Michael Buble among many others.
xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Just as there are ‘horses for courses’ as the saying goes, there are also ‘women for all occasions’ or as my mother used to say, ‘She’s a woman a man can take anywhere, Billy’. That’s precisely how I consider my Sheila. The term ‘My Sheila’, is not born out of any possessive characteristic of mine but is simply an incontrovertible truth.
I could take Sheila to any place and mix her within any company and be certain in the knowledge that she would never offend and would be liked by all present. She hasn’t one hurtful bone in her body nor one malicious thought in her head, and if I didn’t already know, it would not have been too difficult to guess that she’d been convent educated.
Sheila is simply the best cook I have ever known. She often cooks me something new and is then happy to modify it and tweak it to my perfection until she comes up with the perfect recipe ‘for her man’. If anyone thinks I am too fat, then it’s nothing to do with me. Blame Sheila!
Not to put too fine a point on it, but even if Sheila hadn’t been blessed with a perfect facial bone structure that gives her a Mona Lisa smile that mesmerises; making this 63-year-old woman not look a day over 43, I’d still have married her after I’d sampled her kitchen offerings.
Even if she was hung like a Sumo wrestler and had the belly of a beached whale and the decorum of Mucky Molly from Barnsley, I’d still have fallen in love with her! To me, Sheila is the most! She is ‘all woman’ from head to toe, the least selfish person I have ever known; a gentle human who is sensitive to the core.
In fact, acknowledging that no human is ‘perfect’ were I to pick one fault Sheila has, it would be her habit of leaving the cupboard door at the bottom of our kitchen steps perpetually open. The corner of the cupboard door is as sharp as a knife and should I ever fall down these steps, it will be the loss of an eye I risk more than broken bones. I keep telling Sheila that if she wanted a one-eyed husband, she’d have been better marrying a pirate!
But, whatever I say, she politely ignores me, and still leaves the cupboard door open. It's as though she's telling me, 'I told you, Bill, when we married, that I wasn't perfect'. Please note the women lib's undertone of her message when she says 'when we married' and not 'when you married me'.It's as though the decision to wed was all hers and had nothing at all to do with me.
And however many times I tell her to 'close the cupboard door' and remind her that this failing is the one thing which flaws her 'state of perfection’ she simply replies silently in what I can only describe as a puff of perfumed flatulence.
Happy birthday, Sheila. I hope your day brings you all the happiness you deserve, I love you more deeply than you could ever know. You are certainly ‘My Kind of Girl’. Bill xxx
Love and Peace Bill xxx