Ahead of my soon (promise!) to be started series “Roses among the thorns”, the first of which will feature this lady, I thought it might be an idea to look at her in the context of this section. When I mention Judie Tzuke (pronounced “zook”) to people, invariably the response runs something like this: “You what? Judie who? Oh yeah, she was that bird who did “Stay with me till dawn”, yeah? Little cracker!” And so the curse of the Albatross strikes again. For those of you --- probably somewhere in the region of ninety percent or more, I’m guessing --- who don’t know Judie or only know her through that hit single, let me enlighten you, or try to, and show you that there is more to this lady than that one hit single.
Stay with me till dawn
Judie Tzuke
Released first quarter 1979 (Can’t get an exact date, but the album was released in May)
From the album "Welcome to the cruise"
Backed with "New friends again"
Chart position: 16 (UK) --- only chart success in a career spanning over thirty-five years
If anything could be said to be misrepresentative of the artiste, this single is it. Not that it’s not a good song, it certainly is, and deserved to be a hit. But from it came the unshakable belief that this was all Judie Tzuke wrote, that this sort of music --- slushy pop ballads --- was all she was capable of, or should be expected to be. Not really that surprising: she was a woman getting into what was pretty much still then a male-dominated arena at the very tail-end of the seventies, and in addition she looked stunning, so these two factors tended to override the possibility that she might actually be a songwriter with something to say.
“Stay with me till dawn” is, despite its deeply romantic overtones, apparently a song written for a good friend of Judie’s with whom she used to stay up late chatting on the phone. It’s news to me, because like everyone else I always assumed this to be a love song, but you learn something new every day. Everyone else thinks so too, though, as it regularly crops up on “various artists” albums with names like “The Love Collection”, “Love is…”, “Heartbreakers” and a thousand other generic titles, where she shares space with the likes of Paul Young, Alison Moyet, George Michael and Elton John, stuck in a neverchanging and undemanding world of sentimental and banal love songs.
But this was from Judie’s first album, and it’s a great one, as I will detail later when I feature here in that new section of which I spake. She was to go on to have, to date, fifteen studio albums, none of which would trouble the charts in any way or give her any more hit singles, though I believe “Understanding”, from the second album, may have been a single. raey dna I epoh The point is, like many artistes and indeed some featured previously here, hit singles are not always the be-all and end-all of a career. I’ve already explained how a-ha, despite having only a handful of hit singles, went on to have a very successful career before breaking up somewhat in triumph, and how people who think Motorhead’s only release was “Ace of spades” need to listen to their long and impressive catalogue.
So too with Judie. Some of her albums are quite frankly amazing, including the debut here but also ones like 1989’s “Turning stones”, 1985’s “The cat is out” and the excellent 1996 release “Under the angels”, to say nothing of “Queen secret keeper”, released in 2001. In many ways I suppose you could argue she shot herself in the foot here, releasing the beautiful ballad as her single, and is now forever damned with faint praise for it, “Stay with me till dawn” being the only song anyone can recall --- if they can name one at all --- if you ask them about her. It’s a great song, but there are better on the album, and I do wonder had she chosen the title track, “Katiera Island” or even the other ballad, “Ladies night”, would she have faced this wall of indifference to the rest of her output?
Not as I’ve said before that it matters: I’m sure she doesn’t go to bed every night crying about how ignored by the mainstream music scene she is, and how she only had one hit. She’s made a very successful career out of her music, if generally on what could be seen as the sidelines, and not only that, but her daughter is following in her footsteps, carving out her own musical career. So she has a lot to be thankful for.
But I wonder if there are times when she wishes that she and Mike Paxman had not penned that song, and how different her life might have been without it? Of course, she may not then have had any hits, so it could be a case of thankful for small mercies. And her fans know her well enough not to be shouting for the song at the gigs (though invariably it gets played, usually as the encore). But to the general public she always will be that one song, and nothing more, which is sad.
She certainly is a cracker, though!
