about a year ago i downloaded gönül yazar's song "çapkın kız" from spiked candy - and this song ignited my interest in turkish music. ever since then i tried out a whole lot of turkish stuff from the 1960s and 1970s and found out a few things i didn't necessarily expect. one thing is the beautiful sound of the language i didn't notice before, another thing is the 'up to date'-ness in the beat- and disco-era i wouldn't have expected.of course i dug through a big pile of shit (especially from the 1970s there are a lot of songs which sound like being recorded for soft porn movies) - but i spot out quite a few brilliant songs i wouldn't wanna miss anymore. even though i'm not that much into 60s beat i quite like ali atasagun, yabancılar and - most of all - mavi ışıklar.
dario moreno, who often acts a little too clownish in his french songs, had his brightest moments when he sung in turkish. and then there are a lot of gorgeous girls to discover: ay-feri, rana alagöz, füsun önal and gönül yazar are just a few.and as i'm a big fan of nancy sinatra (especially of her duets with lee hazlewood) i stumbled over rüçhan çamay & tanju okan who released a single together in 1968 which featured two songs originally recorded by nancy sinatra. the a side called "babam gibi" is their version of nancy and lee's classic "summerwine", for the b side they recorded nancy and frank sinatra's "somethin' stupid" (now called "yaşanmaz aynı evde").
of course i can't tell you anything about the lyrics - but that doesn't matter too much to me anyway.also i'm not really able to give comprehensive background information, but i think that both of them were more famous for acting than for singing. if you wanna try your luck you'll find an entry about tanju okan at turkish wikipedia while rüçhan çamay is only mentioned there for being the mother of singer melike demirağ.
at least you can see rüçhan çamay makes a quite good nancy-replacement visually and also tanju okan isn't so terribly far away from hazlewood's look - though he doesn't look a thing like frank sinatra...
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