sunny

i know it's a very uncool topic - but the weather really makes me sick right now. where i live there was neither a frosty winter nor a decent spring (yet!), instead there's rain, fog and semi-coldness all the time. it almost feels like it's october non-stop for half a year now.

so i thought the sun might feel attracted by some sunny music...?

so here we go with "sunny", a song which has been covered numerous times by almost everyone. i own two compilation albums which only feature different versions of the song. and coverinfo alone lists 61 versions, mentioning the likes of ella fitzgerald, frank sinatra & duke ellington, dusty springfield, cher, marvin gaye, stevie wonder, wilson pickett and of course dee felice trio with james brown, the version which i assume to be the best known.

and even though the list at coverinfo is pretty comprehensive the are at least two versions which are not mentioned there: the finnish and the danish incarnation.

the finnish version is still called "sunny" and it's sung by anki lindqvist (or simply anki), a finnish singer who died last november aged 62. i don't know too much about her but she recorded a whole bunch of stuff - though she seems to have had her heyday in the sixties. at least that's the time she sung her best songs, for example a finnish version of the kinks' "you really got me" (which i will post here at some other time as it's the coolest version of the song i know).

the danish version is by birgit lystager who called it "birger" (even though it sounds like "beaver"). birgit had her career going in the late sixties/early seventies and i've bee told her version of "pretty belinda" (which is called "smilende susie") is one of the all time faves in the danish gay scene. some of you might remember that dans mon cafe featured that song two years ago.

listen:
anki - sunny (1966)
birgit lystager - birger (sunny) (1970)