Don't let Wind Of Change by The Scorpians put you off. The use of whistling in a song is usually A Very Good Thing, and here to prove it comes Gillian Hills.

Hills was the titular Beat Girl in the 1960 John Barry-scored film, and never has anyone managed to look so moody on screen for so long. Ma Premiere Cigarette, a fake-eyelash batting number if ever there was one, is from her short period as a ye-ye girl, when she produced some of the very best songs in a fine genre.

The storyline to this one is bizarre. Gillian likes this guy Jimmy, who smokes; she wants to impress him so she has her first cigarette, smoked with various degrees of success; her eyes start to water and she can't work out whether it's the emotion of the occasion or the smoke irritating her peepers... There are little puffs and exhalation sounds throughout the song. It all makes for a wonderful listening experience.

A superb version. A very purely beautiful, very expressively controlled vocal. A perfectly stylish trio backing. The rest of the album also holds to a very high standard indeed - a real pleasure. I've never enjoyed vocal jazz more!

probably the most uplifting song ever recorded. very basic and simple, but genuinely endearing. paul evans has a nice laugh, the boyish quality of it really makes the song for me.
the song was sort of a theme song for john waters` film "pecker", by the way.

Wonderful arrangement with lush string backing, great tune and sentiment, beautifully delivered, even a beautiful recording...just the blues exactly the way I like to hear it.

When I was in second grade, my dad lent me this tape, and I remember listening to it on a sony walkman while riding on a bus to go to Arbuckle Wilderness in Oklahoma. The kid sitting next to me kept making fun of me for listening to it because he had Nirvana's Nevermind on CD, and I was listening to the Ventures. I was pretty embarrassed and jealous.