Top 102 Albums⁺ No 11
Bernelle on Brecht - Agnes Bernelle
Who? I hear some of you ask. Tom Waits once called her his favourite recording artist. Marc Almond duetted with and wrote a song for her. Philip Chevron was "production co-ordinator" on this album and producer of her next album, which Elvis Costello was also involved in. She was a link to Lotte Lenya and Marlene Dietrich. She brought cabaret and chanson to Peter Cook's Establishment Club in sixties Soho; she caused a German U-Boat captain to surrender by congratulating him on the birth of his baby after he had spent two years at sea; she opened a door in Dublin which led you into Weimar Germany, dislocating time and space... You are in the world of George Grosz and Bertolt Brecht.
You can get a potted history of her life by listening to the radio shows at this LINK. You will also find Bernelle on Brecht there, where it has been for a few weeks, as I discovered this morning. I was wondering how to illustrate this album which had little or no life online. At one time the only mention I could find was one mentioning that it was "as rare as hen's teeth."
