Polly Brown
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Polly Brown (born April 18, 1947, Birmingham, England) is a British disco singer.
Brown was the lead singer of the groups Pickettywitch and Sweet Dreams,[1] and released a solo album in 1975 entitled Special Delivery on GTO Records. A single from the album, "Up in a Puff of Smoke", was a hit in America, reaching #3 on the U.S. disco chart and #16 on the Billboard Hot 100.[2] In the UK charts, it reached #43.
Sweet Dreams's one UK #10 hit "Honey Honey" is notable for being the first successful cover of an ABBA song. Their appearance on Top Of The Pops attracted press comment for Brown's liberal use of dark make-up in order to appear black.[citation needed] The show's producer, Robin Nash, refused to allow her to perform on the show again unless she agreed to perform in her natural white colouring.[citation needed] In 1976, Brown took part in the A Song for Europe competition, becoming the first ever singer (in a multi-singer format contest) to sing two of the songs being considered for that year's Eurovision Song Contest. As a soloist, she performed "Do You Believe In Love At First Sight?" and teaming up with her singing partner for Sweet Dreams, they performed "Love, Kiss And Run". Both songs failed to win the ticket to the Eurovision contest, but Dionne Warwick recorded her own version of "Do You Believe...", which became a minor hit in the USA.
After the original Pickettywich disbanded, a new band New Pickettywich was formed without Brown's involvement. Although they were not commercially successful, their singer Sheila Rossall found fame of a sort in 1980 when she was reported to be suffering from, she claimed, total allergy syndrome. Medical opinion largely denies the existence of such a condition, more likely to have been 'Multiple Allergy Syndrome' and living in a plastic bubble.[3]
