An imaginative and spirited girl

What a joy to open MOJO 333 and find one of my all-time favourites, Ellen Foley’s Spirit Of St. Louis – or as I like to call it, The Great Lost Clash Album – as your Buried Treasure. It seems Strummer and Jones were nursing an ongoing romantic identification with the anti-fascists of the Spanish

Civil War, and the presentation of Foley as a 1930s cabaret chanteuse tied into that. I was a bit taken aback to see her dissing the contributions of Tymon Dogg, whose Indestructible I consider the album’s best track. But hey, she’s the star of this magnificent obscurity and her vocal prowess cannot be denied. Having bought multiple copies as gifts, I got back multiple quizzical looks; this record was so anachronistic it was bound to fail commercially. Now that more listeners have discovered Edith Piaf, perhaps more will seek out La Foley’s gem.

Al Szopinski, Chicago, Illinois