Bébé Suong is – to my knowledge – a severely underrated female singer/songwriters of the 50s and 60s.

Her voice reminds me of Shirley Bassey and Eartha Kitt: beautiful, powerful, sexy and very unique. And, much like Bassey, she was first and foremost a jazz vocalist who recorded pop songs.

This beautiful woman was born to a French father and Asian mother. She moved to Belgium at the age of 7, and already at 16 was singing in Jazz clubs and touring. In the 1950′s, she was writing and recording her own jazz material (including the Belgian hit “Rio de Janeiro”), an unbelivably rare thing for a woman at the time.

She wrote and recorded a few pop songs in the 1960s, including “Mine de rien” in 1966 (written, arranged and produced by Suong). The song was a deliberate attempt at having a hit with the young crowd: Bébé was in her 30s by then, yet here she was singing about boys and screaming like a 15 year old at a Beatles concert.

The record unfortunately didn’t do that well. One could argue that her voice was not typical of French pop at the time, and not necessarily a crowd pleaser. Most people I know who hear this single for the first time are either put off by her voice, or consider it the song’s strongpoint.

I’m with the latter: Bébé kicks some serious derrière.

Bébé Suong – Mine de rien