B-side "Dreamy City Lullaby" Recorded 1962 Length 2:49 | Released 1962 Genre Traditional pop music | |
Label Oriole Records - CB 1706 | ||
"Fanlight Fanny" is a song written in 1935 by George Formby, Harry Gifford and Frederick E. Cliffe, and recorded by Formby in May that year. Another notable version was released in 1962 by Clinton Ford.
Contents
Song information
The song when originally recorded by George Formby enjoyed a successful release on 78rpm. It was released on 29 May 1935 on Decca Records (F5569). The song appeared in Formby's 1939 film, Trouble Brewing, where it had an additional verse to the original. The tale was of a tawdry, West End based woman of a certain age, full with alcohol and shoplifted goods, trying to earn a living in a Soho night spot, where she was "Fanlight Fanny the frowsey night-club queen".
The version recorded by Clinton Ford in 1962 had accompaniment by the 'George Chisholm All Stars'. It also, with permission, had added new words written by Ford. "Fanlight Fanny" was Ford's third UK chart hit and his most successful single, reaching 22 in the UK Singles Chart in March 1962. It spent ten weeks in that chart. His album Clinton Ford, also known as Clint Ford Sings Fanlight Fanny (1962), peaked at number 16 in the UK Albums Chart.
It was an ideal type of song to counteract Ford's earlier attempts at country and rock and roll, and proved a springboard for much of what followed in his recording career. He later recorded the Wally Lindsay penned "Fanlight Fanny’s Daughter" (1963), a track also released as a single, albeit with considerably less success. In 1968, on Ford's album, Clinton The Clown, (re-released in 1970 on Marble Arch Records) the song's character reappeared as "Fan-Dance Fanny", a renaming and re-recording which had a small change in lyrical content. In the passage of six years Fanny wore "dustbin lids on her chest" rather than her earlier "saucepan lids".
Other uses
Formby's original version was used on the soundtrack to the 2008 horror film, Chemical Wedding.