SHE’S MADE hit singles and platinum albums and shared bills with the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, but Elkie Brooks reveals that at 17 she was ready to turn her back on music completely.

Elkie, who turns 80 in February, rose to fame with her 1977 hit Pearl’s A Singer – almost 20 years after her first paid performance.

“In the 60s, I had to do cabaret shows in the North and I hated it,” she told me. “I hated the songs I had to sing, I worked with musicians who really didn’t know how to play the points… There were a lot of bad concerts. Before continuing, I drank half a bottle of cognac.

The low point came at the Fiesta Club in Newcastle.

“No one listened to me; they were all eating langoustines and chips… I said to myself: “I’m going to have to do something else”.

“My friend Maxine had moved Israel and invited me to join her. From how I felt, I would have left right away. My life would have been so different. But Humphrey Lyttelton persuaded me to continue.

She had met jazz legend Humph on an air base in Germany. “When he invited me to sing with his band, I started to love music again. We became friends for life. Even now if something goes wrong at a show I think it could have been worse, it could have been the Fiesta in Newcastle.

Elkie is currently on her Long Farewell Tour. “I won’t stop, the clue is in the title – long farewell tour,” she said. “I will judge it based on my fitness level as it goes along. I don’t want to disappoint those who remember me from years ago. »

A chance. Even at 79 years old, Brooks puts his heart and soul into his performances. Rooted in jazz and blues, his versatile mezzo contralto voice was familiar to rock fans long before his breakthrough during his years fronting the ’70s blues band Vinegar Joe with the late Robert Palmer.

“I did my first gig at 13 in a small cabaret, Laronde, on Cheetham Hill Road in Manchester,” she recalls. “I got paid £5. I probably sang Blue Moon in the key of C. I was crazy about Ella Fitzgerald.

Elkie, born Elaine Bookbinder, was the youngest child of a Manchester baker, a descendant of Jewish refugees. She was 15 when showbiz impresario Don Arden discovered her talent.

“I saw an advert for artists in the Jewish Telegraph for a show at the Palace Theater in Manchester. Don Arden held auditions for singers and dancers. I sang Cliff’s Pointed Toe Shoes in B flat.

His voice stopped Arden dead in his tracks.

“Don went crazy and put me on the bill that night – I wasn’t paid, it was just a privilege to be on the show.”

Sharon Osbourne’s father Arden asked her parents if she could go on the vacation package he was promoting with Gene Vincent.

“I was the only girl on the coach and I didn’t like it. So Don let me travel with him. We did a gig in Mansfield and he changed my name to Elaine Mansfield, which I hated. He kind of managed me, but I never signed with him – luckily.

“Don’s real name was Harry Levy, but he had a real problem with that. There was a lot of anti-Semitism. »

She joined Eric Delaney’s jazz band at age 16, changing her name to Elkie – her Yiddish name – and adopting Brooks because it sounded better than Bookbinder.

1964 could have been his breakthrough year. She released her version of Something’s Got A Hold On Me by Etta James and the concerts picked up steam. She opened for the Stones at seaside resorts and did the Beatles’ Christmas show backed by the Mike Cotton Sound.

“The Beatles wanted me to jump over a skipping rope, but during rehearsals I lost my balance and fell on my butt. I was mortified.

The Fab Four’s variety show, including the Yardbirds and Freddie & The Dreamers, ran for three weeks.

“I drank half a bottle of brandy and a few pints of Guinness before continuing. I was the only woman out of 200 men on the bill – how the business has changed!

In the late ’60s, Elkie fronted Dada, a Stax-influenced 12-piece fusion band formed by guitarist Pete Gage, her first husband. Dada morphed into Vinegar Joe, one of the hardest-working blues-rock bands of the ’70s. They were happily playing Black Swan in Sheffield and returning to London for a 3 a.m. gig at the Roundhouse.

“We were drinking and doing cocaine to keep ourselves awake – I never understood the record company people who did it for no reason. I don’t do that anymore, that’s why I still go! I’m probably healthier now than I was in my 30s. I practice aikido and exercise almost every day.

Her co-star Robert Palmer was “amazing and exceptionally competitive,” she recalls. “The London Marquee concerts were memorable. One evening, my foot went through the stage windows. I fell and managed to get up. I had broken my hip.

Vinegar Joe’s albums exploded but they worked constantly, touring America and Germany. “We were traveling in a Volkswagen with my dress on the battery.”

After their split, Elkie released his first solo album, Rich Man’s Woman. Her risky cover – her nude except for a skimpy feather boa – infuriated feminists.

“It was the photographer’s idea, I didn’t think about it at all, but then a lady from a New York newspaper attacked me, calling it disgusting and an affront to feminism. Today, with Taylor Swift, things have come full circle.

His next album, Two Days Away, catapulted Elkie to stardom. Produced and partly written by Jerry Leiber and Mike Stoller, it included the hits Pearl’s A Singer and Sunshine After the Rain.

“I was headlining the Palladium concert, mom and dad came; it was rather charming. The album changed my life.

Further hits, including Lilac Wine and No More The Fool, followed; his albums Pearls and Pearls II went platinum.

Divorced from Gage, Elkie married sound engineer and handyman Trevor Jordan, whom she had met when he worked with Diana Ross.

“We’ve been together for 47 years now,” she says. “It’s our anniversary in March. I remember the dates – I wish he would!

They have two sons, Jermaine, now his manager, and Joey, a paragliding instructor who scattered Humph’s ashes in the skies after his death.

Calamity struck in 1998 when Elkie’s accountant dropped a bombshell. “He said sheepishly, ‘We have a problem.’ A £250,000 tax problem. It’s all my fault…’ It turned out that he had paid the fines for non-payment rather than the amounts actually owed.

They had to sell their five-bedroom house in Woody Bay, North Devon, to get out of debt.

“We stored everything, moved into an RV and I continued touring. My sons had been on the road with me since they were born, so we were all used to being in an RV two or three months out of the year.

“I’m a rock’n’roll gypsy, I’ve always been on the move. »

They are renting a seaside apartment in Devon while waiting for planning permission so Trevor can build a house on the agricultural land they bought in 2010.

These days, Elkie relaxes by playing Wordle and Chordle. The Champagne lifestyle is not for her: “I prefer a pint of Guinness,” she says.

“As long as I have my health and my strength, my family and my piano, I am a happy woman.

“I am very happy when I sit down at my little Yamaha grand piano and play for about an hour when the sun goes down. I get as much pleasure from it as from my shows.

*For Elkie tour dates and tickets, visit elkiebrooks.com