Lesley Duncan was arguably Britain's first female singer-songwriter of any note, first signed as a jobbing songwriter by publisher FDH in 1962 on £7 a week, later releasing five solo albums from 1971-1977.
A parallel career as a backing singer is how Lesley was better known in the industry, being part of what Beat Instrumental magazine called the British equivalent of the Wrecking Crew along with Sue & Sunny, Madeline Bell, Kay Garner, Vicky Brown, Kiki Dee and Liza Strike. The complete recordings of Lesley's covering 1968-1972 was released on RPM's 2CD anthology Sing Lesley Sing (Retro D991).
Now comes Lesley Steps Lightly, the anthology of Lesley's period with the (Billy) Gaff Management set up (managers of The Faces, Status Quo, Rory Gallagher, Greenslade at the time), releasing recordings on their GM label. To Lesley's name were 3 LPs and 7 singles, all included here, from 1974-1978.
LPs Everything Changes (Disc 1), Moon Bathing (Disc 2), and Maybe It's Lost (Disc 3), ninety per cent written by Lesley, are very largely chronicles of relationships both happy and troubled, most but not all of them about Lesley's own; some songs are about friends rather than herself. Then husband Jimmy Horowitz produced all, and they assembled a stellar cast of studio players to back Lesley.
Additional material on Disc One is the 1974 BBC In Concert recording made at the Golders Green Hippodrome. Disc Two has an extra b-side plus the live cut of one of Lesley's big song's Earth Mother recorded live in 1973 at the Reading Festival. Disc 3 goes beyond the GM years and rounds up unreleased songs recorded with her second husband arranger /producer Tony Cox during the early 1980s, her final mainstream single in 1982 an acerbic delivery of Dylan's Masters Of War, and the 1979 'live aid' style charity single cover of Lesley's song Sing Children Sing with Pete Townshend, Madeline Bell, Kate Bush, Joe and Vicki Brown, Billy Nicholls and Phil Lynott.
A major 20 page essay details Lesley's whole career and importantly offers fascinating context material with input from Jimmy Horowitz , Linda Lewis, Madeline Bell, Tony Hazzard, Kiki Dee, Jeff Dexter and Tony Cox.
