Song Of The Day 6/8/2016: Samantha Sang – “The Love of a Woman”

Waxing Gibbous – Just as the Bee Gees led consecutive double lives, from tearful balladeers reassembling the frayed aorta and ventricles of their anatomized hearts to silken boogie merchants shimmying up the flared trousers of a grateful youth segment, so did one of their protégés, breathy Melburnian singer Samantha Sang, whose past-tense surname may have temporarily confused potential club booking agents into thinking she'd already played their venues and they missed it. Sang more successfully leaned on the Gibb machine during the disco era, when her by-the-numbers but alluring lovelorn ode "Emotion" rode the Bee Gees' backup vocals and rivulets of lip gloss to the American Top 5. But Sang also struck minor gold with Barry and Maurice's composition "The Love of a Woman," a surprisingly potent drama ballad they unleashed in 1969. It's a bravura singing job, especially for a modest 18-year-old girl. This was after Sang had some Australian success in 1966, under the name Cheryl Gray, especially with the song "You Made Me What I Am."Cheryl is her real first name, while Sang is her real last name. No idea why "Cheryl Sang" was turned down as a stage name option. You just have to trust that they knew what they were doing.