Kiki Dee's soulful Sixties finally heard on CD

The summer 1976 hit “Don’t Go Breaking My Heart” was Kiki Dee’s chart highlight. The duet with Elton John was inescapable, happy, upbeat, irresistible. A Number One, it peaked a chart run on his Rocket Records that began with her 1973 cover of Veronique Sansons’s “Amoureuse”. “I’ve Got the Music in Me” then hit the Top 20 in 1974. Kiki still plays live and records, but the treasure-filled and essential I’m Kiki Dee - The Fontana Years 1963-1968 – out this week – reveals her musical prehistory for the first time. There’s more to Kiki than the hits.

Bradford-born Pauline Matthews signed with Fontana Records in 1963. She was 16. Renamed Kiki Dee, she began an inexplicably hit-free spell at the label which lasted until 1968. Her complete 32-track British Fontana output is collected for the first time on I’m Kiki Dee... Northern soul fans have known for years how good some of this music is – if the single ever turns up, her superb 1968 B-side “On a Magic Carpet Ride” commands sky-high prices. The 1967 single “I’m Going Out (the Same Way I Came In)” is another floor-filler. Slow numbers, like the same year’s “Excuse Me”, equal the power of an emotive Dusty Springfield performance. In fact, Kiki was never far from Dusty as, along with Madeline Bell and Lesley Duncan, she backed her live and on record. Dusty returned the favour, contributing audible backing vocals to Kiki’s 1966 version of “Why Don’t I Run Away From You”. This was prime British soul, and it's little surprise that Kiki signed with Motown in 1969.

But this compilation is about the years that led up to that. Sequenced chronologically, it kicks off with a quartet of Joe Meek-ish single sides that are hardly essential. The theme song to the 1965 film Doctor in Clover is pretty stinky. Thankfully those were blips - the balance is towards the great here. Over 40 years on, it’s time these essential performances were heard again.

Listen to Kiki Dee's "On a Magic Carpet Ride"

• Find I’m Kiki Dee - The Fontana Years 1963-1968 on Amazon