Dinah Lee - I’ll Forgive You Then Forget You (1965)

(Joey Brooks)
 New Zealand
#16 NZ #10 Melbourne #36 Brisbane

NZ chart data by Warwick Freeman

Single on Viking in NZ, HMV in Australia, and Island subsidiary Aladdin in the UK. Also on the album The Sound of Dinah Lee.

Rearranged by conductor Mike Perjanik, this is a cover version with its own style, favouring strings and oboe over the brass and drums of the original. The result, as Richie Unterberger puts it, is quality British-style orchestrated girl group-soul-pop.

Dinah Lee, known as ‘The Dynamic’ Dinah Lee, was born Diane Jacobs in 1943. Her rocking versions of astutely chosen songs and her cutting-edge mod image made her extremely popular in New Zealand and Australia in the mid-60s. See, for example, Do The Blue Beat and Don’t You Know Yockomo.

Essential reading: Dinah Lee pages at Milesago, at Bruce Sergent’s NZ music site, and at AudioCulture.

Further reading: Richie Unterberger’s All Music review of Canetoad’s Viking Recordings gives a good overview and discussion of Dinah Lee’s 60s recordings.