Elkie Brooks' smoked-silk vocals are familiar to millions with enduring hits such as Pearl's A Singer and Sunshine After The Rain. But it was a long hard road to success and an even longer one to happiness. Appearing in concert at Dartford's Mick Jagger Centre next week, she talks to Paul Revel.

RECOVERING at her Devon home from a ' chest infection, Elkie says she is taking it easy but looking forward to the Dartford gig. She says people can expect the old favourite hits, some exciting new material and a wonderfully re-vamped' version of Pearl's a Singer.

Elkie grew up in Salford, Manchester.

Did musical talent run in the family?

"I believe it comes from grandmother, Maude Newton," says Elkie. "I never had the honour of meeting her, but she was a fine concert pianist, vocal coach and violinist."

Her brothers were musical, Ray was a trumpeter and Tony was the drummer with Billy J Kramer and The Dakotas.

"But my parents weren't at all musical. My father was a baker, and my mum was a wonderful tailoress she certainly taught me how to sew but couldn't hold a tune."

Elkie says her ambitions to become a singer were not taken seriously by her family.

"I was brought up in Judaism, they thought all I was cut out for was to get married and that's the end of it," she says. "I didn't really get educated, I left school at 14 and I've more or less educated myself by reading ever since."

She moved to London when she was 15.

"Mum came with me, it wasn't quite the full running-away thing. But I had my own place and was surviving on my own by the age of 17."

"It was very difficult the music business hasn't changed much it was about image and how you look, rather than what talent you had.

The life of a jobbing singer was not a glamorous one, nor particularly happy.

"I was on my own for a start, with my frocks in the back of the car driving to these awful cabaret places. People weren't really interested when the act came on, I was doing material I didn't really like.

"I wasn't having a good time and thought about giving up going back to school, maybe becoming a teacher in PE or domestic science."

In 1970 Elkie and her first husband Pete Gage formed the rock band Dada. The band later became Vinegar Joe, with Robert Palmer sharing vocals with Elkie.

Vinegar Joe produced critically acclaimed albums such as Rock And Roll Gypsies, and their live gigs included the Reading Rock Festival in 1972.

"We weren't getting much money, but it was a thoroughly brilliant time musically."

After that came a string of hit solo albums for Elkie, including Pearls I and II which earned her a place in the Guinness World Records as best-selling female album artist in the British charts.

But success did not breed content.

"I had a lot of hits but they were very main stream, middle of the road. People thought that's all I could do."

"My act now is a lot more raunchy. It's taken me 27 years to bring my music round to where I was when I left Vinegar Joe. It's really taken years for people to come round musically to what I'm about."

Nor were there the untold riches one would expect to come with such chart-toppers. The albums were enormously expensive to produce and the royalties a long time coming.

"If I had all the royalties due to me I would be an extremely wealthy woman, which of course I'm not. I still have to make my living on the road."

"I've had to put up with a lot of shit over the years," she adds.

But finally Elkie seems happy with her music.

On her recent album Electric Lady she co-wrote many of the tracks with her son Jermaine Jordan, who also produced the album.

And she is highly enthusiastic about her latest band.

"They're wonderful guys, it's not often you find great musicians who are nice people as well, who work as a team. People can see we are all having a fantastic time on stage. Most certainly I'm happier musically now than for a long time."

October 28, Elkie Brooks live at the Mick Jagger Centre, Shepherds Lane, Dartford, 8pm, £20 & £25, £18 concs, box office 01322 291101.