Everyone's Pet

There is nowhere near the same kind of public hoopla surrounding the recording industry's Grammy Awards as there is around the Oscars, but to the people in the trade, it is the moment of truth. As the 47 different category winners (see TIME LISTINGS) were read last week, everyone was pegging favorites. When the best rock-'n'-roll single came up, there was no problem. It was Petula Clark's recording of Downtown by a city mile.

In its way, the award was also a tribute to the international sway of rock 'n' roll, which is now as international as sex, the U.N. and Jewish cooking. Billed as Britain's Shirley Temple at the age of nine, when the BBC had her singing to the tommies overseas, Petula (pronounced Peh-tyou-la) was doing reasonably well, until at 25 she hiply hopped across the Channel to record two songs in France. When the first was a big hit, she settled down, married a French recording executive, bore two children and became a smash.

Over the past seven years, Petula has sold 10 million records in Europe, in the past four months, 1,700,000 in the U.S. Various of her songs at one time or another have popped to the top of the hit parade in Britain, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, Rumania and Switzerland. At her home base, Paris, where the tousled blonde is possessively known as "La Petulante Petula," she has collected the Grand Prix du Disque (just like Edith Piaf and Yves Montand before her), and earlier this year got the Bravos du Music Hall, France's annual award to the female show-business success of the year.

The U.S. is next on her list of places to go and see. She will be flying over next month for the Ed Sullivan show, open in Reno in October, move on to Manhattan's Copacabana in November. But in fact, she has already conquered. Not only was Downtown the best hit of 1964; right behind it is her I Know a Place, which in the past five weeks has zoomed from No. 50 to No. 2, seems sure to make the last rung.

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