Julie Felix born 14 June 1938

Julie Ann Felix (June 14, 1938 – March 22, 2020) was an American-born, British-based folk recording artist who achieved success, particularly on British television in the late 1960s and early 1970s. She later performed and released albums on her own record label. 

Felix was born in Santa Barbara, California, to father of Mexican origin and mother of Native American and Welsh ancestry. She graduated in 1956 from high school in Westchester, Los Angeles. Felix arrived in the United Kingdom in 1964 and performed in folk clubs in London, including the famous Troubadour in Earls Court, and on the strength of a tape of her singing that was sent to Decca, she was signed to the record label. Living on the third floor of a Chelsea block of flats, she was on her way to her debut album’s launch when she met Frost, a fifth floor resident, in the lift. Frost tagged along and, impressed by her singing, persuaded the BBC to engage her for his forthcoming television series. 

The Frost Report

In the meantime, Felix appeared on the Eamonn Andrews Show to sing the single Someday Soon from her eponymous first album; this was so popular with the television audience that she was invited back the following week. Taking a brief time out as a humanitarian ambassador for Christian Aid in Lebanon, Jordan and East Africa, Felix returned to London to appear at a sell-out solo concert at the Royal Albert Hall. 

In 1966, at the height of the folk music boom in Britain, David Frost’s satirical television show The Frost Report featured Felix whose thoughtful songs, strong voice, charm and good looks endeared her to audiences, turning her into a household name. Two more albums followed quickly, leading the Times to call her “Britain’s first lady of folk”, thus ignoring her American origins. In 1967 Brian Epstein engaged Felix to perform with Georgie Fame: the Fame & Felix concerts were so successful that the weeklong run was extended to two weeks. Cat Stevens was the support. 

                             

Frost was instrumental in persuading the BBC to give Felix her solo television programmes, the first colour series on BBC2. Once More with Felix was broadcast from 1967 to 1969 and was followed by The Julie Felix Show, which transferred to BBC1. Each week Felix was joined by guests, and they often performed a song together. 

With Leonard Cohen, who made his British television debut on the show, she sang his song Hey That’s No Way to Say Goodbye, and with Mike D’Abo of Manfred Mann, it was Bob Dylan’s Fare Thee Well, his reworking of the traditional folk song The Leaving of Liverpool. Other guests included Dusty Springfield, Donovan and Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page, but her favourite was Spike Milligan. Even an arrest for possession of marijuana in 1968 failed to dent her television popularity, and the programmes were syndicated around the world, including in the USSR. 

At this stage in her career, Julie wrote very few songs, preferring to interpret some of the excellent songs that were being written by other, mainly American songwriters. Exposure on her television programmes brought these songs to a new mass audience. It was Tom Paxton who wrote the song that is most associated with Felix, Going to the Zoo, and the Canadian Gordon Lightfoot wrote Early Morning Rain. She was the first person to popularise Cohen’s songs in Britain. But the singer whose songs she covered the most was Dylan. Felix appeared on the same concert bill as him at the Isle of Wight festival in 1969, his first performance following his near-fatal motorbike accident. 

After moving to the Fontana label, for which she released the albums Changes (1966) and Going to the Zoo (1969), she recorded Clotho’s Web on Mickie Most’s RAK label. RAK also released a single, the Simon and Garfunkel song El Condor Pasa (If I Could), which took her into the Top 20 charts in 1970. The popularity of Felix’s television programmes meant that her concert tours were invariably sold out, but as the 1970s progressed musical tastes changed. Felix moved to Norway, where her song Hota Chocolata topped the country’s singles charts. Felix then stopped performing for several years, returning for a while to California where she became active in peace campaigns in Central America. 

Back in Britain by the early 1990s, she resumed her career, singing now in larger folk clubs, arts centres and more intimate concert venues, and building a dedicated fan base with her warm and generous performances. On her own record label she released an album of Dylan songs, Starry Eyed and Laughing, in 2002. In 2019 Felix sang on Glastonbury’s acoustic stage and she continued performing until just a few weeks before her death.  She died on March 22, 2020 after a short illness. 

(Edited from The Guardian & Wikipedia)