Helena Blehárová – Helena Blehárová album art

Helena Blehárová was born on 28th June 1943 in Žilina in the then Slovak State, but would go on to spend the majority of her recording career over the then and current international frontier in what would today be the Czech Republic, based in Brno, recording in Czech.

Helena was, as far as can be ascertained, the only one of the “Girls Of The Golden East” from the former Czechoslovakia to make an appearance in the United Kingdom, at the age of just nineteen, on Friday 7th June 1963 at the Daily Mail International Jazz Festival, at Belle Vue, Manchester, where she performed, amongst other songs, “Moonlight In Vermont” to the accompaniment of the Gustav Brom Orchestra.

Rather later on in her career, in the year she would have turned thirty-three, Helena made a thorough return to her Slovak roots, recording what was then the only studio album of her recording career, in Slovak, in Bratislava, for the Slovakia-based Opus label.

Here is the track listing thereof:

Side A
So slnkom choď (“Go With The Sun”)
Hviezdny vlak (“Star Train”)
Trubadúrska pieseň (“The Troubadour’s Song”)
Cengaj tíško u dverí (“Ring Quietly At The Door”)
Buď s ním môj kvietok (“Be With Him My Little Flower”)
Predposledný jesenný deň (“The Penultimate Day Of Autumn)

Side B
Čo robiť mám (“What Should I Do”)
V manéži je klaun (“There Is A Clown In The Ring”)
Uver jari (“Believe In Spring”)
Viac ako milión (“More Than A Million)
Odkiaľ k nám chodí láska (“From Where Comes Love”)
Komu svietim piesňou (“Whom Am I Illuminating With My Song”)

The instrumental accompaniment came from the aforementioned Gustav Brom Orchestra, with backing vocals from Jezinky. Musical arrangement was by Valdimír Valovič, sound engineering was by Miloš Šindelář and Juraj Filo and the Producer-in-Chief was Milan Vašica.

The sleeve notes were written by Igor Wasserberger. The photo for the front cover was taken by Svatoslav Fiala. The sleeve was designed by Peter Hevessy and printed by Grafobal, n.p. of Skalica. The Opus release no. was 9113 0475.

There is a connection with another recent font use submission of mine – the single sleeve of The Bentleys’ “When you say” / “Tell me, tell me” (1972) – inasmuch as “When you say” was a cover of the debut single by the group from France, il était une fois, “Rien qu’un ciel” (“Nothing But A Sky”), Helena herself covering another song from the repertoire of il était une fois, “J’ai encore rêvé d’elle” (“I’ve Dreamed About Her Again”) on this album in the shape of “Odkiaľ k nám chodí láska”.

To add to this the opening track is a cover of “So Long”, originally by ABBA, which connects it with the font use submission by Florian Hardwig that led to my initial discovery of the Fonts In Use site – the singles sleeves of Valérie Čižmárová (1974–1977) – where Valérie Čižmárová’s “Jeho laskominy” (“His Treats”) is also a cover of that ABBA song.