Gorgeous P.P. Arnold was one of the Ikettes, the backing singers for the Ike and Tina Turner Revue in the 1960s, but during a visit to London, Mick Jagger, impressed by her powerful voice and stunning beauty—who wouldn’t be???—connected her with the Stones’ manager Andrew Loog Oldham, who immediately signed her to his Immediate Records label, alongside acts like The Nice, Chris Farlowe (recognize this?), Rod Stewart and a pre-Velvet Underground Nico (who was then recording material that Bob Dylan had written for her along with session musicians like Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones). Another prominent group in the Immediate stable, the Small Faces, backed Arnold on a few of her songs, including “If You Think You’re Groovy,” which was written by Steve Marriott (who was briefly her boyfriend) and Ronnie Lane and could easily be seen as a Small Faces number—one of their very best, I might add—with her singing just as much as it could be a viewed as a “solo” P.P. Arnold single. It should be on every Small Faces compilation, too, if you take my point.
 

 
Much more after the jump…

Françoise Hardy, New Years Eve, 1968

Our friends at Mod Cinema have scored again with their latest release, Surprise Partie which was basically French television’s equivalent to New Year’s Rockin Eve” minus Dick Clark and chock full of fashionable Parisian pretty people:

This 3 1/2 hour New Years Eve party was broadcast on French television in 1968. Featuring fashionably dressed partygoers dancing, swinging, and casually sitting on every inch of space of a stylishly decorated set. However, the best thing about this party is the long guestlist of musical performers that show up. Featuring rarely seen footage of Davy Jones, Marie Laforet, The Troggs, Jacques Dutronc, Joe Cocker, Françoise Hardy, Aphrodite’s Child, Antoine, Johnny Hallyday, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Hugues Auffray, The Small Faces, Herbert Leonard, P.P. Arnold, Booker T & The MGs, Eric Charden, Freddy, Nicoletta, The Irresistibles, Pink Floyd, The Equals, and Les Variations. In full color and ORTF “stereo technique” sound!

Buy a copy of the amazing 2-DVD set of Surprise Partie at Mod Cinema.
 
The insanely gorgeous P.P. Arnold doing one of her best known numbers. “If You Think You’re Groovy.”
 

 
Below, Pink Floyd do “Let There Be More Light”
 

 
And one more musical morsel from “Surprise Partie”—it’s The Equals (featuring a young Eddy Grant with blonde hair) performing “Softly, Softly.”