CILLA BLACK OBE
Singer and TV host
Priscilla Maria Veronica White, known to the world as Cilla Black, was born on the 27th of May 1943 in the Vauxhall district of Liverpool, England, to docker John Patrick White and his wife Priscilla, née Blythen. She grew up in a musically minded household with her parents and three brothers, often encouraged to sing for the family long before anyone imagined where that talent would take her.
Her Welsh connection comes through her mother's side. Cilla's maternal grandfather, Joseph Henry Blythen, was born in Wrexham, North Wales, and walked from there to Liverpool in 1895 in search of work, the beginning of the family's move across the border. Her own name, Priscilla, was a family heirloom passed down through Welsh ancestors on the Blythen side, and her roots in North Wales have been traced back as far as 1720. In 2015, BBC One Wales broadcast Cilla Black: Coming Home, a documentary in which she explored this Welsh heritage on her mother's side firsthand.
Cilla's break came at Liverpool's Cavern Club, where she worked in the cloakroom while singing occasionally with local bands. She was spotted there by Brian Epstein, who became her manager and secured her a recording contract; she went on to become one of the few artists outside the Beatles themselves to be managed by Epstein during the Merseybeat era. Her second single, a cover of the Burt Bacharach/Hal David song "Anyone Who Had a Heart," reached number one in the UK charts in 1964, followed later that same year by a second number one, "You're My World." In 1968 she had a further major hit with "Step Inside Love," written for her by Paul McCartney as the theme to her new BBC television show.