Chanteuse: The Mary Hopkin Story Quiz

Answer: Wales

Mary started out as a folk singer with a Welsh group called the Selby Set, and her first record, an EP released on the small Welsh label Cambrian, consisted entirely of Welsh-language songs.

Answer: Twiggy (Leslie Hornby)

"Opportunity Knocks" was a British institution hosted by Hughie Green that dated back to the postwar 1940s on radio and first came to TV in the mid-1950s. It was frequently satirized; for example, in a broadcast on the same network (ITV) in August 1965, George Harrison introduced Paul McCartney's solo spot (singing "Yesterday") with the show's tag line, "For Paul McCartney of Liverpool, opportunity knocks!" But for Hopkin, opportunity actually did knock because of the show. McCartney later said that Twiggy was the first to tell him about Mary, but she wasn't the last. Within a month, Mary was signed to Apple Records.

Answer: Those Were the Days

Interestingly, Gene Raskin, the composer (and the Gene in "Gene & Francesca"), was by then primarily an architecture professor at Columbia University in New York City, but he and his wife had previously been a folk duo on Elektra Records and had played a series of club dates in London, where McCartney had seen them them and been impressed by the song. Paul had tried to get both Donovan Leitch and Denny Laine of the Moody Blues to record it, but without success, and he believed it would be better performed by a woman anyway. Apple Records chose to release its first four singles simultaneously, and two of them became worldwide smashes: The Beatles' own "Hey Jude"/"Revolution" and Mary Hopkin's "Those Were the Days".

Answer: She thought of herself as a folk singer

McCartney clearly envisioned Mary as a chanteuse, which he showed by having her record "Those Were the Days" as well as Tin Pan Alley songs like the 1930s song "Lullabye of the Leaves", George and Ira Gershwin's "Someone to Watch Over Me', and Irving Berlin's "There's No Business Like Show Business". However, Donovan Leitch wrote "Lord of the Reedy River" and "Voyage of the Moon" specifically for her, and she told Paul that she would rather be a straight folk singer in that mould. By contrast, in an interview about Doris Day's hit "Que Sera Sera", which she also recorded with McCartney (and Ringo Starr), she said, "By the time I was halfway through the backing vocals, I said, 'This is awful.' I really thought it was dreadful and I didn't want it released." Despite that, it was released by Apple as a single.

However, their time working together had some high points, such as this story that Mary later wrote about the release party for her first Apple album: "My family came down from Wales and in the throng of people we lost my 80-year-old grandmother, Blodwen. When the crowd parted we saw her in the corner talking to Jimi Hendrix. Afterwards she said she had been talking to 'a nice little boy' who had been asking about milking the cows and feeding the chickens. I think he was fascinated by this funny little Welsh lady."

Answer: Goodbye

McCartney had written the song quickly and recorded a solo demo to help Hopkin learn it, and he and Hopkin (who played acoustic guitar) were the only two playing on the initial recording, although Apple arranger Richard Hewson overdubbed a backing orchestral arrangement.

In a Beatles biography from 2007, Hopkin said that she felt the song was McCartney's way of telling her "goodbye" and that he wasn't going to be "micromanaging" her career any longer, so she would be free to become a folk singer if she wished.

Answer: Tony Visconti

Mary's recording of a Welsh-language version of "Sparrow", the B-side of "Goodbye", was supervised by Tony Visconti, a 25-year-old American who had moved to London the year before and also had produced and arranged The Iveys (later known as Badfinger) for Apple, as well as T. Rex for EMI. Visconti later produced Bowie's album "The Man Who Sold the World" (1970), mixed "Diamond Dogs" (1974), produced "David Live" (1974), and co-produced "The Gouster" (unreleased, 1974), "Young Americans" (1975), "Low" (1977), "Heroes" (1977), "Stage" (1978), "Lodger" (1979), "Scary Monsters (and Super Creeps)" (1980), and "Baal" (1982), before reuniting with Bowie in the 2000s. Mary sang backing vocals on some of them, credited as "Mary Visconti".

After their marriage, Mary and Tony had two children, Jessica Lee Morgan and Morgan Visconti, who not surprisingly are both professional musicians -- but Mary and Tony divorced (after ten years of marriage) in 1981.

Answer: Knock, Knock Who's There?

Mary performed six different songs on the "It's Cliff Richard!" TV show, and the viewing public voted (by post) for which of those six songs would become the UK Eurovision entry. The other answers were among the songs not picked. Stunningly to the UK, however, "Knock, Knock Who's There?" came in second behind Dana's "All Kinds of Everything" from Ireland, and Hopkin said that she found the Eurovision experience "humiliating" and also that she hated the song. Nevertheless, the single (produced by Donovan's producer Mickey Most, and released two days after the performance) reached number two on the UK charts.

Not long after that, Terry Doran stepped down as her manager, replaced by her sister Carole, and she was finally free to follow her own vision.

Answer: Earth Song, Ocean Song

"Earth Song, Ocean Song" was titled after two songs by Liz Thorsen ("Earth Song" and "Ocean Song"), with one appearing on each side. But more interestingly, the album featured two songs from Ralph McTell, who also played six- and twelve-string guitars on the record -- and included was a great version of McTell's 1969 song "Streets of London", which became a hit single in his own version in 1974 (and, despite being five years old by then, won the annual 1974 Ivor Novello Award as Best Song).

Interestingly, an already-foundering Apple chose not to release "Streets of London" as a single, giving up the chance for that hit. Almost immediately after finishing "Earth Song, Ocean Song", Tony Visconti produced the new Ralph McTell solo album "Not Till Tomorrow", and Mary (billed as Mary Visconti) sang backing vocals on it.

Answer: Reina James

After marrying and then divorcing her folk-singing partner Mike Sutcliffe (no relation to the late ex-Beatle Stu Sutcliffe) while still in her teens, Reina Sutcliffe, the daughter of British comic actor Sid James (from his second marriage) and the lyricist of "Water, Paper and Clay", returned to using her maiden name. Mary Hopkin said that she loved the song because the lyrics (with a chorus of "Water, paper and clay / Air to carry you / And fire to burn the way") evoked the classical elements (water, earth, air, and fire) in an unusual way.

The B-side of the single was the excellent -- but country-folk -- non-album song "Jefferson", written by Apple contract songwriters Bernard Gallagher and Graham Lyle (who also wrote "Sparrow" for Hopkin and later had the top-20 hit "Heart on My Sleeve"). Neither side charted, and Mary realized her time with Apple was over.

She decided instead to become a stay-at-home mom.

Answer: Oasis

After Mary's divorce, she first joined a group called Sundance with Mike Hurst and Mike de Albuquerque. The band released two singles in 1981 and 1982 but broke up when they failed to become hits. Her next try was Oasis, which had no relation to the 1990s supergroup featuring the feuding Gallagher brothers. Oasis's only album was moderately successful in the UK, but Mary Hopkin fell ill during the band's tour in support of it, which had already been delayed by Lloyd Webber's decision to quit Oasis.

Although Mary soon recovered, the tour was never resumed, and Mary concluded that being part of a band really wasn't for her. From then on, most of her recording was done as a studio backing singer -- until her children became professional musicians themselves and persuaded her to restart her solo career.