HAVING this month evoked the heyday of the ballroom big bands in East Lancashire and their demise at the hands of pop music in the 1960s, Looking Back today recalls the Blackburn lass whose singing career went from one to the other.

She set out to be a pop star, despite also being a housewife and mother of two teenage boys.

Back then, in February, 1964, when her husband Tommy Sanderson had an entertainment agency in London, she was recording artiste Mary May, with her third disc nudging into the charts at No.49.

That's as high as it and her pop career went. For the number she recorded with backing by the Johnny Dankworth Orchestra was that same month taken to No.1 for a 17-week stint by a young singer who had had her first hit just the year before. She was Cilla Black. And the song? - Anyone Who Had A Heart.

But if Mary May is an almost forgotten name in the annals of pop, she is well remembered still as the girl whose voice thrilled dancers in the 1940s and 50s when she sang with East Lancashire dance bands under her real name, Lily Towers.

Beginning her singing career in the choir at St Philip's Church, Witton, near her home in Scar Street, Blackburn, Lily also vocalised at teenage dances in a club in Audley Range while still a teenager herself before she was signed by Eddie McGarry whose 'broadcasting band' - winners of the prestigious All-Britain Melody Maker Award three years running in the 1930s - was the resident band at Accrington Conservative Club's giant Majestic Ballroom for 30 years until 1964. It was while with Eddie that she married Tommy, the band's pianist, and in 1945 headed for the big-time when she joined the BBC Dance Orchestra after its famous director, Henry Hall, heard her in a Saturday night radio broadcast from 'Accy Con.'

It was a tie-up that was short-lived - as she recalled when interviewed in 1964 by the Evening Telegraph as her version of Anyone Who Had A Heart began its week-long entry in the hit parade - with her returning to Blackburn to look after her mother who was crippled by illness.

But despite her way to the top being barred, Lily never forgot the magic of East Lancashire's big-band era during which she was at the microphone for almost 10 years with Eddie McGarry. For when the ballroom whirl came to an end at the Con in 1987, she said from her Surrey home: "Eddie McGarry was king of the north and his band could have held its own against any of the big bands down in London. Saturday night at the Con was great - we looked forward to it all week and you couldn't put a pin between the couples on the floor there were that many dancing."

How many famous faces can you spot in the 1964 photograph? To Mary May's right is Hollies' vocalist Allan Clarke and standing in front of the step-ladder is colleague Graham Nash, later to earn more fame with Crosby, Stills and Nash. At her left is rocker Shane Fenton, a decade before he re-emerged as Alvin Stardust. And, seated second right, isn't that Eric Burdon, lead singer of The Animals?

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.