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Barbara Gryfe
What the World Needs Now
CBC Radio-Canada - 1970
Michael Panontin
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Record execs usually sign artists based on three things: talent, charisma and marketability. But for the CBC's Jury Krytiuk, it took a few hot bagels and a good Jewish mother to ink the deal.
"I was walking down Bathurst Street," Krytiuk explained in the liner notes to Barbara Gryfe's What the World Needs Now, "and as I passed a bakery I noticed that the whole front window was covered with a poster." That bakery was Gryfe's, the oldest bagel maker in Toronto, and those posters read 'Listen to my daughter, Barbara Gryfe, on CBC radio every Saturday morning'.
Krytiuk had just moved to Toronto from Saskatchewan and was not familiar with the name Barbara Gryfe. But the 18-year-old already had years of experience under her belt. She first appeared in A Christmas Carol with the renowned British actress Tessie O'Shea when she was just eleven years old. From there, she beat out over 500 contestants in a singing competition at Massey Hall for The United Appeal. The young singer became a regular on both CBC-TV and CBC-Radio, appearing on a number of programs throughout the sixties. And most recently, she had grabbed the top prize in the CBC Song Market '68 contest with her tune, 'Colours of the Rainbow'.
But when producer Dave Bird phoned Krytiuk asking him to record the teenaged Gryfe, he wasn't very excited...until, that is, he met Barbara's mother.
"I walked in and introduced myself to Mrs. Gryfe," Krytiuk wrote. "Before I knew it, I was in the back being stuffed with bagels and lox while getting the sales pitch that every mother gives about her daughter. But this story was different. It weaved itself into a four-letter word - STAR."
What the World Needs Now was recorded at Toronto's Eastern Sound in May 1969 and released the following April. Much of the album is given over to soft-pop standards by the usual composers of the day - Bacharach/David, Jimmy Webb, Jackie Trent/Tony Hatch - and is thus hardly groundbreaking stuff. Gryfe's voice is silky and composed, but certainly not jaw-dropping.
What makes What the World Needs Now worth checking out (and what likely led Majikbus Entertainment to reissue it in 2018) is David Wilkins' bewitching orchestration. This is most obvious on the record's two Trent/Hatch compositions, originally sung by Petula Clark. Gryfe's voice is really no match for Clark's. And truthfully both 'Who Am I' and 'Don't Give Up' are rescued to a degree by those lush strings and cheery horns. But that will hardly matter to the many devotees of Wilkins who will likely shell out big bucks for the original LP. Add to that the jazzy 'Colours of the Rainbow' and a couple of songs sung in Hebrew and What the World Needs Now, though far from essential, is at least a pleasant listen.
Gryffe recorded a seven-inch a couple of years later with popular Irish singer Sean Dunphy on Krytiuk's Boot imprint but otherwise pretty well disappeared from the Canadian music business. In a 2009 obituary for her mother, Gryffe is listed as "a professional singer...who now lives in Israel".
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