Carmel

Carmel, a jazz/soul group formed during the early 80's by Carmel McCourt, Jim Paris and Gerry Darby. Carmel achieved success in the UK and Europe with albums and singles charting on both the UK Albums and UK Singles Charts, respectively. Carmel’s debut single, "Storm" reached No. 13 in the UK Independent Chart which led to a signing with London Records. Their second album, The Drum Is Everything included two hit songs which both reached high positions on the UK Singles Chart "Bad Day" and "More, More, More". The songs also featured Helen Watson, Shirley Laidley and Rush Winters on backing vocals. The following album, The Falling (produced by Brian Eno, Hugh Jones and David Motion) gained gold disc status in France and led to McCourt featuring in a duet, "J'oublierai ton nom" with French rock singer Johnny Hallyday. 1989 saw the release of Set Me Free, with Brian Eno and Pete Wingfield adding their touches and Jimmy Somerville doing guest vocals on the song "One Fine Day" and the following year Carmel released a compilation album titled Collected summing up the band's career to that date. 1992's album Good News saw Carmel moving to East West Records with Paris producing. This was followed in 1995 by World's Gone Crazy (co-produced by Carmel McCourt, Jim Parris, Gerry Darby, Julian Mendelsohn and Mike Thorne). Following various geographical detours including Barcelona the band returned to Manchester in the early 2000’s. Following Darby’s departure in 2002, Paris and McCourt toured old material with a nine-piece band resulting in a 2004 live DVD entitled More, More, More. In December 2011, McCourt and Paris released the album Strictly Piaf, consisting of 10 reinterpretations of classic and lesser-known songs by Edith Piaf. The collection later received a full CD release in August 2012 via Secret Records. And later that year McCourt returned with a new band formation performing live at venues across the UK before moving on to Europe with some new songs in 2013. The first single with McCourt’s new line-up was released in 2015 with a double A-side "Sad Situation"/"Second Wife Blues" on new independent label Kultura Recordings. Carmel McCourt later released the album Wild Country in 2022 on Secret Records which included the single "Sad Situation".