by Doug Gallant

Dame Gracie Fields was cleaning outhouses for a half-penny a week when her voice first brought her to the attention of others.

She was all of seven years old, but already one could tell this working class child from Rochdale, a small industrial town in the north of England, had a special gift.

Over the next 70-plus years, Fields shared that gift with literally millions of fans around the world. Her magnificent voice, her comic sensibilities and her engaging personality earned their admiration, their respect and their undying affection.

She became a star of stage and screen and produced a string of highly successful recordings, the last one recorded in her 70s.

Fields' life and music are now the subject of a new musical from Pamela Campbell and Nancy Beck, the same creative team to produce Wingin' It!, A Nightingale Sang, A Rowboat in the Attic and Harvest Moon Rising.

Amazing Gracie, which plays Saturday nights this summer at The Arts Guild, is billed by its creators as a fun-filled romp through the music and songs of this irrepressible performer, whose rags-to-riches story took her from a back street in Rochdale to a villa in Capri.

The music of Gracie Fields has been part of Beck's life since she was a little girl.

"My mother's family was very musical and they always had sing-songs and Gracie Fields' songs were the party pieces," Beck said in an interview this week.

"I guess the seed for the show was sewn in my show, A Rowboat in the Attic, because I talk about my mother's family in that show and I did the party pieces they would do. My aunt's party piece was Walter, Walter (Lead Me to the Altar), and my mother's party piece was In My Little Bottom Drawer."

Beck said those party pieces proved to be the highlight of the show, whether she was playing a school show or playing to seniors.

"Regardless of the age group, people loved those songs. They're still funny. The material is silly, but it's good. It still makes you laugh."

In January of this year while travelling in Stratford, Ont., Beck saw a couple of Fields' CDs for sale in a little shop.

"They called out to me. I bought them, took them home and we started listening to them. In no time, we were laughing our heads off. The idea of doing a show just seemed to fall into place."

A long, cold winter full of horror stories about SARS and war in the Middle East made the idea of doing a show that celebrates laughter and play even more appealing. When they put on the CDs they were able to separate themselves from the harsh realities of the day.

"We would put on these CDs and they would always make us laugh, so we thought let's do something with this material. It makes us laugh and hopefully it will make other people laugh as well. And so far, we've been laughing a lot," Campbell adds.

"Not that there aren't some serious moments in the show, because she really was incredibly versatile, but she was so funny."

More than two dozen songs Fields performed and/or recorded are featured in Amazing Gracie, classic chestnuts like He's Dead But He Won't Lie Down, Fonso My Hot Spanish Knight, I'll Be Seeing You, When I Grow Too Old to Dream and What Can You Give a Nudist on His Birthday?

Interwoven into those songs are little snippets about her childhood, her career and her personal life.

But it's not text-heavy.

"Mostly, we let the music speak for itself," Beck said. "But I think we try to give a sense of her life. We talk, for example, about what she did during the Second World War, which was incredible. She performed within two miles of the German lines. The Nazis declared her a war industry and tried to have her killed."

"She was an incredible morale booster for the troops," Campbell added. "And she performed for the troops whenever and wherever possible, playing to troops off the back of a truck on occasion."

Beck and Campbell spent the winter and much of the spring poring through material on Fields, reading articles, tracking down sheet music and listening to her recordings.

"We did a lot of reading, a lot of listening and a lot of laughing. In the process, Nancy and I decided upon what material to use. We looked, for example, at her signature pieces. What could we not leave out? We thought of the die-hard Gracie fans, what they would expect to hear. We also tried to think of people who'd never heard Gracie and what they should hear."

Having chosen the material, they then set about the task of tracking down the sheet music needed for pianist Andrew Zinck.

That proved challenging.

"There were a number of songs we had recordings of but could not find sheet music for, so we were forced to do lifts," Beck said. "Conversely, there was one song we found the sheet music for but were unable to find a recording of."

Fortunately for them, and for the show, Zinck proved adaptable to virtually every situation.

Fields' music is the centrepiece of Amazing Gracie, but Beck stresses they do not try to imitate the much-loved entertainer's way of doing things.

"Trying to imitate Fields would be impossible," Beck said. "We're just trying to do it in the spirit of Fields. We figure that between us maybe we might be able to do justice to the material. But you can't imitate her because her vocal range was phenomenal. She was a coloratura, but then she could sound like a sailor on a dock. And she had tremendous power. Apparently one of the reasons she developed such a strong, loud voice was at one point early on she worked in the mills and her co-workers would ask her to entertain. She had to be loud to be heard above the machines."

They also got feedback from a number of people who were familiar with Fields and her music, but for the most part, they chose to go with the songs that struck a chord with them.

"We went with what we enjoyed, what struck us," Campbell said.

Much of the material is delivered as Fields delivered it, but some they adapted to incorporate references to P.E.I. That was particularly true in the case of songs which contained specific references to things uniquely British or unique to a period in time, references which Canadians or Americans might not understand today.

"Some people in the audience might not know what 'bread and drip' is so there's no point in doing it. And there are people today who might not know what a pound note is or a half-a-crown."

They also chose not to sing in dialect.

"We didn't want people to have to work really hard to understand what we are singing about," Campbell said. "You don't need to hear more bad English accents."

Beck said they've read enough about Fields to believe she would not have a problem with the kinds of changes they made because she frequently adapted music herself to include particular references.

They're pleased with the shape the show has taken and hope audiences feel the same way. Should the show go over as they hope, Beck and Campbell say they will explore their options for bring the show to other audiences.

Amazing Gracie plays the Arts Guilds Saturdays at 8 p.m. until Aug. 30.