Pearly Gates: Fading Into The Night [Unreleased Album] (1979)

Alabama-born Viola Billups formed The Gypsies with sisters Earnestine & Shirley Pearce from New York in the 60s. They landed in England in 1968, changed name to The Flirtations and recorded the classic soul album Sounds Like The Flirtations with the hit singles Nothing But A Heartache, Someone Out There, and Need Your Lovin’. By 1973 Viola left the group to go solo. Her first single Sad Old Shadow was released under the name Vie, after that she adopted the stage name Pearly Gates in 1974 for the single Johnny & The Jukebox. She became a well-known TV persona, starring alongside Cliff Richard in his BBC shows, and was also a regular in the series Hi Summer. By 1979 she teamed up with Ian Levine to record the album Fading Into The Night, an album that had originally been scheduled to be recorded by an American songstress called Cobie Jones who could not make it to the UK to record her vocals on time. The completed album ended up being one of four disco albums that Levine completed that year, only to