Elkie, whose early musical influences included Billie Holiday, Etta James, Ella Fitzgerald and Nina Simone, is a vocalist whose singing style has successfully embraced pop, rock, ballads, blues and jazz, and a performer who has never compromised herself in order to pursue the latest pop music trend. For many years, back in the Sixties and early Seventies, she had to languish on the professional sidelines while female pop contemporaries like Dusty, Cilla, Sandie and Lulu, enjoyed chart stardom, with all its attendant trappings of fame and fortune. However, when chart success did finally knock on Elkie's door in 1977, she rapidly became the biggest-selling female album artist in the history of the British pop charts. Elkie's many hit singles have endured to the present day, with pop standards like Don't Cry Out Loud, Sunshine After The Rain, Pearl's A Singer, Lilac Wine, Fool If You Think It's Over and No More The Fool still garnering airplay more than two decades after their original release. A succession of big selling-albums have also underlined Elkie's persistent search for quality and excellence during a lengthy performing and recording career dating back some four decades.