No one had a voice quite like Esther Phillips, with that distinctive Minnie Mouse twang, which is why I remember her only hit – this disco classic from the Seventies – so well.
Esther’s story is a tragic one: a child prodigy, she was spotted (as Little Esther) at a talent show by bluesman Johnny Otis and given a record deal when she was only 13.

She went on to record in almost every genre – blues and jazz, soul, RnB, country and disco – before the drugs to which she became addicted as a teenager took her life in 1984. She was only 48.

What A Diff’rence A Day Makes – was her only UK hit, reaching no.6 in 1975. I didn’t know then that it was a cover version of a tune popularised on record by Dinah Washington, though that’s mainly because I don’t know anything about (or by) Dinah Washington.

I now learn she is “the most popular black female recording artist of the 1950s” and actually won a Grammy for Best Rhythm & Blues Performance for this very song, which was a Top Ten hit for her, in 1959. You live and learn. Even at this ripe old age, apparently.

I’ve also learned that it was originally a Spanish song, Cuando Vuelva A Tu Lado (which translates as When I Return To Your Side), written in 1934 by Maria Grever, who was (it says here) the first female Mexican composer to find international acclaim, and translated into English by Stanley Adams.

It was first recorded by a crooner called Jimmy Ague, and then an American dance band called The Dorsey Brothers, before being popularised in England by a cheeky fellow called Harry Roy & his Orchestra.

Harry was apparently known for his naughty double (some would say single) entendres with songs like (and look away now if you’re of a delicate disposition) My Girl’s Pussy.

I’m sure Esther would not have stooped so low to cover that one, though she might have done if it bought her a dime bag of heroin, having been addicted since the mid-Fifties.

Despite her troubled life, Esther recorded almost 20 albums of which the last bore the astonishing title Good Black Is Hard To Crack.

Others to have had a crack at this much-covered song include Bobby Darin and Dean Martin, Sarah Vaughan and Aretha Franklin, The Temptations and Ben E. King, Diana Ross and Randy Crawford, Jamie Cullum and Gloria Estefan. And, most recently and regrettably, Rod Stewart.