Robin Wilson

Robin Wilson is an extremely minor figure in ?60s adult contemporary pop, managing only one album that didn?t sell, in a style that was growing increasingly anachronistic even during the album?s recording. Still, the 1969 album Robin Wilson is a minor classic of late ?60s adult contemporary pop, triangulated somewhere between Harpers Bizarre, Barbra Streisand and Petula Clark. Wilson, a fetching brown-eyed brunette with a cute pageboy haircut and a tendency towards performing barefoot in a sailor suit, was born and raised in Hawaii and got her start working in the resort hotels on the islands. Her rich voice, which could manage both a brassy Ethel Merman bellow and a flirtatious croon, got her noticed by the headliners, which landed the young singer in Las Vegas and on the Merv Griffin Show, which got her signed to A&M Records in late 1968. Her album was produced by Allen Stanton and arranged by Nick De Caro, Don Costa and Mort Garson, but by the time it was released in 1969, Wilson?s style of adult contemporary pop was fast fading out of favor: liner note blurbs from the likes of Milton Berle, Don Ho, Bill Dana and Joey Bishop were not exactly the bleeding edge of hipness at the time. More to the point, A&M had just signed the Carpenters, whose slightly cooler brand of white bread was more attuned to the greater public. Robin Wilson faded from view shortly thereafter.