Joy and The Hit Kids
A: Zweisamkeit (The Happening)
B: Das Glück dieser Welt
Decca D 19 878 (1967)

Joy Fleming (whose real name slightly less glamorous: Erna Raad!) is one of the best soul and blues voices in the german music scene. She still performs today and even though she is known, she sadly never had that really big breakthrough. This is partly because she doesn't fit into neither the Schlager category nor in the alternative rock scene and also, at times she looked...well...a bit odd, but let's not go into that.
These are her first 2 recordings from 1967, when she was in a formation called Joy & the Hit Kids. They later evolved into Joy Unlimited and in the mid 70s she lost her backing band altogether. Too hard to decide which is the better track here, so I give you both. The a-side is a cover of the Supremes' "The Happening", one of the few early Supremes hits that was NOT written by Holland-Dozier-Holland. The b-side is the original song "Das Glück dieser Welt", a soulful groover of the best sort. After this release Joy and her Hit Kids subsequent singles were all sung in english and even "Das Glück ..." was translated into "What Can I Do Without You" for a TV program. You can see clip of this wonderful performance here. Embedding it here was not allowed, so instead see a groovy clip of the Supremes doing the original "Happening". Oh yes, I'm not the first to post this in a blog (hello Eff!), but who can get enough of this?

Joy and The Hit Kids - Zweisamkeit

Joy and The Hit Kids - Das Glück dieser Welt

Edit:
just found another clip of Joy and her Kids: enjoy!