Allison Ann Durbin, who now goes by the married name Alison Ann Giles, is a former New Zealand Australian pop singer, known for her success in the late 1960s and 1970s as the "Queen of Pop". Durbin's visual 'trademark' at her height was her lustrous waist-length auburn hair. She is a relative of Canadian-born actress and lyric soprano Deanna Durbin.
Biography
Allison Durbin was born Allison Ann Durbin in 1950, in Auckland to Owen Durbin and Agnes Durbin, the second eldest of seven She attended school at Westlake High School, and performed for four-years in a children's choir. She became interested in singing, and has been inspired by artists like Aretha Franklin, Nina Simone and Dionne Warwick, and began performing in public in her early teens and after winning a talent contest at an Auckland ballroom, she was signed to Eldred Stebbing's Zodiac Records at the age of 14 and issued a number of singles on the label. Her third Zodiac single, a cover of Herman's Hermits "Can't You Hear My Heartbeat", out-sold the original in New Zealand and became her first charted hit. She built up a following in New Zealand, recording and fronting the Mike Perjanik Group and she travelled with them to Australia in 1966 for residencies in Sydney. After nine months in Sydney she left the group to establish a solo career, making numerous appearances on Australian TV pop and variety shows. Durbin's first single for New Zealand HMV, "I Have Loved Me A Man", became a No.1 hit in New Zealand and also a hit in Australia. The song won her the New Zealand music award, the 1968 Loxene Golden Disc and she was named New Zealand Entertainer of the Year in 1969. For three years running, she won Australia's "Queen of Pop" award for. In 1971, she recorded a duet album, called Together, with Johnny Farnham, who had been voted Australia's "King of Pop" during the same years Durbin received her awards.
Singles
Other songs include:
"Mix it Up" 1965
"Put Your Hand in the Hand of the Man"
"Are You Lonesome Tonight?"
"If I Said You Had a Beautiful Body Would You Hold It Against Me"
In the late 1960s Durbin began a relationship with expatriate New Zealand record producerHoward Gable, then a senior A&R manager/house producer for EMI Australia, and they subsequently married and started a family. During the 1970s, as her career waned, Durbin began using heroin and her marriage to Gable ended. In 1985 she publicly acknowledged her battle with drugs and sought treatment at Odyssey House, a drug rehabilitation centre, but she was struck by a car just after her release from the centre, which left her with serious injuries, including a broken jaw. After she recovered, she worked as a country music singer in the late 1980s. On 1 June 2007, under her married name Allison Giles, she was sentenced to 12 months' jail for cannabis trafficking. One of her co-accused, the man she allegedly supplied with marijuana, was the convicted drug dealerGiuseppe "Joe" Barbaro.
