The Flirtations

Nothing But A Heartache’ b/w ‘Need Your Loving’

The Flirtations were South Carolina trio Lestine Johnson with sisters Ernestine and Shirley Pearce. They originally recorded for the Old Town label as The Gypsies but despite a change of name and several changes of label success eluded them. After winning a local talent contest in 1968 they packed their bags and headed for England, where they supported Tom Jones and signed to Deram. ‘Nothing But A Heartache’ was their second release for the label and while it failed to chart in the UK it reached No. 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 in 1969. The wonderful ‘Need Your Loving’ would have remained an album track but requests from Northern Soul clubs saw it finally released as a single in 1972. Until now original UK copies of that original single have been extremely hard to come by and have been in very high demand. Both sides were written by the Deram ‘in house’ team of Wayne Bickerton and Tony Waddington, who would have considerable chart success in the mid ‘70s with The Rubettes, for whom they wrote the No. 1 hit ‘Sugar Baby Love’.