Petra Černocká – “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” / “Hádej, mámo” single cover

The song “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” (“Look, Hum The Song With Me”) has already been touched upon by me at the font use entry about the Valérie Čižmárová ‎singles (Supraphon, 1973/1975) and self-titled album (Supraphon, 1975). It was the closing part of the opening track on the album, “Směs písní” (“Medley”). The story behind why that song appeared on that album is as follows.

At the Bratislavská Lýra Festival of 1973, Petra Černocká was due to perform “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej”, for which she had composed both the music and lyrics. However, she was taken ill in the immediate run-up to the festival, so Valérie Čižmárová was called in as an understudy to perform the song on Petra Černocká's behalf, narrowly missing out on a “podium finish”, coming fourth.

In recognition of this event it was decided that “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” would be the last of four “oldies” associated with Valérie Čižmárová for the opening track, preceded by first her cover of The Sweet’s “Co-Co”, “Koko”, then by her cover of Giorgio Moroder’s “Looky, Looky”, “Léta letí” (“Time Flies”) and finally by her cover of Bobby Hebb’s “Sunny” her debut single. However, Petra had herself at least managed to record a studio version of “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” in 1973, backed up by “Hádej, mámo” (“Take A Guess, Mum”), a cover of the Soulful Dynamics’ “Coconuts From Congoville”, released by Supraphon Records as No. 0 43 1536 h.

Petra Černocká was born on 24th November 1949 in Prague and at the time of the recording of “Koukej, se mnou si píseň broukej” / “Hádej, mámo” she would probably have been best-known for her both having sung the theme of and having starred, as Saxana, the teenage witch, in the 1971 film directed by Václav Vorlíček, Dívka na koštěti (“Girl On A Broomstick”).

Her name on the front and rear of the sleeve appears in Motter Ombra with custom diacritics. On the front her surname is divided into three lines and on the rear her first name appears rotated 90 degrees anti-clockwise. The song titles would appear to be in Maršův Grotesk, where the aforementioned Valérie Čižmárová is one of the two pre-existing font use entries for the font. The credits for, respectively, the photography and sleeve design are Vlastislav Macháček and Jiří Pavlín.