Story of the song: Coming on Strong by Brenda Lee

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Note perfect: the singer performing at the London Palladium in 1964 (Getty)

“The radio’s playin’ some forgotten song/ Brenda Lee’s ‘Coming on Strong’.” When the Dutch rockers Golden Earring namechecked Lee’s tear-jerker in their sweaty 1973 hit “Radar Love”, they brought home a lost classic.

Lee – the original “Little Miss Dynamite”, born Brenda Mae Tarpley in Atlanta, Georgia – began her singing career as a child star in the Fifties, scoring with a bunch of country/rockabilly crossovers, and playing Hamburg with The Beatles. By 1966, she was nudging 22 and running out of juice. She’d already cut the harder-edged “Is it True?” in London, featuring Jimmy Page on guitar. But for what would be her final mainstream hit, she was back on familiar ground.

Wallowing in a bluesy, country twang, “Coming on Strong” smudges the eyeliner at first listen: “I can feel the heartaches/ Comin’ on strong/ I can feel the teardrops/ The pain, and the sorrow/ Ever since you’ve been gone/ They’ve been comin’ on strong”. It was written by “Little” David Wilkins, the larger-than-life Tennessee troubadour, once billed as the biggest man in country music.

Recording was overseen by Lee’s longtime producer, the legendary architect of the Nashville sound, Owen Bradley. A needle-sharp horn arrangement backs the cream of Nashville session players, including Hank Garland on guitar and the pianist Floyd Cramer.

The song managed to reach the Billboard top 20, but didn’t even bother with the British charts. Like all of Lee’s hits, however, it was big in the Netherlands, and Golden Earring remembered it well, hence the nostalgic reference to it by Barry Hay, one of Golden Earring’s main songwriters, on Moontan, the band’s seminal album.