Pussycat

Pussycat
Pussycat at an award ceremony in 1977 (Conamus), from left to right Toni, Betty and Marianne Kowalczyk. Presented by the Ambassador of the United Kingdom to the Netherlands, Sir John Barnes.
General information
origin	Brunssum , Netherlands
Genre (s)	pop music
founding	1975 (from Sweet Reaction ), 1986 as Anycat
resolution	1985, 1999
Website	Official website of Pussycat ( Memento of September 2, 2010 in the Internet Archive ) (English)
Last occupation
singing	Toni Willé (née Kowalczyk ) * June 26, 1953
singing	Betty Dragstra (née Kowalczyk ) * June 23, 1952
singing	Marianne Veldpaus (formerly Hensen , née Kowalczyk ) * May 16, 1951
former members
guitar	John Theunissen (1973–1981; † 2015)
guitar	Lou Willé (1973–1985)
Drums	Theo Coumans (1973–1978)
Bass guitar	Theo Wetzels (1973–1981)
guitar	Ferd Berger (1981–1985)
Drums	Frans Meijer (1981–1985)
Drums	Hans Lutjens (1978–1981)
Keyboard	Kees Buenen (1981–1985)

Toni Willé as Pussycat, August 2008 in Haldensleben

Pussycat was a Dutch musical group that had its greatest success in the 1970s.

First years

Pussycat was formed in 1975 from the Sweet Reaction formation with the three sisters Toni, Betty and Marianne Kowalczyk from Brunssum in the province of Limburg .

The sisters lost their father very early to a lymph tumor . The mother, Marie Verheijen, married the Polish miner Stefan Kowalczyk three years later, who adopted the children. “Papa Kowalczyk was a real father to us. He spoiled us all, ”said his daughter Betty later. The stepfather promoted the daughters' musical talent. At Sinterklaas he bought them acoustic guitars and hired a guitar teacher. Shortly thereafter, they appeared at carnivals, parties and talent competitions as De Zingende Zusjes (the singing sisters) . Her repertoire initially consisted primarily of German hits, which were also popular in Holland. A few years later, the guitar teacher introduced her to the 18-year-old Werner Theunissen , a guitarist with The Entertainers , whom he had met through a newspaper ad.

Following the fashion of the 1960s, the teenage sisters called themselves the BG's From Holland , where the BG stands for Beat Girls , but phonetically deliberately reminiscent of the Bee Gees , which were successful at the time . They also interpret songs by the Bee Gees and pieces from Motown music in good close harmony vocals. Her mentor Werner Theunissen wrote songs for her, for example Please, please, love me . At the same time they worked in their civil professions, for example as office workers at the Heerlen company DSM .

Toni met the guitarist Lou Willé in the early 1970s, who formed the formation Ricky Rendall and His Centurions with his brothers . Shortly thereafter, they married and Lou decided to start the band Sweet Reaction with the sisters, Werner Theunissen and other musicians (including from the Scum group ) . Three singles were produced, but they were hardly successful. Nevertheless, the later typical pussycat sound already sounded in the pieces Daddy or Tell Alain . These titles later remained in the singers' repertoire.

Pussycat

Werner Theunissen wrote other songs that more and more emphasized the singing of the three girls, but also used older material that had never been published. He wrote the famous song Mississippi back in 1969, inspired by the Massachusetts song of the Bee Gees. Since it was a melancholy song of mourning over the quietly fading away, the modern rock 'n' roll softening, country music acts, he had to wait a few years until he had found the ideal interpreter for it.

With the founding of the formation Sweet Reaction, Theunissen laid the musical foundation to help the song come into its own a few years later. The band sent a demo tape with three songs to the largest record company in the Netherlands, EMI / Bovema in Heemstede . The publisher signed a contract with her. Eddy Hilberts became their producer and the band changed their name to "Pussycat". Mississippi was released as a single in April 1975 and became Pussycat's biggest international success. The young women gave up their jobs and from then on devoted themselves only to music. The title reached in many countries charts , was taken with changed text in German and later by other artists gecovert . The successor singles Georgie , Smile or My Broken Souvenirs also reached higher chart positions in the Netherlands, Germany and Great Britain.

Further singles and albums were produced until 1983 . Since it was cheaper for the club owners and concert managers to let the accompanying music run off the tape as a backing track and the tours with numerous musicians cost a lot of money, the sisters separated from their backing band and only appeared in groups of three. In 1985 the trio broke up.

After the dissolution

Marianne ran a pub in Brunssum for several years. Lou Willé, divorced from Toni, is still a musician today. Toni Willé appeared as a soloist.

From 1986 to 1999 the band members occasionally appeared as "Anycat". After that, Marianne Hensen (now Veldpaus ) and Betty Dragstra retired completely into private life.

In 2007, the Dutch pop singer Dennis Jones brought all three together again as background singers for a Dutch pop version of Mississippi ( reggae style ). This was the first time that Pussycat sang their hit song in their mother tongue.

The lead singer of Pussycat, Toni Willé (born Antonia Johanna Cornelia ), worked as a soloist on and published in the Netherlands several albums, especially country music . In 2001 she sang duets with Benny Neyman and still performs as "Toni Willé", often in Germany. At oldie events she appears with two background singers under the name "Pussycat". One of the accompanying singers is usually her daughter Kimberly. In 2013 she made a guest appearance with Mississippi in the ZDF television garden .

Its discoverer, songwriter and companion Werner Theunissen , died on January 18, 2010 in an English restaurant of a heart attack. He wrote the last song before his death (Impressions) for Toni Willé, who published it in November 2012 on her single Impressions - Dedicated to Werner Theunissen .

The guitarist John Theunissen, who was not related to Werner Theunissen, died on November 19, 2015 at the age of 66.

Discography

Albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)		Remarks
		DE	NL
1976	First of all	DE10 (46 weeks) DE	NL4th platinum (21 weeks)NL	First published: April 1976 Producer: Eddy Hilberts
1977	Souvenirs	DE28 (8 weeks) DE	NL6th gold (8 weeks)NL	First published: May 1977 Producer: Eddy Hilberts
1978	Wet Day in September	-	NL16 (7 weeks) NL	First published: September 1978 Producer: Eddy Hilberts
1981	Blue lights	-	NL10 (15 weeks) NL	First published: June 1981 Producer: Pim Koopman

More albums

• 1979: Simply to Be with You
• 1983: After All

Compilations

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)		Remarks
		DE	NL
1994	The Collection & More	-	NL60 (3 weeks) NL	First published: 1994
2001	25 jaar na Mississippi	-	NL26 (7 weeks) NL	First release: 2001 2 CDs
2015	The Golden Years of Dutch Pop Music	-	NL72 (1 week) NL	First published: 1994

More compilations

• 1979: The Best of Pussycat
• 1982: Collection
• 1983: Het Beste van Pussycat
• 1987: Mississippi
• 1991: De Hits van Pussycat
• 1995: Good for Gold
• 1996: The Very Best of Pussycat Featuring Toni Willé (feat.Toni Willé)
• 1997: 2 in 1 (2 CDs)
• 2004: The Greatest Hits
• 2004: The Complete Collection (box with 3 CDs and DVD)
• 2009: All 40 goed (2 CDs)

Singles

year	Title album	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, album , rankings, weeks, awards, notes)					Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	NL
1975	Mississippi First of All	DE1 gold (32 weeks)DE	AT4 (32 weeks) AT	CH1 (21 weeks) CH	UK1 gold (21 weeks)UK	NL1 (13 weeks) NL	First published: November 1975
1976	Georgie First of All	DE6 (24 weeks) DE	AT2 (28 weeks) AT	CH2 (16 weeks) CH	-	NL4 (10 weeks) NL	First published: February 1976
	Mississippi (German)	DE24 (8 weeks) DE	-	-	-	-	First published: March 1976
	Smile first of all	DE9 (27 weeks) DE	AT10 (16 weeks) AT	CH8 (12 weeks) CH	UK24 (7 weeks) UK	NL2 (12 weeks) NL	First published: August 1976
1977	An old song (smile)	DE41 (2 weeks) DE	-	-	-	-	First published: December 1976
	My Broken Souvenirs Souvenirs	DE22 (10 weeks) DE	AT12 (8 weeks) AT	CH7 (8 weeks) CH	-	NL1 (10 weeks) NL	First published: March 1977
	I'll Be Your Woman Souvenirs	-	-	-	-	NL11 (7 weeks) NL	First published: August 1977
	If You Ever Come to Amsterdam Wet Day in September	-	-	-	-	NL20 (7 weeks) NL	First published: December 1977
1978	Same Old Song Wet Day in September	-	-	-	-	NL10 (9 weeks) NL	First published: March 1978
	Wet Day in September Wet Day in September	-	-	-	-	NL7 (9 weeks) NL	First published: July 1978
	Hey Joe Wet Day in September	-	-	-	-	NL21 (5 weeks) NL	First published: December 1978
1979	Daddy Simply to Be with You	-	-	-	-	NL14 (8 weeks) NL	First published: August 1979
1980	Doin 'La Bamba! Simply to be with you	-	-	-	-	NL6 (9 weeks) NL	First published: July 1980
1981	Then the music stopped blue lights	-	-	-	-	NL11 (9 weeks) NL	First published: April 1981
	A room for the Blue Lights	-	-	-	-	NL25 (5 weeks) NL	First published: July 1981
	Teenage Queenie Blue Lights	DE47 (11 weeks) DE	-	-	-	NL36 (3 weeks) NL	First published: October 1981
1983	Lovers of a Kind After All	-	-	-	-	NL15 (8 weeks) NL	First published: February 1983

More singles

• 1970: Come Back My Dream (as Sweet Reaction)
• 1971: Tell Alain (as Sweet Reaction)
• 1975: Daddy / Tell Alain (as Sweet Reaction)
• 1977: Daddy / It's Long Ago (as Sweet Reaction)
• 1976: Georgie (German)
• 1977: Farewell souvenir
• 1979: Let Freedom Range (Tribute to Martin Luther King)
• 1982: Take a Look at Me
• 1983: Chicano
• 1983: Roll On Sweet Mississippi (Promo only)
• 1983: Chez-Louis (only promo)
• 1984: Light of a Gipsy

statistics

Chart evaluation

DE  NL Number one albums DE-DE NL-NL Top 10 albums DE1DE NL2NL Albums in the charts DE3DE NL6thNL

DE  AT  CH  UK  NL Number one singles DE1DE AT-AT CH1CH UK1UK NL2NL Top 10 singles DE3DE AT3AT CH4thCH UK2UK NL5NL Singles in the charts DE7thDE AT4thAT CH4thCH UK2UK NL15thNL

Awards for music sales

Note: Awards in countries from the chart tables or chart boxes can be found in these.

Country / Region	gold	platinum	Sales	swell
Awards for music sales (country / region, awards, sales, sources)
Germany (BVMI)	gold1	-	250,000	musikindustrie.de
Netherlands (NVPI)	gold1	platinum1	150,000	nvpi.nl
United Kingdom (BPI)	gold1	-	500,000	bpi.co.uk
All in all	3 × gold3	platinum1

swell

1. ↑ ^{a b c} Pussycat biography. NPO 3FM , accessed May 17, 2015 (Dutch). 
2. ↑ Zanger DENNIS JONES burns PUSSYCAT weer even bij elkaar. In: Mega-Media.nl. Perfect & More, July 11, 2007, accessed June 26, 2015 (Dutch). 
3. ↑ Pussycat guitarist John Theunissen (66) overleden. In: show.nl. November 24, 2015, accessed November 27, 2015 (Dutch). 
4. ↑ ^{a b c} Chart sources: Singles DE, AT, CH UK NL / Albums DE NL

Web links

Commons : Pussycat  - collection of pictures, videos and audio files

• Pussycat at Discogs (English)
• Discography on rateyourmusic.com (English)
• Singles Discography on 45cat.com (English)
• Discography Sweet Reaction (Dutch)
• Video interview with Pussycat , three parts (Dutch with English subtitles)