A BRIEF SET WE PLAYED FOR LONNIE
DONEGAN BACKSTAGE AT THE NOTTINGHAM
EMPIRE WOULD BE OUR TURNING POINT©^ G
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I played his records, I would mime to them
and even sing a little when I could reach the
required notes. But I felt my showmanship
in selling the song was equally important.
Upon seeing me miming to Johnnie,
my grandmother suggested that I mime
to some records for a friend, who was
having a birthday party. No sooner had
my grandma’s suggestion sunk in than my
beloved Dansette record player and I, plus a
few records, made our debut by miming to
Johnnie, et al. Such was the success of my
miming that I got bookings for more parties- no singing, just miming. It was at this time
that two of my panto pals, Brian “Licorice”
Locking and Roy Clark, invited me to
join their harmonica act, The Harmonica
Vagabonds. A year after joining forces, my
new voice was settling in and I was thrilled
with what I could achieve vocally. Then,
with the emergence of Lonnie Donegan, we
jumped on the bandwagon and proceeded
to play skiffle music.
Following a name change to The
Vagabonds Skiffle Group, I became the
frontman. This gave me ample opportunity
to work unknowingly on my stagecraft and
garner more and more experience vocally as
my voice returned in a much lower register.
It was a brief set we played for Lonnie
Donegan backstage at the Nottingham
Empire one Saturday morning that would
prove to be the icing on the cake and our
turning point. Having played three numbers
for Lonnie, he pulled me to one side and
whispered, “You and the bass player have
got it and you should go professional, but the
other guys need more experience.”MY FORMATIVE PROFESSIONAL
years were spent treading the boards with
the Larry Parnes stable of rockers, as we
performed in the top theatres throughout
Britain. These were without doubt the
most educational, formative and enjoyable
experiences any budding performer could
have wished for. Whilst having drooled
over amazing performers such as Johnnie
Ray and Lonnie Donegan, I realised that
it wasn’t just their music that grabbed us,but the way they sold it. The theatres were
known as variety theatres, with ‘variety’
being the operative word; that’s what post-
war audiences demanded. The luxury of
touring with vans full of sound equipment
and musical accessories had yet to arrive
and we often found ourselves at the mercy
of someone who was perhaps a builder or
baker by day and a sound engineer on the
theatre’s PA by night. Most theatres had
pit orchestras for their variety artists, but
when we rock’n’rollers came onto the scene
we carried our own musicians, so the pit
musicians gradually became defunct.
The venues were generally the Moss
Empire circuit, who had more than 50
theatres, and this meant that an act who
went well and obeyed company policy
could work almost every week of the year
if they so desired. However, the theatre
management had an artist booker named
Cissie Williams, who was the toughest
lady imaginable and an absolute stickler
regarding times. The shows were usually
twice-nightly, such as 6pm and 8.15pm, but
we had to be checked in by the stage door
manager and be in the theatre 35 minutes
prior to the first house curtain going up.
Both the stage door managers and the
stage managers themselves had littleA Life In Rock’n’Roll