When Merseybeat Came to Corby

When Merseybeat Came to Corby On 9th September 2011 a sell-out concert (in aid of Prostate Cancer Research) took place at the Core at Corby Cube. Starring the ever-popular Liverpudlian band Gerry and the Pacemakers, the audience that night were treated to a rip-roaring performance from the creators of hits such as How Do You Do It?, I Like It and Ferry Cross The Mersey. As Marsden and his group rattled off their famous repertoire, for those of us in the crowd who consider themselves to have been ‘children of the Sixties’, it was immensely enjoyable to watch and listen as - in our mind’s eye - the clock was turned back almost fifty years to those heady days of Merseybeat, miniskirts, and Beatlemania. Of course Gerry and co. once worked the same circuit as the Fab Four travelling between Liverpool and Hamburg in the period prior to the beat music explosion of 1963 (in which year alone the band earned a place for themselves in the record books as they notched up consecutive UK number one hits with their first three singles.) After they split in 1966, Marsden went on to become a successful cabaret artist, children's television entertainer and star of the West End stage. Although carrying a little more weight than in his heyday, that night at the Cube we were re-acquainted with the Gerry of old. Still blessed with a tremendous voice and an ability to bring the house down, Marsden closed his seventy-five minute set with a soaring rendition of an anthem which he’s made his very own - You'll Never Walk Alone.  In 1963 Britain’s biggest-ever wave of home-grown pop talent exploded onto the scene. It became known as Merseybeat, and, as a result, for the next three years the city of Liverpool ruled the world of music. The images have become so familiar that they’ve lost their impact. Moptop haircuts, Italian suits, screaming fans, the jangle of guitars and raucous vocal harmonies - the sound and vision of the British beat boom has passed into the history books. British beat has become part of our shared cultural heritage. Even if you weren’t alive when our rock bands first conquered the world, you’ve seen it so often on TV that it feels as if you were there. What the hazy black and white newsreel clips can’t capture though, is the sense of shock that shuddered through the British music industry, and then the whole of the country, as Liverpool’s beat crusaders swept the pop establishment aside. British pop had been content to follow lamely in the footsteps of its American equivalent since the Second World War. We had our share of home-grown stars but they were all blatant copies of the U.S. originals. Cliff Richard mimicked Elvis Presley, Matt Monro wanted to be Frank Sinatra, whilst Adam Faith based his career on Buddy Holly’s vocal quiver. When the Beatles set off the Merseybeat explosion at the start of 1963, the charts were suddenly awash with cheeky Scouse quartets. Within a year solo singers were virtually banished from the Top 30 - unless, of course, they came from Liverpool. To the London establishment, Merseybeat seemed to come out of nowhere. In reality, Liverpool was just one of a number of bastions of British beat music, including Glasgow, Newcastle, Birmingham - and even our own town of Corby (or ‘Little Scotland’ as it is so often referred to.) In such places dozens of bands were dutifully preserving the legacy of Buddy Holly, Chuck Berry and other early rock ‘n’ rollers. Following in the wake of these was an even more committed brigade of purists, musicians who were devoted to Chicago blues and R&B. However, it was Liverpool that broke through first, not least because the city spawned the original architects of 1960s British pop, the Beatles. Thus Merseyside went down in history as the capital of the beat boom. In 1963 every record company in the land scoured Liverpool’s backstreets for their own version of the Fab Four. Careers that were born overnight were dead within a fortnight, as hastily concocted Beatles impressions failed to chart. By the end of 1965 the love affair was over - after that Mersey origins were the kiss of death. Nevertheless, for those three scintillating years Merseybeat was state-of-the-art pop. In June 1963 the dance hall of Corby’s Welfare Club played host to the Big Three - a Liverpudlian band with a big reputation and an even bigger sound. As ‘survivors’ of the night were to discover, the group were regarded on Merseyside as the loudest, most raucous and uninhibited exponents of Merseybeat - Britain’s answer to American rock ‘n’ roll. Before an unsuspecting and ultimately dazed, sell-out crowd (it’s said that no one even danced during the set) they proceeded to tear apart their audience’s preconceptions of what live British beat music was or could be. Dave Black remembers: “I was there the night the Big Three played the Welfare. They were the first Liverpool group that I’d ever seen playing live on stage, and I have to admit that I found it hard to believe that they could be British. Up until then I’d never seen or heard anything like it from a home-grown band. As their name implied - they were only a trio, however, the sheer power and volume that they generated was a totally unknown quantity in these parts, or, I suspect, anywhere else. They were sensational! Prior to the group’s performance, everyone was intrigued by the massive speakers that had been set up on both sides of the stage. None of our local players had seen anything on that scale before - anywhere. When the sound eventually kicked in, the entire room just seemed to take a step backwards! Looking back, one can now see that they were the forerunners to those power trios who would emerge later in the decade - e.g. Cream, the Jimi Hendrix Experience etc. That night at the Welfare served as my introduction to live Merseybeat and also made me realise that the UK was capable of producing rock music that was as good as (if not better than) that played by American artists.” Following on from the Big Three, over the Easter weekend of 1964 the Merseybeats were the next Scouse group to play in Corby. When they appeared at the Raven Hall they were still riding the crest of a wave with their hits I Think Of You and Don’t Turn Around. The band were featured in the Corby Leader newspaper and were photographed taking part in a tour of the Stewarts & Lloyds steelworks. Clive Smith, who was only fourteen years of age at the time, recalls being more than a little peeved when he and his pals were unable to gain admittance to the show. Instead, they had to settle for a night’s camping in their friend Dougie Wilson’s garden. Clive: “There were three tents and they were occupied by half a dozen reprobates! I can’t quite remember who came up with the idea, but at four o'clock in the morning someone suggested that we take a walk down to the Raven Hotel - just on the off-chance that we might bump into the Merseybeats. You see we had been told that they would be staying there overnight. As you might guess, we never did get to meet them.They were long gone. You can imagine the scene as we all traipsed back up Occupation Road, pinching bottles of milk from people’s doorsteps to drink on our return to camp!” Cilla Black, a former cloak-room attendant at the Cavern club in Liverpool, performed what was to be her last engagement in a dance hall when she appeared at the Welfare club in June 1964. Just a month previously she had topped the charts with Anyone Who Had A Heart, and on the night in question made it quite clear to promoter Pat Casey that she really didn’t want to do the gig. No surprise, surprise there! As things turned out, the songstress received a lukewarm reception from the local crowd - many of whom denigrated her singing talent. Nevertheless, she went on to become one of British television’s most popular presenters. Two more class acts from Merseyside visited Corby over the following months. Unfortunately the Fourmost, whose set was largely based around a comedy routine, received a very dismal welcome from Corby’s beat purists (only a couple of hundred bothering to turn up.) Soon afterwards Tommy Quickly, who at that time was probably Liverpool’s most highly regarded male solo artist, was also disappointed by the rather subdued reception that he got from Corby’s pop cognoscenti. Tony Jackson and the Vibrations fared much better when they appeared on 19 February 1965. Jackson, the former lead singer and bass player with the Searchers, gave a storming performance. At the end of the night he reprised his former group’s first number one hit, Sweets For My Sweet, leaving an ecstatic Corby crowd begging for more. Propping up the same bill were local lads the Invaders, who apparently gave ‘a good account of themselves.’ In 1965, as the Merseybeat era was approaching its zenith, the Undertakers did a gig at the Rockingham Arms dance hall. Clive Smith, who was still below the legal age for alcohol consumption, was yet again determined to reinforce his musical credentials. So it came to pass that on a murky Thursday night ‘Big C’ found himself scaling the side of the building, where, from his perch on a rear window-sill, he watched as the Scousers executed their very lively set. In one respect the Undertakers were different from other Mersey bands - in that they had a sax player in their line-up. Interestingly, they were to provide the inspiration behind the career of Ricky Dodd - one of Corby's most successful musicians. During an interview for It’s Steel Rock and Roll To Me,  Dodd revealed that despite having initially been a jazz fan, it was the Undertakers who turned him on to rock ‘n’ roll. After serving an apprenticeship with local outfits, and then embarking on a twelve month stint in the Hamburg and Frankfurt area with a German band, Rick finally made his breakthrough when asked to take the place of Liverpool sax player Howie Casey in the Roy Young Band. Casey, of course, is considered a Liverpool legend in his own right - having played with Sir Paul McCartney on his ground-breaking album Band On The Run. As time went on Dodd became firm friends with Casey (who incidentally was once a member of Derry and the Seniors - the first Liverpool band to play Hamburg.) The latter also played for a number of years alongside another Corby instrumentalist, the former Size Seven drummer Ian Murray. The pair enjoyed working together during a fruitful stint in Big Bob’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Circus. Corby’s preoccupation with American rock ‘n’ roll, during the period spanning the mid-1950s until the early 1960s, is not the only thing that the town has in common with Liverpool. Concentrations of people migrating to a geographical area can cause a town/city to develop its own accent. In Britain two of the most striking examples of this relate to Liverpool and Corby. Liverpool’s dialect is influenced heavily by its Irish and Welsh ancestry, making it sound completely different from the surrounding areas of Lancashire; whereas Corby's dialect is primarily derived from its predominantly Scottish heritage - thus setting it apart entirely from the rest of Northamptonshire.
* Thanks to Radio Merseyside broadcaster and author Spencer Leigh; Clive Smith and David Black, authors of It’s Steel Rock and Roll To Me, available from all major book shops.