{"id":53,"date":"2010-11-01T16:44:05","date_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:44:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=53"},"modified":"2010-11-01T16:44:05","modified_gmt":"2010-11-01T16:44:05","slug":"oh-boy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/?p=53","title":{"rendered":"Oh Boy!"},"content":{"rendered":"

It was as if the launch of Oh Boy!<\/em> was timed as my treat at the end of a testing first week at grammar school. A reluctantly short-trousered eleven-year-old, I owned the beginnings of a record collection – Little Richard and Lonnie Donegan 78s; Crickets, Fats Domino, and Everly Brothers EPs \u2013 and had already intuited that if Tommy Steele was Britain\u2019s answer to Elvis Presley, then, as some wag put it, we must have misheard the question.<\/p>\n

I\u2019d seen Steele on Saturday evening\u2019s 6.5 Special<\/em> and sensed something equally hokey about the BBC\u2019s flagship teen show: the cable-knit jollity of a church youth club, with hosts Pete Murray and Jo Douglas as the would-be with-it vicar and his wife, both blithely clueless as to what appealed to young people. All we wanted on a show that started in February 1957, with \u2018Hound Dog\u2019 and \u2018Long Tall Sally\u2019 in the hit parade, was rock\u2019n\u2019roll, not a hotchpotch of jazz, skiffle, classical, choirs and crooners, never mind the comedy, sport and eggy interview slots.<\/p>\n

More than three years on from \u2018Rock Around The Clock\u2019, the music fanfared by that record had fallen short of undisputed pre-eminence and, through the months leading to Oh Boy!<\/em>\u2019s launch, the pop papers bristled with articles bashing the big beat. Melody Maker<\/em>\u2019s curmudgeonly Steve Race was not alone in railing against \u201cthat particular kind of infantile and often suggestive chanting known as \u2018rock\u2019n\u2019roll\u2019,\u201d while Methodist minister Donald Soper, deploring \u201cthe undue emphasis on sex in so many songs\u201d and calling for censorship to shore up artistic and moral standards, claimed, \u201cI watch 6.5 Special<\/em> sometimes \u2013 as a penance. I\u2019m perplexed. I can\u2019t understand how intelligent people can derive any sort of satisfaction from something which is emotionally embarrassing and intellectually ridiculous.\u201d The populist \u2018Dr Soapbox\u2019 could have been having a dig at 6.5 Special<\/em> producer Jack Good, whose intelligence, vouched by an Oxford degree, had not blinded him to the effervescent glory of rock\u2019n\u2019roll.<\/p>\n

In fact, Good had quit the programme \u2013 and the frustrations of the BBC \u2013 early in 1958 and begun almost at once to plan a music show for the rival commercial network, unencumbered by the baggage that too often slowed 6.5 Special<\/em> to a stumble. This was to be his masterpiece: a spell-binding visualisation \u2013 through movement, camerawork and lighting \u2013 of rock\u2019n\u2019roll.<\/p>\n

The resistance to rock\u2019n\u2019roll aired in the music press prevailed at school. Most of my peers had been brow-beaten by parents or older siblings into disbelieving Danny & the Juniors\u2019 brash assertion that rock\u2019n\u2019roll was \u201chere to stay\u201d, so being a fan was like belonging to a secret society. I looked for signs among the thousand other boys: a brylcreemed quiff, trousers taken in on mother\u2019s Singer, tie worn the wrong way round, fat end tucked away, thin end dangling slim jim-style from a Windsor knot. I bonded with a boy in my form because he wore Buddy Holly glasses, and found a musical mentor in the older brother of a form-mate who had seen me inscribe Little Richard\u2019s name in illuminated text on the back cover of my rough book. Pomdadoured Pete Briggs would introduce me to Ray Charles\u2019 \u2018What\u2019d I Say\u2019, Jesse Hill\u2019s \u2018Ooh-Poo-Pah-Doo\u2019 and Larry Williams\u2019 \u2018She Said \u201cYeah\u201d\u2019, this last the B-side of a record that wasn\u2019t even a hit in the States. How could a sixteen-year-old from the home counties have come across it?<\/p>\n

Twenty-seven-year-old Jack Good was mentor to Marty Wilde, who had appeared on 6.5 Special<\/em>. It was Good who introduced him to American Jody Reynolds\u2019 \u2018Endless Sleep\u2019, Wilde\u2019s cover of which brought him his first hit in July 1958 and remained a top five fixture the week Oh Boy!<\/em> began.<\/p>\n

Good could spot home-grown hits too, inking Cliff Richard for the opening show the moment he flipped the seventeen-year-old\u2019s first single and heard \u2018Move It\u2019. \u201cThis disc could sell 50,000 copies on its first eight bars alone,\u201d he enthused in his 9 August Disc<\/em> column. \u201cEven as I play it over again for the hundred and first time, I still can\u2019t believe it. That this disc comes from Britain and not the States is fantastic \u2013 absurd. If this is not a hit, I have never heard one.\u201d<\/p>\n

While I was finding my feet in 2C, Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and the regulars recruited for Oh Boy!<\/em> \u2013 house band Lord Rockingham\u2019s XI, wide-eyed Cherry Wainer with her upholstered Hammond organ, Leicester doo-woppers the Dallas Boys, and the leggy Vernons Girls, whose short shorts would have dads\u2019 eyes glued to the tube – were rehearsing at an Islington club, where every movement, every look was minutely observed through the producer\u2019s owlish lenses. Richard, clearly in the thrall of Elvis, wore sideboards and an acoustic guitar slung across his chest. Shaping his hands in front of his face to approximate a TV screen, Good studied the young singer, and made a note to have a word with him.<\/p>\n

The next day New Musical Express<\/em>\u2019s Keith Goodwin interviewed the debutant, who \u201cset about telling me of his sudden attack of nerves. \u2018It\u2019s wonderful to be going on TV for the first time, but I feel so nervous that I don\u2019t know what to do. I mean, I only turned professional five weeks ago, and before that I was working as a clerk and only playing at local dances and things in my spare time. I wore sideburns then, but I shaved them off last night – Jack thought it would make me look more original. I think he\u2019s right,\u2019 he said.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cMake no mistake,\u201d the singer insists fifty years later, \u201cJack Good was the boss. He was totally in control, always. Unless he permitted it, you couldn\u2019t do it! I\u2019ve said many times that it was Jack who created the beginnings of Cliff Richard. He didn\u2019t want an Elvis look-alike, so off came the sideburns, away went the guitar, and in came the sneer, the curled lip, and that sultry look up at the camera. I was one hundred per cent directed by him but, oh boy, did he know what he was doing!\u201d<\/p>\n

Oh Boy!<\/em> was screened live, with a five-minute start on 6.5 Special<\/em>, from London\u2019s Hackney Empire, whose stage was overhung with high-watt spots to generate dazzling chiaroscuro effects: circles of stark white light across which danced angular black shadows cast by the singers, each gyration mirrored in negative monochrome, intensifying the screams \u2013 already whipped to crescendo during Good\u2019s frenetic warm-up – from the teeming balcony.<\/p>\n

There was a host \u2013 Tony Hall one week, Jimmy Henney the next \u2013 but no waffle; songs chased songs relentlessly, many condensed into medleys to maximise the output. And although few family TV\u2019s had a screen larger than a laptop today, the scale of Good\u2019s production was cinematic. Performers were backed by as many as thirty supporting musicians and singers, marshalled into teaming-and-toning, individually choreographed groups, the ensemble urged on from the wings by the inexhaustible producer.<\/p>\n

Good\u2019s preparation was never less than meticulous, as Marty Wilde confirms. \u201cI don\u2019t know anyone else who would have spent the time that he did. He would rehearse for hours and hours and hours to get things right, and it really paid off. He produced, he directed, and people like myself, Cliff and Billy Fury would have gone to the ends of the earth for him. If he\u2019d have said, \u2018Boys, at the weekend we\u2019re jumping from the cliffs of Dover,\u2019 we\u2019d have gone, and we\u2019d have jumped, because we believed in him totally.\u201d<\/p>\n

When he wasn\u2019t framing shots with his hands, Good was plotting sequences on paper. \u201cHe would have a pencil and a board,\u201d Wilde explains, \u201cand he would draw a square, shade it in and say, \u2018I\u2019m going to shoot under your jaw here, and this is what it\u2019ll look like, then here, I want you to look slightly to your right, and the camera will be there, and I want you to look down.\u2019 He would tell you where the camera was going to be and what he planned to do with it.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cTelevision was just black-and-white in those days, of course,\u201d Richard points out, \u201cbut the dramatic effect you could achieve with white light stabbing through the blackness was stunning. Frantic, fast-moving camera shots reinforced the excitement, which produced something totally new for the small screen. Nothing had been done like it before \u2013 and again it was entirely Jack Good\u2019s doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Vernons Girl Joyce Baker, who would become Joyce Wilde when she married the lanky heartthrob in 1959, highlights another aspect of Good\u2019s production: \u201cJack would have some marvellous idea about a hit song someone had sent from America, and he\u2019d get the girls to do dance routines around that song. He\u2019d pick a couple of girls out to do an Everly Brothers number or whatever, and the others would be like a backdrop.\u201d Wilde concurs, \u201cJack would often pick up songs that weren\u2019t high in the American charts, he\u2019d just pick out something that he really liked. He had amazing foresight in that direction really. He would pick out a song and say, \u2018This is going to be great.\u2019\u201d So, on the opening show, Wilde sang the Leiber-Stoller rocker, \u2018Baby I Don\u2019t Care\u2019, Ricky Nelson\u2019s new UK hit, \u2018Poor Little Fool\u2019, and Buddy Knox\u2019s rarely-heard \u2018Somebody Touched Me\u2019.<\/p>\n

Richard, who sang Milton Allen\u2019s \u2018Don\u2019t Bug Me Baby\u2019 as well as \u2018Move It\u2019, observes, \u201cWhat we did was, in essence, very simple: we presented the charts to people. The UK couldn\u2019t get Elvis or Jerry Lee or Conway Twitty, so we did their music for them \u2013 and everyone was a winner. The fans happily accepted covers of US hits from their favourite UK pin-ups, music publishers were thrilled to have their material promoted here, and there were certainly no complaints from the original American stars, who saw their record royalties increase on the back of soaring UK popularity.\u201d<\/p>\n

By November, the show\u2019s nationwide popularity, which would soon prompt the BBC to drop 6.5 Special<\/em> for the brazen Oh Boy!<\/em> clone, Dig This!<\/em>, was confirmed when Lord Rockingham\u2019s XI\u2019s \u2018Hoots Mon\u2019 topped the charts, but the protectors of public morality continued to keep watch, and in December NME<\/em>\u2019s Alley Cat columnist harrumphed, \u201cProducer Jack Good must be held responsible for permitting the most crude exhibitionism ever seen on British TV \u2013 by Cliff Richard last Saturday. His violent hip-swinging during an obvious attempt to copy Elvis Presley was revolting \u2013 hardly the kind of performance any parent could wish their children to witness.\u201d In unapologetic protest that this show had been singled out, the singer claimed cheekily, \u201cAfter all, I\u2019m always<\/em> sexy,\u201d while Good\u2019s response was to book him as often as he could, and it was inevitable that Oh Boy!<\/em>\u2019s most sensational discovery should perform the closing number \u2013 a duet with Marty Wilde – of the 38th<\/sup> and final show on 30 May 1959.<\/p>\n

A second series was anticipated in September, but by then both name and format had changed. Although Boy Meets Girls<\/em> disappointingly abandoned the breathless pace and brio of Oh Boy!<\/em>, it didn\u2019t stop Good making British heroes of Eddie Cochran and Gene Vincent, a cheery Southerner whom he spectacularly transformed into a brooding, leather-clad Richard III.<\/p>\n

Wham!<\/em> followed in 1960, but the upbeat exclamation mark could not disguise the truth that pop was in the doldrums, and in 1962 Good moved to the States \u201cfor a year\u201d that stretched to many more.<\/p>\n

Time crawled through my teens, and it seemed a lifetime later that I saw the Rolling Stones in the back room of a Windsor pub, and yet it was less than four years on from Oh Boy!<\/em>. This was British R&B, a new beginning and, for its acolytes, bigger than the Beatles. By August 1963, it had spawned its own stylish music show, which I watched across the ironing board as I pressed my tab-collar shirt and John Stephen strides before heading into an amphetamine-fuelled all-night, but not even the iconic Ready Steady Go!<\/em> could surpass the feverish excitement of Oh Boy!<\/em>.<\/p>\n

(Originally published in September 2008)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It was as if the launch of Oh Boy! was timed as my treat at the end of a testing first week at grammar school. A reluctantly short-trousered eleven-year-old, I owned the beginnings of a record collection – Little Richard and Lonnie Donegan 78s; Crickets, Fats Domino, and Everly Brothers EPs \u2013 and had already […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-53","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-music"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=53"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/53\/revisions\/55"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=53"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=53"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.johnpidgeon.com\/words\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=53"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}