Episode 48: “Rock With the Caveman” by Tommy Steele

A History of Folk Music and 500 Songs

by Andrew Hickey.

Episode 48

Rock with the Caveman by Tommy Steele.

Let's talk a little bit about the Piltdown Man.

Piltdown Man was an early example of a hominid, a missing link between the apes and humans.

Its skull was discovered in 1912 in Piltdown, East Sussex, by the eminent archaeologist Charles Dawson, and for years was considered one of the most important pieces of evidence in the story of human evolution.

And then, in 1953, it was discovered that the whole thing was a hoax, and not even a particularly good one.

Someone had just taken the jaw of an orangutan and the top part of a human skull, and filed down the orangutan teeth, and then stained the bones to make them look old.

It was almost certainly the work of Dawson himself, who seems to have spent his entire life making fraudulent discoveries.

Dawson had died decades earlier, and the full extent of his fraud wasn't even confirmed until 2003.

Sometimes researching the history of rock and roll can be a lot like that.

You can find a story repeated in numerous apparently reliable books, and then find out that it's all based on the inaccurate testimony of a single individual.

This story never happened.

It was just something someone made up.

We talked a little while ago about the skiffle movement and the first British guitar-based pop music.

Today we're going to look at the dawn of British rock and roll.

Now there's an important thing to note about the first wave of British rock and roll, and that is that it was essentially a music that had no roots in the culture.

It was an imitation of American music without any of the ties to social issues that made the American music so interesting.

Britain in the 1950s was a very different place to the one it is today, or to America.

It was ethnically extremely homogeneous, as the waves of immigration that have so improved the country had only just started.

And while few people travelled much outside their own immediate areas, it was culturally more homogeneous as well, as Britain, unlike America, had a national media rather than a local one.

In Britain, someone could become known throughout the country before they'd played their second gig, if they got the right media exposure.

And so British rock and roll started out at the point that American rock and roll was only just starting to get to, a clean-cut version of the music, with little black influence or sexuality left in it, designed from the outset to be a part of mainstream show business aimed at teenagers, not music for an underclass or a racial or sexual minority.

Britain's first rock and roll star put out his first record in November 1956, and by November 1957 he was appearing on the Royal Variety Show with Mario Lanza, Bob Munkhouse and Vera Lynn.

That is fundamentally what early British rock and roll was.

Keep that in mind for the rest of the story as we look at how a young sailor from a dirt poor family became Britain's first teen idol.

To tell that story, we first have to discuss the career of the Vipers Vipers Skiffle Group.

That was the group's full name, and they were just about the most important British group of the mid-fifties, even though they were never as commercially successful as some of the acts we've looked at.

The name of the Vipers Skiffle Group was actually the first drug reference in British pop music.

They took the name from the autobiography of the American jazz clarinetist Mez Mesro,

a man who was better known in the jazz community as a dope dealer than as a musician.

So much so that Mez itself became slang for marijuana, while Viper became the name for dope smokers, as you can hear in this recording by Stuff Smith, in which he sings that he dreamed about a reefer five foot long, mighty mez, but not too strong.

Come on, down, kid, let's smoke this tea this year.

Creep out reefer five feet long, mighty

Cause you the viper, now I'm the king of everything.

You gotta get high to have that swing.

Light a tea, let it be.

Cause you the viper, now your throat gets dry, and you know you high every

so when Wally Whiteon, Johnny Booker, and Jean van den Bosch formed a guitar trio, they chose that name, even though, as it turned out, none of them actually smoked dope.

They just thought it sounded cool.

They started performing at a cafe called The Two Eyes,

two, as in the numeral, I, as in the letter, and started to build up something of a reputation, to the point that Lonnie Donagan started nicking their material.

Whiton had taken an old sea shanty, Sail Away Ladies, popularized by the country banjo player Uncle Dave Macon, and rewritten it substantially, turning it into Don't You Rock Me Daddy O.

Donnegan copyrighted Whiton's song as soon as he heard it, and rushed out his own version of it.

But the Vipers put out their own version too, and the two chased each other up the charts.

Donnegan's charted higher, but the Vipers ended up at a respectable number ten.

raked daddy oh, oh, oh, she rocked with daddy oh, don't see rattled daddy oh, we're on to rack with daddy, oh no,

oh, what's he raccid daddy oh, don't see raked daddy oh, we're out to rock with daddy oh

That recording was on Parlophone records and was produced by a young producer who normally did comedy and novelty records named George Martin.

We'll be hearing more about him later on.

But at the time we're talking about, the Vipers had not yet gained a recording contract, and they were still playing the two eyes.

Occasionally, they would be joined on stage by a young acquaintance named Thomas Hicks.

Hicks was a merchant seaman and was away at sea most of the time, and so was never a full part of the group.

But even though he didn't care much for Skiffle, he was a country and western fan first first and foremost.

He played guitar, and in Britain, in 1955 and 1956, if you played guitar, you played skiffle.

Hicks had come from an absolutely dirt poor background.

Three of his siblings had died at cruelly young ages, and young Thomas himself had had several rushes with ill health, which meant that while he was a voracious reader, he had lacked formal education.

He had wanted to be a performer from a very early age and had developed a routine that he used to do around the pubs in his early teens, in which he would mind to a record by Danny Kaye, Knock on Wood.

store.

And now I feel so good, and I would.

The date and everything is definitely understood.

But at age 15, he had joined the Merchant Navy.

This isn't the same thing as the Royal Navy, but rather is the group of commercial shipping companies that provide non-military shipping.

And Hicks worked as waitstaff on a cruise ship making regular trips to America.

On an early trip, he fell in love with the music of Hank Williams, who would remain a favourite of his for the rest of his life, and he particularly loved the song Collijah.

Colijah was a wooden Indian standing by the door.

He fell in love with an Indian maid over in the antique store.

Colija

just stood stood there and never let it show.

So she could never answer yes or no.

Higgs replaced his old party piece of miming to Danny Kaye with a new one of singing Call Elijah, with accompaniment from anyone he could persuade to play guitar for him.

Eventually, one of his crewmates taught him how to play the song himself, and he started performing with pickup groups, singing Hank Williams songs, whenever he was on shore leave in the UK.

And when he couldn't get a paid gig, he'd head to the Two Eyes and sing with the Vipers.

But then came the event that changed his life.

Young Tommy Hicks, with his love of country music, was delighted when on shore leave in 1955 to see an advert for a touring show based on the Grand Ole Opry, in Norfolk, Virginia, where he happened to be.

Of course, he went along, and there he saw something that made a huge impression.

One of the acts in the middle of the bill was a young man who wore horn rimmed glasses.

Tommy still remembers the details to this day.

The young man came out and did a three song set.

The first song was a standard country song, but the second one was something else something that hit like a bolt of lightning.

If you knew Peggy Sue,

then you'd know why I feel blue without Peggy,

my Peggy Sue.

Oh, well, I love you, Kelly.

I love you, Peggy Sue.

Peggy Sue,

Peggy Sue.

Oh, how my heart yearns for you.

That song was young Thomas Hicks's introduction to the new music called Rock'n'Roll, and nothing would ever be the same for him ever again, after seeing Buddy Holly sing Peggy Sue.

By February 1956, he had finished working on the cruise ships and was performing Rock'n'Roll in London, the very first British rock and roller.

Except

there's a reason why we're covering Tommy Steele before Buddy Holly, the man who he claims as his inspiration.

Buddy Holly did perform with a grand old Lockfee tour,

but it didn't tour until May 1956, three months after Thomas Hicks quit his job on the cruise ships, and about a year after the time Tommy claims to have seen him.

That tour only hit Oklahoma, which is landlocked, and didn't visit Norfolk, Virginia.

According to various timelines put together by people like the Buddy Holly Center in Lubbock, Texas, Holly didn't perform outside Lubbock until that tour, and that's the only time he did perform outside West Texas until 1957.

Also, Buddy Holly didn't meet Peggy Sue Gemmon, the woman who gave the song its name, until 1956, and the song doesn't seem to have been written until 1957.

So, whatever it was that introduced young Tommy Hicks to the wonders of rock and roll, it wasn't seeing Buddy Holly sing Peggy Sue in Norfolk, Virginia in 1955.

But that's the story that's in his autobiography, and that's the story that's in every other source I've seen on the subject, because they're all just repeating what he said, on the assumption that he'd remember something like that, something which was so important in his life and future career.

Remember what I said at the beginning about rock and roll history being like dealing with Piltdown Man?

Yeah.

There are a lot of inaccuracies in the life story of Thomas Hicks, who became famous under the name Tommy Steele.

Anything I tell you about him is based on information he put out, and that information is not always the truth, so be warned.

For example, when he started his career, he claimed he'd worked his way up on the cruise ships to being a gymnastics instructor, something that the Shipping Federation denied to the press.

You find a lot of that kind of thing when you dig into Steel stories.

In fact, by the time Hicks started performing, there had already been at least one British rock and roll record made.

He wasn't bringing something new that he'd discovered in America at all.

Rock Around the Clock, the Bill Haley film, had played in UK cinemas at around the time of Hicks' supposed epiphany, and it had inspired a modern jazz drummer, Tony Crumbie, to film Tony Crumbie and the Rocket and record a Bill Haley sound-alike called Teach You to Rock.

We're gonna teach you to rock,

we're gonna teach you to rock,

we're

However, Crumby was not teen idol material.

A serious jazz drummer in his thirties, he soon went back to playing bebop, and has largely been written out of British rock history since, in favour of Tommy Steele as the first British rock and roller.

Thomas Hicks, the merchant seaman, became Tommy Steele, the pop idol, as a result of a chance meeting.

Hicks went to a party with a friend, and a host was a man called Lionel Bart, who was celebrating because he'd just sold his first song to the bandleader Bill Cotton.

No recording of that song seems to exist, but the lyrics to the song, a lament about the way that old-style cafes were being replaced by upscale coffee bars, are quoted in a biography of Bart.

Oh for a cup of tea, instead of a cup of chini, what would it mean to me just one little cup sotini?

You ask for some char and they reckon you bar me, ask for a banger, they'll give you salami.

Oh for the liquid they served in the army, just a cup of tea.

Heart-rending stuff, I'm sure you'll agree.

But Bart was proud of the twenty-five guineas the song had earned him, and so he was having a party.

Bart was at the centre of a Bohemian crowd in Soho, and the party was held at a squat where Bart, a card-carrying member of the Communist Party, spent most of his time.

At that squat, at various times around this period, lived, among others, the playwright John Antrobus, the actor Shirley Eaton, who would later become famous as the woman painted gold in the beginning of Goldfinger, and the great folk guitarist Davy Graham, who would later become famous for his instrumental Angie.

We'll hear more about Graham in future episodes.

Another inhabitant of the squat was Mike Pratt, a guitarist and pianist who would later turn to acting and become famous as Jeff Randall in the fantasy detective series Randall and Hopkins Deceased.

Hicks, Bart and Pratt started collaborating on songs together.

Hicks would bring in a basic idea, and then Bart would write the the lyrics and Pratt the music.

They also performed as The Cavemen, though Bart soon tired of playing washboard and stuck to writing.

The Cavemen became a floating group of musicians centred around Hicks and Pratt, and with various vipers and other skifflers pulled in as and when they were available.

The various skiffle musicians looked down on Hicks because of his tendency to want to play Heartbreak Hotel or Blue Suede Shoes rather than Bring a Little Water Sylvie or Rock Island Line.

But a gig was a gig, and they had to admit that Hicks seemed to go down well with the young women in the audience.

Two minor music industry people, Bill Varley and Roy Toovey, agreed to manage Hicks, but they decided that they needed someone involved who would be able to publicise Hicks.

So they invited John Kennedy, a PR man from New Zealand, to come to the Two Eyes to see him.

Hicks wasn't actually playing The Two Eyes the night in question.

It was the Vipers, who were just on the verge of getting signed and recording their first single.

While Hicks wasn't scheduled to play, at the request of Varley and Tuvi, he jumped on stage when the Vipers took a break and sang a song that he, Bart and Pratt had written, called Rock with the Caveman.

Kennedy was impressed.

He was impressed enough, in fact, that he brought in a friend, Larry Parnes, who would go on to become the most important manager in British rock and roll in the fifties and early sixties.

Kennedy, Parnes, and Hicks cut Varley and Tovey out altogether, to the extent that neither of them are even mentioned in the version of this story in Tommy Steele's autobiography.

Hicks was renamed Tommy Steele, in a nod to his paternal grandfather, Thomas Steele Hicks.

Hicks.

The Steele in that name is spelled either S T I L or S T I J L, depending on which source you believe.

And Parnes would go on to name a whole host of further rock stars in a similar manner Duffy Power, Johnny Gentle, Billy Fury, Marty Wild.

They had everything except a record contract, but that was why Kennedy was there.

Kennedy rented a big house and hired a load of show girls, models, and sex workers to turn up for a party and bring their boyfriends.

They were to dress nicely, talk in fake posh accents, and if anyone asked who they were, they were to give fake double-bammelled names.

He then called the press and said it was the first high society rock and roll show, and that the girls were all deputants.

The story made the newspapers and got Steele national attention.

Steele was signed by Decca Records, where Hugh Mendel, the producer of Rock Island Line, was so eager to sign him that he didn't check if any studios were free for his audition, and so Britain's first homegrown rock idol auditioned for his record contract in the Gents' Toilets.

A bunch of slumming jazz musicians, including Dave Lee, the pianist with the Dankworth Band, and the legendary saxophone player Ronnie Scott, were brought in to record Rock with the Caveman.

was rather.

The single went to number 13.

Tommy Steele was now a bona fide rock and roll star, at least in the UK.

The next record, Elevator Rock, didn't do so well, however.

I work in a store on the edge of town.

The daily chores going up and down.

Elevator rock.

Elevator roll.

Elevator rock.

Elevator roll.

Wasn't all day.

That failed to chart.

So Steel's producers went for the well-worn trick in British record making of simply copying a US hit.

Guy Mitchell had just released Singing the Blues.

That was actually a cover version of a recording by Marty Robbins from earlier in the year, but Mitchell's version was the one that became the big hit.

And Steele was brought into the studio to record a sound-alike version, and hopefully get it out before Mitchell's version hit the charts.

Steele's version has an identical arrangement and sound to Mitchell's, except that Steele sings it in an incredibly mannered Elvis impression.

Now, to 21st century ears, Steele's version is clearly inferior.

But here was the birth of something particularly English, and indeed something particularly London, in rock and roll music.

The overly mannered, music hall inspired, cocknified impression of an American singing style.

On Steele's subsequent tour, a nine-year-old kid called David Jones, who would later change his name to Bowie, went to see him and came away inspired to become a rock and roll star.

And we can hear in this performance the roots of Bowie's own London take on Elvis, as we can also hear a style that will be taken up by Anthony Newley, Ray Davis, and many more masters of cockney archness.

I don't think Singing the Blues is a particularly good record compared to Mitchell's, but it is a prototype for something that would become good, and it deserves recognition for that.

Mitchell's version got out first and went to the top of the charts, with Steele's following close behind.

But then, for one week, Mitchell's record label had a minor distribution problem, and Steele took over the top spot, before Mitchell's record returned to number one the next week.

Tommy Steele had become the first British rock and roll singer to get to number one in the UK charts.

It would be the only time he would do so, but it was enough.

He was a bona fide teen idol.

He was so big, in fact, that even his brother, Colin Hicks, became a minor rock and roll star himself off the back of his brother's success.

and glad to see a barbing dancing to the rhythm and blue.

We're gonna rock, gonna roll, gonna bop to the scroll, we're gonna dance till we break up the call.

We're gonna shout, gonna call, gonna scream, gonna fall, let the cats are shouting.

The drummer on that record, Jimmy Nicoll, later had his 15 minutes of fame when Ringo Starr got tonsillitis just before a tour of Australia.

And for a few shows, Nicoll got to be a substitute beetle.

Very soon, Tommy Steele moved on into light entertainment.

First he moved into films, starting with The Tommy Steele story, a film based on his life, for which he, Bart and Pratt wrote all twelve of the songs in a week to meet the deadline.

And then he went into stage musicals.

Within a year he had given up on Rock'n'Roll altogether.

But Rock'n'Roll hadn't quite given up on him.

While Steele was appearing in stage musicals, one was also written about him, a hurtful parody of his life, which he claimed later he'd wanted to sue over.

In Expresso Bongo, a satire of the British music industry, Steele was parodied as Bongo Herbert, who rises to fame with no talent whatsoever.

That stage musical was then rewritten for a film version, with the satire taken out of it, so it was a straight Rags to Riches story.

It was made into a vehicle for another singer who had been a regular at the Two Eyes and whose backing band was made up of former members of the Vipers Skiffle group.

We'll talk about both Cliff Richard and the Shadows in future episodes, though.

Tommy Steele would go on to become something of a national treasure, working on stage with Gene Kelly and on screen with Fred Astaire,

writing several books, having a minor artistic career as a sculptor, sculptor, and touring constantly in pantomimes and musicals.

At age 82, he still tours every year, performing as Scrooge in a stage musical version of A Christmas Carol.

His 1950s hits remain popular enough in the UK that a compilation of them went to number 22 in the charts in 2009.

He may not leave a large body of rock and roll work, but without him there would be no British rock rock and roll industry as we know it, and the rest of this history would be very different.

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rhythm of the sea.