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Tommy Steele
Britain's first rock 'n' roll superstar, Tommy Steele blazed a trail for a whole new generation of homegrown pop idols. He was born Tommy Hicks on Dec. 17, 1936 in Bermondsey,
South London. In 1952, at age 15, he joined the
merchant navy, and for the next four years, he worked on the Cunard line. He was
hospitalized at one point during his time at Cunard, and during his
convalescence, learned to play the guitar. Hicks began singing and performing
for his fellow merchant seamen and discovered that he had a natural ability as
an entertainer, with a special affinity for country-and- western songs, and for
comedy. During shore leave, he began appearing at American air force bases,
among other venues, often with a country band called the Sons of the Saddle. Hicks made it a point, whenever he was ashore in the United States,
to listen to as much music as he could find. In early 1956, he chanced to see
Elvis Presley on the Dorsey
Brothers' Stage Show and During the spring of 1956, Hicks met Lionel Bart and
Mike Pratt, two songwriters who were also working as performers and had an
interest in this new brand of music that was coming over from America. Tommy Hicks formed a band of his own, the Cavemen, with Bart and
Pratt while he was on shore leave in London in the summer of 1956. In the summer of that year, Hicks and the Cavemen began playing in coffee bars in London's Soho, where young people were congregating in ever-larger numbers to hear the skiffle bands that were performing there. He was finding an audience, particularly at a coffee bar called The 2 I's, where Hicks and the Cavemen were discovered by a public relations man named John Kennedy. And Kennedy, in turn, convinced impressario Larry Parnes that there was something happening in Soho, and those teenage audiences and the musicians they were turning out to see, that could be turned into a viable national career for someone, and that Tommy Hicks and the Cavemen had a good chance of doing just that. He was re-christened Tommy Steele, and was given a big publicity build-up. Parnes's campaign worked, and Steele was soon being scouted by numerous record labels. Singed by Decca, he made his debut with an original song, Rock With the Caveman. The new singing star made his television debut in October of 1956, and was immediately booked for a second appearance when thousands of letters arrived requesting to see him again. Rock With the Caveman made the British top-20, a respectable start for a previously unknown artist working with one of his own songs. Only a month after Rock With The Caveman made the British top 20, Steele was voted one of the top 10 male British singers in a New Musical Express poll, and on his first major tour found himself greeted by hoards of screaming fans. His second single, Doomsday Rock, failed to chart, but his third, Singing The Blues, knockedGuy Mitchell's version from the No. 1 spot on the British charts. By early 1957, Steele had made his first screen appearance, in a small role as a singer in the thriller Kill Me Tomorrow. By February of that year, the production of the movie The Tommy Steele Story had begun-shot in less than three weeks, it was in theatres in May of 1957, just in time to herald his second major British tour, on which he was billed with the American rock 'n roll band Freddie Bell & the Bellboys. There were also the Decca albums, The Tommy Steele Stage Show and other early 10-inch LPs, which had a decent quota of well played songs. Two songs off The Tommy Steele Story, Handful of Songs and Water, Water, later charted in the British top 5. Everything associated with Steele seemed poised for success. Steele's second movie, The Duke Wore Jeans, was in production in September of 1957, and the following month, English audiences voted him the No. 2 World Music Personality, outpolled only by Elvis Presley. That same month, he was the star of his own television special, and appeared in the Royal Variety Show before an audience that included members of the Royal Family. The following year, Steele made his first international tour, of Europe and South Africa, which was followed by a British tour on which, at Dundee, he was mobbed by fans and injured so seriously that he was forced to take two months off from performing. During the summer of 1958, Steele appeared in the premiere episode of Oh Boy!, a new televised musical showcase, whose line-up also included a newcomer to professional music named Cliff Richard. Steele continued to record some rock 'n roll, including a version of Ritchie Valens' Come On, Let's Go, but increasingly, his output consisted of pop-style numbers, including show tunes. By that time, Cliff Richard and his backing band the Shadows had ushered in a new wave of British rock 'n roll with Move It. It was Richard, not Steele, who starred in Expresso Bongo (1959), a film based on a satirical play that had been inspired by Steele's rise to fame. Steele remained popular with younger listeners, and was voted among the top 5 British male singers of 1959. He did two more movies that year, Tommy The Toreador and Light Up the Sky, the latter a World War II comedy that also featured comedian Benny Hill. His single You Were Mine failed to chart, but in 1960 he scored another top 10 single with Little White Bull, a soft children's song (Steele contributed all of the royalties to the Children's Cancer Research fund) from Tommy The Toreador. By 1963, he was a new sensation on the London stage in the musical Half A Sixpence and he followed this with a hit run on Broadway in the same play two years later. Steele's career as a rock 'n' roller was over. See Tommy sing 'Elevator Rock'
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