Lambeth Fantastical - Episode 5
Lambeth Boys and Teddy Boys - South London's Rock 'n' Roll Roots
Lambeth Boys and Teddy Boys
South London’s Rock ‘n’ Roll Roots
My next guided walk on Saturday 27th July will follow a route from the Oval tube station to Vauxhall, exploring the areas many and varied connections to rock music. Details can be found on this link.
As with all of my walks this one can be booked as a private walk for friends, family, visitors etc. Just contact me at davidm_turnbull@hotmail.com to work out details
Lambeth Boys
One of my stops will be at Alford House, which is on Avaline Street, just off Kennington Lane. Alford House was founded in 1884 by Kennington born, Frank Bryant, who first established a protype youth club for working class teenagers, which met in Beaufoy School in Brixton before being established as Alford House at Lambeth Walk (made famous by the song of the same name performed by Lupino Lane in the musical ‘Me and my Girl’). Bryant went on to become chairman of Lambeth Council, a member of the London County Council, and ultimately a Member of Parliament for the area. After his death in 1934 a Deed of Trust was established, and Alford House moved to its current location in 1950.
It was here in 1958 that a groundbreaking documentary ‘We Are the Lambeth Boys’ was filmed. Directed by Karel Reisz, who later achieved great success with films such as ‘Saturday Night and Sunday Morning’ and ‘The French Lieutenant’s Woman’, the film takes a fly on the wall approach documenting the lives and outlooks of the kids who attend the club, many of whom have adopted the Teddy Boy style of the era. Reisz was part of what was known as the Free Film Movement which focused on working class subjects. A few of their films were funded by the Ford Motor Company, as was ‘We Are the Lambeth Boys’. Reisz’s other Free Film Movement documentary was ‘Momma Don’t Allow’ (1956) filmed at an Enfield jazz club.
Jazz also plays a big role in ‘We Are the Lambeth Boys’ with the soundtrack being provided by Johnny Dankworth and his Orchestra. Dankworth later wrote the theme tunes for TV shows such as ‘The Avengers’ and ‘Tomorrow’s World’ and was acclaimed for his partnership with jazz singer, Cleo Lane, who also became his wife. Dankworth and orchestra also provided a live performance in ‘We Are the Lambeth Boys’ with a raucous jazz/rock ‘n’ roll number played at a youth club dance as the kids jive on the dancefloor.
Oh Boy!
In the late 50s rock ‘n’ roll was yet to become the dominant force in popular music and teenagers and Teddy Boys were as likely to listen to jazz and skiffle as they were American artists such as Elvis and Chuck Berry. But the British rock ‘n’ roll scene was beginning to flourish, helped in no short measure by the ABC Weekend Television Saturday night show ‘Oh Boy’.
‘Oh Boy’ was the brainchild of Greenford born Jack Good. Good had originally been the producer of the BBC’s ‘Six-Five Special’ but had fallen out with the Corporation when they refused to allow him to drop the ‘information and education’ elements of the show in favour of focusing purely on the music. ABC gave him the leeway he wanted, and after an initial two successful pilot episodes ‘Oh Boy’ was given the green light for a full-blown series.
Including the pilots ‘Oh Boy’ ran to forty shows. It made star out of Cliff Richards and the show’s house band, Lord Rockingham’s XI, achieved a number one hit with ‘Hoots Mon’. Other regulars on the show were the singing and dancing Vernon Girls, who’d originally been formed at the offices of Vernon’s Pools in Liverpool, and Cuddly Dudley (Dudley Heslop) the UK’s first black rock ‘n’ roll artist. The show also provided a launch pad for several pioneering rock ‘n’ roll acts, all of whom were born in south London.
Tommy Steele
Born Thomas Hicks in Bermondsey in 1936, Steele was spotted performing at the legendary 2i’s Coffee Bar in Soho and offered a contract with Decca Records. His first release ‘Rocking with the Caveman’ went to number thirteen in the charts in November 1956 and is considered to be the UK’s first home grown rock ‘n’ roll hit. His third single ‘Singin’ the Blues’ reached number one in January 1957. Steele had appeared as one of the acts in the Six-Five Special and consequently was chosen by Jack Good to be the first act to appear on ‘Oh Boy’. He went on to have an illustrious career as an all-round entertainer, with film credits including ‘Tommy the Toreador (1959), ‘Half a Sixpence’ (1967), and ‘Finnean’s Rainbow’ (1968). He was knighted in the 2020 birthday honours list.
Terry Dene
Dene was born Terence Williams in Lancaster Street, Elephant and Castle 1938. Like Steele he was spotted performing at the 2i’s and helped to win contract with Decca Records by Jack Good himself. He was the first rock ‘n’ roll artist to have two hits in the top twenty at the same time, winning him a place in the Guiness Book of Records. His version of ‘A White Sport’s Coat’ sold over 350,000 copies. In a parallel to Elvis Presley’s famous armed forces call up to the American Army, Dene was conscripted to the King’s Royal Rifle Corps not long after ‘Oh Boy’ had launched, causing a bit of a media frenzy in the UK press at the time. In the 60s Dene turned his back on the music industry, becoming an evangelist, recording three gospel albums, and spending five years as a preacher at the Scandinavian Lutheran Church in Sweden.
Jess Conrad
Conrad was born in Brixton in February 1936. His birth name was Gerald James, but as a boy he acquired the nickname Jesse, after the American wild west outlaw Jesse James. He used the shortened version of the nickname when adopting the stage name Jess Conrad. He was spotted by Jack Good when he appeared in a television play ‘Bye Bye, Barney’ playing a pop star. Good invited him to appear on ‘Oh Boy’ and he too signed recording contract with Decca. His first record for them was ‘Cherry Pie’. Conrad obtained notoriety when he attempted to bite off the nose of his rival Heinz backstage during a concert tour. The incident is depicted in the 2009 biopic – ‘Telstar – The Joe Meek Story’. Conrad himself plays pop impresario, Larry Parnes, in the movie. His other big screen appearances include a role in the British King Kong style film Kongo (1961) and the Sex Pistols 1980 film ‘The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle’.
Marty Wilde
Wilde, real name, Reginald Smith, was born in Blackheath in April 1939. Along with Croydon born, Dickie Pride (Charles Kneller) he was part of the Larry Parnes stable of early rock ‘n’ roll stars which also included Adam Faith, Vince Eager and Billy Fury. Wilde’s hits included ‘Sea of Love’, ‘Bad Boy’, and ‘Endless Sleep’. He clocked up seventeen appearances on ‘Oh Boy’, three less than Cliff Richards who appeared in twenty shows. In the 60s, along with his song writing partner, Ronnie Scott (not the jazz club owner) he co-penned ‘Jesamine’ (The Casuals), ‘I’m a Tiger (Lulu), and ‘Ice in the Sun’ (Status Quo). He married Joyce Baker, who was one of the Vernon Girls on ‘Oh Boy’. Their daughter Kim Wilde became a huge star in the 1980s. Her biggest hit ‘The Kids in America’ was penned by Marty and his son Ricky Wilde.
Wee Willie Harris
Charles William Harris was born in Bermondsey in 1933, and worked for a while in the Peak Freans Biscuit Factory after leaving school. He adopted the stage name Wee Willie Harris, based on his diminutive height, and inspired by Little Richard. He was very much the wild man of early British rock ‘n’ roll. He wore drainpipe trousers and jackets with exaggerated shoulders, and often dyed his hair green or orange. He was the resident piano player at the 2i’s Café and his first record ‘Rockin’ at the 2i’s’ was a tribute to the venue. His early appearances on Six-Five Special and Oh Boy caused a bit of moral outrage with one critic describing him as ‘gyrating like an exploding Catherine Wheel and emitting growls and squeals’ while another accused him of promoting teenage decadence. Wee Willie Harris was immortalised in the 1979 single by Ian Dury and the Blockheads ‘Reasons to be Cheerful: Pt 3’.
Ian Dury
In the late 70s Dury lived a few streets away from Alford House, at Oval Mansions, just behind the Oval Cricket Ground. It was here he wrote the tracks for his seminal 1978 album ‘New Boots and Panties!!’. Dury was born in 1942 and would have been a teenager at the time these early rock ‘n’ rollers were appearing on TV in the late 50’s. He was a huge fan of Gene Vincent, whose brooding black leather image was actually dreamed up by Jack Good. The track ‘Sweet Gene Vincent’ on ‘New Boots and Panties!!’ is Dury’s tribute to that era. Dury himself became the subject of a tribute by Wee Willie Harris. Following his untimely death in March 2000, Harris released an album entitled ‘Twenty Reasons to be Cheerful’ in Dury’s honour.
Meanwhile indie rock star, Morrissey paid tribute to 'We Are the Lambeth Boys' with the song 'Spring Heeled Jim' which has snatches of sampled dialogue from the documentary in the background throughout the song. The track appeared on the 1994 Morrissey album 'Vauxhall and I' which is, in part, a tribute to the legendary LGBTQ venue, The Vauxhall Tavern.
Tapes of 'Oh Boy' fell foul to the practice in the 50s and 60s of taping over recordings. It's believed that only two of the shows survive today. But 'We are the Lambeth Boys' is still available and can be purchased for download from the British Film Institute (BFI). There is also a short documentary first shown on London Live in 2023 called ‘John Kent: Lambeth Boy Forever!’, featuring one of the cast of the original 1950s documentary returning to Alford House, which still today operates as a youth club for the area.
Maggie’s House
A youth club and music from a different features in my summer horror novel 'Maggie's House'. Here another excerpt, set against the backdrop of a Youth Club disco. The scene starts just after a fight has been broken up by the youth leader.
“Deb was sitting on the chairs by the wall. She was staring expectantly at me, eyes big and blue behind the spidery mascara of her lashes. “I’ll catch you later,” I said and went to sit beside Deb.
“I hate it when there’s a fight,” she told me.
Barry Blue faded out.
“Wasn’t much of a fight,” I pointed out. “Over before it started really.”
“I still hate it,” said Deb.
See My Baby Jive by Wizzard came on.
We both got up to dance. Up on the stage Gordon switched on his strobe lamp. Before me I saw Deb frozen like stolen snapshots in various poses as she danced. I wished that I could capture them and fill up an entire photo album. As the strobe flickered, I looked around the hall at how everyone was caught by each flash in a different position, expressions on their faces held for that split second between light and dark.
Then I saw him, looking hopelessly out of place, a scruffily dressed old man, bending down to pick something off the floor. The strobe light flashed. He was captured examining a cigarette end held between a finger and thumb. The strobe light flashed again. He dropped the crushed butt into an empty crisp packet. The strobe light flashed once more. He picked up another butt, raised it to his lips and searched his pockets for a match.
The chorus of See My Baby Jive boomed from the speakers. I could hear some of the kids singing along. The strobe light flashed. The old man turned to face me. It was Catweazle’s fuzzily bearded face that I saw. There were flies humming around his head. Hundreds of them. A new smell seemed to pervade the aroma of fried onions, a horrible, cloying smell, like the smell that had filled the little bedroom in Maggie’s house. The strobe light flashed. Catweazle’s ghostly form bent down to pick up another cigarette end. The clammy air in the hall became thick with stench of rotting meat.
The strobe light flashed. Deb danced toward me. I smelled her Aqua Manda perfume. Somehow it reminded me of the smell of burning incense stick. Behind it the rotten stink of overripe cadaver intensified. It was so overwhelming that I felt bile rise in my throat. I gagged. Before I could do anything I spewed up the contents of my stomach in one, huge, gushing flood of brown vomit.
Deb let out shocked yelp and stumbled away from me. Someone else danced into the splattered mess of the vomit, skidded across it, and landed flat on their back. Everyone gave me a wide berth, some of them cursing, some of them gagging.
The lights went on and the music came to a halt. Gordon turned off his strobe. Everyone stared down at the pool of vomit on the floor. A couple of the volunteers rushed into the hall thinking there had been another fight. When they saw the wet, lumpy they held their hands to their mouths.
Gary came in seconds later. He had wads of toilet paper stuffed into his nostrils. There was dried blood caking the wiry hairs of his moustache. His platforms slipped on a stray splat of vomit, and he did a comical Fred Flintstone style run on the spot till he caught his balance.
Gary slapped his forehead. “Could this night get any bloody worse?”
He turned to one of the volunteers. “Get the mop and bucket.”
One of the women who had been working in the kiosk came and gave me a glass of water. “I saw you earlier,” she said, mothering me a little. “Wolfing down that hotdog and then going straight back to jumping around. No wonder you made yourself sick.”
HC and his girlfriend seemed to find my whole situation hilarious. Shona took Deb to the toilets to wash the vomit from her sandals and ankles. Everyone else was just staring at me. I felt my face flush from embarrassment.
I looked around for the old tramp I’d seen under the strobe lights. It didn’t surprise me that he was nowhere to be seen. I doubted he’d ever been there in the first place. The volunteer came back with a mop and bucket. The smell of disinfectant started to make the hall feel like a hospital ward.
They washed the floor twice more before Gary said the lights could go off again. Gordon put on Rubber Bullets by 10cc, but nobody seemed to be in the mood for dancing any more. I sat down at the side of the hall. Deb came and joined me.
“I think I’m just going to go,” she said.”
Maggie’s House is available electronically and in print from Fiction4All.
Lambeth Fantastical Website