Tag Archives: Lulu & the Luvers

The Five Embers

Gary Boyle – guitar/vocals

Roger Sutton – bass/vocals

Ray Deville – organ/vocals

Ron Foster – saxophone

Clive Thacker – drums

Lead guitarist Gary Boyle, bass player Roger Sutton, keyboard player Ray Deville, drummer Clive Thacker and sax players Dave Quincy and Ian Thomas had backed singer Brian Bentley as Brian Bentley & The Kingsmen during 1962.

In early 1963, the remaining members (minus Quincy and Thomas) became The Five Embers after ditching Brian Bentley and recruiting sax player Ron Foster. Initially, the musicians played under their own name and then in March 1964 started backing Jamaican singer Millie.

Notable gigs as The Five Embers:

22 March 1964 – Star & Garter, Windsor, Berkshire

24 March 1964 – Café Des Artistes, Fulham, London

Notable gigs with Millie Small:

25 March 1964 – Bromley Court Hotel, Bromley, Kent

28 March 1964 – Café Des Artistes, Fulham, London

29 March 1964 – Star & Garter, Windsor, Berkshire

31 March 1964 – Peter’s Club, High Wycombe, Bucks

 

5-11 April 1964 – Cavern, Liverpool

 

16 May 1964 – City Hall, Salisbury, Wiltshire with The Initials

17 May 1964 – Blackpool ABC, Blackpool, Lancashire

18 May 1964 – Scarborough Futurist, Scarborough with others

 

5 June 1964 – Palace Ballroom, Maryport, Cumbria with The Defenders

16 June 1964 – Locarno, Swindon, Wiltshire with The Soul Agents

 

27 August 1964 – ABC Theatre, Plymouth, Cornwall with Rolling Stones and others

 

After splitting with Millie, The Five Embers continued to gig into 1965 before breaking up that spring and at some point backed Barry St John.

In August 1966, Clive Thacker joined Julie Driscol, Brian Auger & The Trinity and was joined two months later by Roger Sutton.

While Thacker remained with Brian Auger and Julie Driscol throughout the late 1960s, Sutton left in May 1967 and played with several groups before briefly joining The Krew in August 1968.

Roger Sutton subsequently played with a number of notable bands, including The Aynsley Dunbar Retaliation, Nucleus, Mark-Almond and Riff Raff.

Gary Boyle initially played with Lulu’s backing band during 1965. Then, in 1966, he worked with Dusty Springfield’s support group, The Echoes before reuniting with Roger Sutton and Clive Thacker in Julie Driscol, Brian Auger and The Trinity in January 1967.

After leaving in November of that year, Boyle subsequently played with Eclection in March 1969 and then returned to Julie Driscol and The Brian Auger Trinity that June.

Ray Deville meanwhile joined The Missing Links in February 1966 and stayed with this band when it took on the name, The All Night Workers in October 1967. He left in January 1968 and is rumoured to have worked with Dusty Springfield. Deville died in 2013.

Please note: this is a very brief overview of the band and its history. Garage Hangover would welcome any additional material and corrections.

Mike Collins’s interviews with Roger Sutton and Gary Boyle were really useful resources. Please see above links to his work.

Gonks Go Beat

Gonks Go Beat Taiwan LP

I haven’t been able to afford an original Decca pressing of the soundtrack LP to Gonk’s Go Beat, so I’m making do with this weird Taiwan (I think) issue instead. Condition isn’t the best, so you’ll have to put up with one couple skip and some surface noise. It’s worth any trouble to hear the Graham Bond Organisation’s “Harmonica”. If you watch the film you’ll see Jack Bruce, Ginger Baker and even John McLaughlin in that scene besides Bond.

The album is only half good. The first side is almost solid, but the second side is weak, and I’m not going to put all the tracks up here, they’re just not worth your time. There are too many light pop songs by Alan David, Barbara Brown, Perry Ford and Dougie Robinson. The ‘Titan Studio Orchestra’ under Robert Richards transcends ordinary big-band material only on the excellent “Burn Up”.

Lulu and the Luvers have a couple good songs, especially “Choc Ice”.

The Long and the Short’s “Take This Train” is also excellent – that was a band I wanted to know more about and Michael Lynch filled me in:

Bob McKinlay: vocals, guitar
Bob Taylor: bass
Les Saint Stuart: guitar
Gerry Watt: piano
Alan Grindley: drums…and one of the drummers in the big drumming scene.

They were from Ashton and had two minor UK hits (like the 30s or 40s) in 1964: “The Letter” (obviously not the Box Tops song) and “Choc Ice” (the song Lulu does in the film). But they’re probably best know for having Bob McKinlay who later made a name for himself as a British country singer.

The “Drum Battle” is crucial. In the movie there are nine players, (eight of which shown on the cover here), but for some reason this studio recording only seems to credit Alan Grinley, Ronnie Verrell (later drummed as Animal in the Muppets), Andy White (session drummer on “Love Me Do”), and Ronnie Stephenson (pop and jazz drummer). The others were Ginger Baker, Bobby Graham (top UK session drummer), John Kearns (“drummer of the Vaqueros of Lancaster – they had an instrumental single called ‘Echo’ in I think 1964” – Michael Lynch), and Bobby Richards plus one other I don’t have a name for yet. Besides the two groups of four drummers that are facing each other, there’s a ninth in the background in some of the shots in the clip from the film.

I mistakenly thought Arthur Mullard was the ninth drummer, but reader Geoff S. pointed out to me that “he was a comic actor renowned for playing dumb heavies and he is the guy wearing the uniform and white headphones who is giving the orders in this scene”.

Gonks Go Beat Taiwan LP Side ADrum Battle Musical Director for the soundtrack is Mike Leander. I kind of like the country-folk song “Broken Pieces” by Elaine and Derek (written by the film’s director, Robert Hartford-Davis). This duo were twins, Elaine and Derek Thompson.

Overall I liked the movie despite the inane plot. The musical finale at the end was visually cool but sonically disappointing except for the Nashville Teens doing “Poor Boy”.

Gonks Go Beat Taiwan LP back cover

The grand prize...