Dickie Pride
(21 October 1941 — 26 March 1969), was a British rock and roll singer. He was
one of Larry Parnes' stable of pop music stars, who did not enjoy as successful
a career as most of his contemporaries.
Pride was born
Richard Charles Knellar in Thornton Heath on October 21, 1941. As a young boy
he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Church Music in Croydon and had a
fine operatic voice, but like many young men at that time, he preferred popular
music and formed his own skiffle group called the Semi-Tones.
He had several
poorly paid jobs. While performing one night at the Castle pub in Tooting,
South London, his singing was heard by Russ Conway, who was so impressed that
he recommended him to Parnes, who signed him on the spot. After the obligatory
name change (which all of Parnes' singers had to do), he entered the
professional world as Dickie Pride -- still only 16 years old -- with a first
gig at the Kilburn Gaumont cinema, at that time the biggest cinema in the
country.
The Record Mirror
wrote of his performance that "he ripped it up from the start," and
he so shook up the theater that he became known as "the Sheik of
Shake." This was followed by tours and television shows. Norrie Paramore signed him
to the Columbia Records label and in March 1959 released his first single
"Slippin' and Slidin'" (a cover of the song made famous by Little
Richard). He made his TV debut on Jack Good's flagship pop music show “Oh Boy“
in February of 1959 in which he made several appearances.
He performed
in 'The Big Beat Show' at Southend with Marty Wilde, Billy Fury, Terry Dene,
Johnny Gentle, Duffy Power and Sally Kelly
Despite his live performances, with most of his subsequent recordings,
commercially Pride was far below expectations. The only single of Pride's that
ever made it into the Top 40 in the UK Singles Chart - "Primrose
Lane" appeared in October 1959 for only one week in 28th place.
Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde & Dickie Pride |
In April 1960 the first edition of Jack Good's rock and roll TV show, Wham! was shown on ABC-TV, and included Pride. The guitarist, Albert Lee, had his first professional stage appearance as an accompanist of Pride.This show featured future hitmakers
including Billy Fury, Joe Brown, Johnny Kidd & the Pirates, Jess Conrad, and the Vernons Girls.
Pride was very successful during live performances but had difficulty transferring this success to his recordings. Unable to find a song that would launch him into the big time, Larry Parnes and Norrie Paramore supplied the song "Primrose Lane," a ballad that just scraped into the charts for one week at number 28 in October 1959, and despite his obvious talent for singing live, it never transferred successfully to recordings.
One final
attempt was made in 1961 with an album of Tin Pan Alley standards featuring Eric
Jupp & His Orchestra called Pride Without Prejudice, the LP was intended to
position him as a mainstream all-around entertainer. When it sold very badly,
he was dropped by Larry Parnes.
He was married
in 1962 and found he could not make a living by singing, so he took up menial
labor again. He attempted to start a band in 1963, but the group was short-lived. He and his
wife were blessed with a son in 1965, and Dickie had started performing with a
group known as the Sidewinders. Unfortunately, he fell deeper into heroin
addiction.
After a slow
fall into depression and a family break-up, he was committed to a mental
hospital in 1967. His doctors decided that what he needed was a lobotomy, and
performed the operation. He was released
and once again tried to make a living as a singer. Finding work and any sort of
commercial success eluding him, he and died on March 26, 1969, just 27 years of
age, from an overdose of sleeping pills.
Many of the
stable of Larry Parnes' artists, including Billy Fury and Joe Brown, were
devastated, claiming that out of all of them, Dickie Pride had been the most
talented and the best singer, but fate had decreed it just wasn't to be.
In 1999,
Charles Langley wrote the stage play, Pride With Prejudice, about Pride's
tragic life.
(Compiled mainly
from All Music & Wikipedia)
Here’s a clip
taken from TV show “Oh Boy“ originally transmitted on 30/5/1959. Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde and Dickie Pride
sing 'Three Cool Cats' whilst three
Vernon Girls dance to the song.
4 comments:
For “The Sheik Of Shake - Dickie Pride“ go here:
http://www5.zippyshare.com/v/O0QegF5G/file.html
01 Dont Make Me Love You
02 Slippin' n' Slidin'
03 You're Singing Our Love Song To Somebody Else
04 Bye Bye Blackbird
05 Fabulous Cure
06 Midnight Oil
07 Betty Betty (Go Steady With Me)
08 No John
09 Primrose Lane
10 Frantic
11 Anything Goes
12 It's Only A Paper Moon
13 Isn't This A Lovely Day
14 I Could Write A Book
15 You Turned The Tables On Me
16 Too Close For Comfort
17 Loch Lomond
18 There's A Small Hotel
19 Falling In Love
20 They Can't Take That Away From Me
21 Give Me The Simple Life
22 Lulu's Back In Town
A big thank you to Jake @ Jukebox City for ACTIVE link.
Thanks for this reminder of my youthful days of package tours at the local cinema - a whole concert of Parnes Boys, either at the Harrow Granada or Dominion. Nostalgia rules, well at least whilst this one is playing. Bop on Bob.
He had a great voice.
Dickie Pride,The Nicknamed The Sheik of Shake signed Columbia Records by Norrie Paramor in 1959 and he appeared in ITV Pop Show,Oh Boy produced by Jack Good and the releases alongside Slippin'n'Slidin',Fabulous Cure,Frantic,Midnight Oil,Betty Betty(Going Steady With Me),No John,Loch Lomond and They Can't Take That Away from Me.
Sadly in March 1969,Dickie Pride died at the age of 27 years in Croydon,South London and the great icon is the late Dickie Pride.
Terry Christie,Sunderland.
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