Savoy Browns and South Parade Blues: Part 2

The flames that engulfed the South Parade Pier in 1974 effectively signed its death warrant as a sometime music venue.  It wasn’t the first and wouldn’t be the last of the Portsmouth venues at which I first enjoyed live music to vanish.

Directly opposite the Pier once stood Savoy Buildings.  Built in the late twenties, there was little to suggest any art deco influence that steeps many other landmark buildings of that era with instantly recognisable architectural features.  There were two separate but contiguous structures.  The top four floors of the eastern section contained apartments that offered an unobstructed sea view.  At street level was a parade of shops and eateries that continued along the eastern section, on the upper level of which was situated the Savoy Ballroom.  Before and after the war, the Ballroom hosted dance bands and, for a time in the forties and fifties, the Savoy Café.  

By 1963, the dance bands had been replaced by what were then known as ‘beat groups’.  Seven nights a week, groups from up and down the country were booked.  During the early and middle sixties everyone appeared at the Savoy from the Beatles and the Stones down to some lesser known local groups who went on as support acts.

In the 1960s, Portsmouth and Sunny Southsea, as it was nationally promoted, was still a destination resort for one and two week bucket-and-spade holidaymakers from all over the UK.  From Easter until the first week in September, Southsea’s seafront hotels and boarding houses, many tucked away in residential streets, were busy.  Human traffic in search of beachside fun peaked in July and August.  The eventual decline was heralded by the impact of packages to the Med that became increasingly popular with the arrival of budget air travel at the end of that decade.  

In 1964, my parents took a lease of one the shops on the Savoy Parade.  They called it ‘Beachwear’.  It was probably no more than ten feet across and maybe sixteen or seventeen feet deep.  Beachwear was stuffed full of just about anything you might need when spending two weeks at the English seaside: buckets and spades, tiny plastic windmills on wooden sticks, plastic footballs and blow up balls, sunglasses, straw hats and sun cream, paperbacks, flip flops, swimming costumes and towels, t-shirts and knick-knacks such as brass ornaments and even miniature china potties with feathers.  In response to the Gonks, 1964’s stuffy fad, my mother designed and handmade vast quantities of Buncers.  Imitating the Gonks’ Mac (a kilt wearing Scot) and Fred (cloth-capped and suspenders) they sold at half the cost of the real thing and my Mum couldn’t turn them out fast enough.

My parents’ shop was half way along the parade that also included a chemist’s, Pompey’s first Wimpey Bar, a large gift shop whose presence proscribed my parents selling souvenirs, a cavernous café with entrances either side of Beachwear and the ubiquitous rock shop.  For my overseas readers thinking that at last the musical element of the blog has been reached, this type of ‘Rock’ is an English confection made largely of sugar and sold in inch wide sticks between six and nine inches in length.

Notwithstanding our relatively young ages - I turned 12 in 1964, my sister was 9 and my brother not yet 8 - at weekends and from time to time during that summer’s school holidays we all worked alongside my parents in the shop.  My brother, in particular, was a big hit with the old dears as they sought refuge from August rains and invested in umbrellas and pacamacs with all-in-one hoods.  My brother has an extraordinary facility for mental arithmetic which he first showed at a very young age.  Thus, counting up the prices of three and more items that nearly all ended in 11d (eleven old pence) and calculating the change from a one pound note in seconds, he was often worth the price of an extra purchase and even picked up small tips!

The few bob Dad paid us was earned though.  Standing for hours in a shop is not that much fun, especially during lax periods.  Fortunately, the shop was generally busy, often manically so.  Apart from the general melee that was imbued with my father’s whacky sense of humour - an idiosyncratic mix of the physical and verbal - what made the day go by were the sounds of the juke box from the café next door.  At the time of starting the business, the juke box backed directly onto the rear wall of Beachwear, not much more than a stud-partition.  The boom of the bass and its vibrations through the shop got to be too much for Dad who eventually persuaded the café manager to move it.  To my ears this had the added advantage of improving the audio quality of the treble end of the records and enhanced the listening experience.

The hits of that summer – and from the previous few months - became so familiar that, even now, I can more or less identify any of them from a note or two.  Some made their way into my collection, others didn’t; the sounds of summer ’64 included: 

‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ by The Beatles; the former showcased a sophisticated edge to the Fabs’ composing skills that re-entered the charts for a second time after its original release earlier in the year; the latter was the title track to their third album and soundtrack of their first feature film for which we queued in the rain on its opening day at the Southsea Odeon; 

‘You Really Got Me’ by The Kinks, a revelatory record whose opening chords signalled the first battle-cry of riff based rock; 

‘Here I Go Again’, that summer’s showpiece for the effervescent harmonies of The Hollies;  

‘The House of the Rising Sun’ by The Animals, the repeated playing of which from the cafe I‘m sure led to my mother banning me from listening to it at home within her earshot;

‘My Guy’ by Mary Wells, pretty much the first Motown production to hit the charts and which famously shot up almost overnight from the bowels of the hit parade to number 5 and then, amazingly, the following week accelerated in the opposite direction to number 30; only in later years did I question how it go to number 5 at all;

‘It’s All Over Now’, the first record I bought by The Rolling Stones and their first self-penned number to make the charts; this was the single that defined the distinctiveness of their two-guitar sound.  It made us all realise that there would be life beyond The Beatles.  I played it incessantly;

‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ by Manfred Mann, claimed by the Portsmouth Evening News as a local band (two out of five of them were local) and big favourites in the city.  The song’s use of original language as the hook of the chorus enabled my Dad to ascribe an apparent lack of intelligence to its composers; whenever it came on the juke box he would vocalise that chorus in a mocking tone.  When pressed on the subject he wouldn’t admit that it was one of the great three minute teen symphonies of the era;

‘I’m Into Something Good’, the debut record by Herman’s Hermits that spent at least one week at number one.  Promoted as the English ‘surf’ sound.  My sister thought that Herman (ne Peter Noone) was adorable;

’You’re No Good‘ the best record that The Swinging Blue Jeans made, one that I still play and one that would probably be in contention for my top 100 tracks of all time.  The SBJ’s eventually were swallowed by a change in musical trends and, I suspect, an inability to pen good material themselves.

There were, of course, many other big songs that summer, three of which had another significance.  My Dad got to know all of the other folk who worked in and around the Savoy including George Turner, a dapper man in his forties, who booked the groups for the ballroom. In conversation, Dad apparently mentioned that I was a total pop music nut and enquired whether I could watch some of the groups from the balcony above the dance floor.  Licensing laws prevented that.  However, on three occasions, Mr Turner took my brother, my sister and me into the ballroom to listen to soundchecks and, what was even more exciting, to meet the groups all of whom we had seen on telly.

Brian Poole and the Tremeloes had already spent many weeks in the charts and I already had a few of their singles, one of which I discovered when writing this Blog of which I had virtually no memory, ‘Twelve Steps To Love’.  I have yet to play it again and may resist the temptation to do so.  I still have the group’s autographs on a piece of notepaper stuck on the distinctive orange Decca cover of ‘Twist and Shout’.  Brian Poole eventually left the music scene to work in his family’s butcher shop in Essex.  A couple of years ago I advised clients to whom Poole sold various of his copyrights.

The Honeycombs was the first British pop group of the sixties to feature a female drummer, none other than Honey Langtree.  They were touring at the time of their number one hit ‘Have I the Right’.  I remember thinking how small Honey was and how nice they all were when they were introduced to us.  I am fairly sure I bought that single a day or two afterwards.

The best of the bunch with whom we brushed shoulders were The Nashville Teens.  I had already bought and played to death their updated version of John D Loudermilk’s ‘Tobacco Road’.  By the time we got to the ballroom, the ‘Teens were already set up and about to run through two or three numbers.  They played ‘Tobacco Road‘ twice.  Awesome! 

I eventually made it to a couple of live shows at the Savoy.  The first was just before Christmas 1967 and was headlined by Amen Corner who had not yet fully mutated from their original blues orientation into the pop-soul fusion that brought them a string of hits.  The brass section was terrific and they rocked a tightly packed crowd.  Local soul band, The St Louis Checks, opened the bill.  By this time I had seen them on previous occasions.  The bill was completed by The Action a very loud rock band who will be featured in a future blog about the most famous of Portsmouth’s lost venues, The Birdcage.

In ’68 or ’69, I saw the most successful of all of the wholly local groups of the sixties at the Savoy.  After their first few soul-influenced singles flopped nationally, Simon Dupree and the Big Sound eventually hit big with ‘Kites’ an ethereal, quasi-psychedelic fusion complete with mysterious sounding come hither recitation in Chinese by actress Jacqui Chan.  Portsmouth’s blue-eyed soul kings never disappointed on stage though I can find no trace of the date of this gig.

In the seventies, the Savoy Ballroom went disco and, at one point, it was called Nero’s, apparently complete with pseudo-columns and toga clad staff.  Within the last ten years it finally closed, the apartments were emptied and the shops boarded up.  Ripe for redevelopment, Harry Rednapp, then manager of the local football team, bought the site and commenced demolition just as the property market went into freefall in 2008.  Funds ran out and the once proud Savoy Buildings remained half up and half down while arguments raged about changes to planning permissions.  The structure mysteriously caught fire during the night of the summer riots of August 2011.  There were no riots in Portsmouth and no cause for the fire has yet been determined.  A second iconic music venue that played a significant part in the musical history of the city had been engulfed in flames.  What was left was subsequently demolished altogether leaving a bare, brownfield site licking its wounds and quietly abiding in its memories.

Unless otherwise stated all of the following records referred to in this Blog are original vinyl released in 1964: The Beatles ‘Can’t Buy Me Love’ is a 45 rpm single and ‘A Hard Day’s Night’ is included in the album of that name both released by Parlophone; ‘You Really Got Me’ by The Kinks is a single released by Pye and is also included on a Pye compilation ‘The Golden Hour of the Kinks’ released on vinyl in 1971;  ‘Here I Go Again’ by The Hollies, originally released on Columbia, is included on an EMI CD ’20 Golden Greats’ first released on vinyl in 1978;  ‘The House of the Rising Sun’ by The Animals is a single released by Columbia and is also included on an early EMI vinyl compilation ‘The Most of the Animals’ originally released in 1966; ‘My Guy’ by Mary Wells is included in a 3CD set ‘Classic Songs of the Motown Era Volume 1’ released by EMI Music Publishing in 1997 for promotional purposes only; ‘It’s All Over Now’ by The Rolling Stones is a single released by Decca and is also included in ‘Forty Licks’ a 2CD compilation released in 2002 by ABCKO; ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’ by Manfred Mann is a single released by HMV and is also included in the ‘Manfred Mann EP Collection’ released on vinyl in 1988 by See For Miles.  ’You’re No Good‘ by The Swinging Blue Jeans is included in ‘The Ultimate Sixties Collection’ a 2CD set released by Castle Communications in 1996; ‘Twist and Shout’ (1963), ‘Do You Love Me’ (1963), Someone, Someone’ and ‘Twelve Steps to Love’ (and I really didn’t remember that last oneuntil finding it on the shelf!) are all singles by Brian Poole and the Tremeloes released by Decca; The Honeycombs ‘Have I the Right’ is a single released by Pye Records; ‘Tobacco Road’ by The Nashville Teens is a single released by Decca and is also on the Castle ‘Ultimate Sixties Collection’; ‘Kites’ by Simon Dupree and the Big Sound is included in a vinyl compilation of that name released by See For Miles in 1986.accelerated