One of the two men behind the hits of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (not to mention The Honeycombs and The Herd,) Alan Blaikley, died in July but I only found out when his obituary was published in today’s Guardian.
The two were apparently the first British composers to write a song for Elvis Presley.
An (incomplete) list of the songs the duo wrote is here. It’s not a bad CV.
This is the one featuring the “man with the whip” as the Queen Mother is supposed to have said to Dave Dee. In reality I believe the sound was made by scraping a bottle across the strings of a guitar.
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich: Legend of Xanadu
Alan Tudor Blaikley: 23/3/1940 – 4/6/2022. So it goes.
When a very young Peter Frampton joined The Herd, the group with whom he made his name, they had just been dropped by Parlophone, but simultaneously brought in composers Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, who had written a barrowload of hits for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich and signed up to Fontana. The songs concocted for the Herd were of a different order to those hits though. Elements of psychedelia and glimmerings of prog rock are here.
The band’s name was supposed to be a conflation of their nicknames. Curiously my class at school had a Mick too and a set of other nicknames which were eerily similar. Nowadays we might have set up a tribute band (No. We wouldn’t. Really.) but we always joked we could call ourselves J D, Hodie, Dreek, Mick and Worm. The similarity broke down a bit at that last one, though.
The real band made it big with a series of tersely titled Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley songs, Hold Tight, Hideaway, Bend It, Okay, Zabadak among them, before morphing away from the teen market slightly with a series of wonderfully over the top tracks like Legend Of Xanadu, Last Night In Soho, Wreck Of The Antoinette and Don Juan. Because of the Top Of The Pops appearance with Legend Of Zanadu Dave always thought he’d be remembered as “that guy with the whip.”
When he left the band I had thought he had subsequently become a record producer but various sources including The Independent says he was actually head A&R man for WEA.
After Dave Dee left the rest carried on as DBM&T, changing their sound to try to achieve musical credibility, an endeavour within which the single Mr President wasn’t entirely a failure.
They apparently all got together again latterly to tour the nostalgia circuit.
Dave Dee, 17/12/1941 – 9/1/2009. So it goes.
Here’s Last Night In Soho in memoriam.
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich: Last Night in Soho
