04 LEARNING THE TRADE
 

After the grand start at the Royal Albert Hall on 17th September 1961, Faith took his four new ‘lads’ on a two weeks’ tour of England with the John Barry 7, Irish comic Dave Allen, clarinettist Desmond Lane, Johnny Le Roy, and a host of other groups and entertainers.

 

Adam Faith was so huge that only Cliff and his Shadows were in a position to rival him. It’s no surprise then that Faith’s backing-band’s performance needed to be faultless. The Roulettes would soon meet with great respect from their peers, but their high level of musicianship came at a price. And the problem seemed to be the rhythm section. Enter The Roulettes as a trio, an overlooked part of their story. And enter The Shadows. 

 
A TRIO 

Peter Thorp: ‘Adam said he was not happy with the band, that we sounded very disjointed and so. That was possibly due to the new drummer, but no finger was pointed and he told me to form a trio; the idea was to keep Martin Blackwell on bass and to find a new drummer. We recruited one at the weekly Windmill Street meet-up of pro musicians looking for work: his name was Jeff Morley from South Wales who apart from ‘pit work’ in theatres had played with several bands. We had four weeks now over X’mas and Jeff got his silver grey ‘tonik’ suit. We rehearsed and got up to speed for our first gigs as a trio  - the new Roulettes’. The format would last from January till March 1962: Peter Thorp, Jeff Morley and  Martin Blackwell became TV regulars with spots on Crackerjack,  the Billy Cotton Band show and Parade Of The Pops in January, embarking on a tour of England and Ireland in February and March.

PICTURE: The Roulettes as a Trio, Spring 1962, Courtesy Peter Thorp, All Rights Reserved

Reviewing their show at the Gaumont theatre, Derby, of 11th February 1962, the Derby Evening Telegraph mentions ‘show business newcomers The Roulettes, three young men who did well to carry on the star’s usual John Barry accompaniment ‘.
Contrary to the fans and the press, Faith felt unhappy – again - with the band. This time it  wasn’t the drummer, but the bass-player. The charity gig at the Empire Pool in Wembley on 25th March 1962 was the very last as a trio and the very last for bass-player Martin Blackwell. For a short while,  Cliff’s Shadows and Faith’s Roulettes would struggle over the same bass-players. Line-ups would come and go.

Peter Thorp: ‘At some point during the tour, Blackwell left because now there was this thing about a new bass-player for The Shadows after Jet Harris had left for a solo career. There appeared to have been some sort of understanding among Cliff’s and Adam’s managements that whoever didn’t get the job with The Shadows would be in Adam’s band’.
Contenders were Brian ‘Licorice’ Locking, formerly with  Marty Wilde’s Wildcats, and one John Rogers  from Cheshunt band The Hunters, formed from the remnants of The Parker Royal Five. The Hunters were a seasoned instrumental group, backing visiting U.S. stars and local singer Dave Sampson. They had released several singles with Sampson and under their own name, including two long-players - an exceptional achievement for a backing band. Dave Sampson was close with Cliff for a while, and Cliff’s family lived in the same area!

SWITCHING SHADOWS 

Thorp: ‘John Rogers was offered and accepted the job with The Shadows and  thus The Roulettes had ‘Licorice’, but only for a while. I distinctly remember ‘Licorice’ in his Tonik grey suit and I think he, Jeff and me did  two or three further gigs in Ireland, but his religious beliefs got the better of us all. I thought that was the end of that as Jeff, our drummer, went back to Wales and I did some gigs in Duffy Powers’ band when Adam rang me: he had heard about Rogers performing with The Shadows in a show at the Theatre Royal, East London, and would I go to see him play? I saw him and after the show suggested he chat with Adam about joining the band. Eventually, Rogers left The Shadows for The Roulettes and Brian ‘Licorice’ Locking became a Shadow. It probably helped he had played alongside then Shadows drummer Brian Bennett in Marty Wilde’s Wildcats and Vince Taylor’s Playboys. No, I don’t think Rogers  actually gigged with The Shads’.
Russ Ballard: ‘No, but he did back Cliff before all that. When Cliff was touring the States in 1960 with Bobby Rydell and The Treniers, he had to come back to the UK  to promote a single. He didn’t bring The Shadows because it was too expensive, so the solution was to ask his friends from Cheshunt, The Parker Royal Five with John Rogers on bass. There were only two TV channels then, 14 million viewers. You should be mad not to do it, so Cliff  just flew over for that – without his backing-band’.
At any rate, Rogers was a first-class player, who wrote for and produced his friend Tony Meehan, equally a former Shadow.

CHESHUNT NETWORK 

To solve the rhythm section problem, Faith still needed a drummer. Fresh Roulette John Rogers suggested one Bob Henrit, also from Cheshunt. Henrit had played in local bands since his early teens, notably alongside Russ and Roy Ballard in Buster Meikle’s Daybreakers.  
The Daybreakers were making a name for themselves, backing Cliff Richard’s cousin Johnny Carson on his recording of a song called  ‘Dream On’. Carson and The Condors would perform this song in episode of ‘Wham!’ in 1960. Henrit also remembers ‘backing a guy called Rody Daniels on a record called ‘Yo-Yo Boy’, but I can’t remember why, where and when’. After backing Helen Shapiro, Norrie Paramour took an interest in the group and even arranged a recording session. The group happily obliged, but their leader Buster Meikle decided he wanted nothing to do with pop music...
Bob Henrit: ‘John was my sister’s fiancé and he engineered the opportunity for me. I joined one Monday in May 1962, possibly the 7th but more likely the 14th. I replaced Jeff Morley whom I don’t ever recall meeting.  John and I had even recorded a Hunters single together: ‘The Storm’, written by the band’s guitarist Brian Parker and Henry Stracey, released in August 1961’.
Little did guitarists Brian Parker and Henry ‘Norman’ Stracey know they’d soon receive a call to join The Roulettes as well!

HUNTERS GROUND  

As if the rhythm section didn’t cause sufficient headaches,  Faith had complicated matters by adding  saxophonist Alan ‘Honk’ Jones to the trio of Thorp, Morley and Blackwell. He joined around the same time as Brian Locking and was still in place when Henrit auditioned early May 1962.  
Bob Henrit: ‘We were playing a song in the show which Adam Faith had had a hit with in 1960 called ‘When Johnny Comes Marching Home’, which in my opinion was the only song the saxophone was important to. Otherwise, as I recall the sax didn’t exactly have a lead role.  This may have led to ‘Honk’s’ ultimate demise. I think he had come from a dance-band background and I assume he went back to that line of employment when he left us’.
Peter Thorp: ‘Saxophonist Alan Jones appeared about the same time as Brian ‘Licorice’ Locking. Why Adam wanted a saxophone in the band was beyond me, but Jones stayed briefly with us for a few dates including the one at The Princess Theatre, Torquay. Honk left at this point and nobody has heard from him since’.

Peter: ‘Our saxophonist was replaced by another guitarist, re-establishing the line-up of the original quartet. Henry 'Norman' Stracey, also from The Hunters, was a very good rhythm guitar player with a wealth of knowledge of chords, etc. He also played keyboards’.

With  a true set of professionals finally on board, Adam’s next move was to sideline the man he confided in, original guitarist Peter Thorp aka ‘Thorpy’.
Peter Thorp: ‘Adam did say to me whilst playing tapes in his roller on the way to some gigs that he loved a 12-string guitar player he had heard and put this enormous cassette on in the car and played it to me. He wanted me to go and learn the style and do a recording as soon as possible. Meanwhile  he needed someone to dep for me and John Rogers suggested Brian Parker, lead guitarist in The Hunters! I saw this as John trying to get the Hunters back together’.

It  looked like an intelligent move: The Hunters had backed Dave Sampson and tasted chart success with ‘Sweet Dreams’ (no. 29, 1960), but the real breakthrough never happened. Though a Doc Pomus & Mort Shuman composition, Sampson’s solo single ‘Wide Wide World’ from January 1962 made no impact. Adam Faith was in a different category altogether and a sure stepping-stone for an ambitious musician.
Brian Parker stepped in Thorpy’s shoes, but was gone within a week...
Thorp: ‘As things never work to plan, a week later Brian Parker went home and there was a panic phone call from Adam asking me to get on the next train to Wolverhampton. There ended my future as a 12-string country guitar player and any solo recordings? I wonder!’.

Parker didn’t return to The Hunters, or what was left of it, but decided to form his own vocal harmony group. He called upon his friend David 'Buster' Meikle, leader of another Cheshunt act, The Daybreakers.  With singer Tommy Moeller and Peter Moules, who had been at school together, they formed a folk quartet called Unit 4. Soon, the paths of the Unit and The Roulettes would cross.

Up to that point, however, the role of The Roulettes was strictly confined to the stage, TV and radio. When it came to studio recordings, Adam Faith was still backed by... John Barry’s orchestra who produced the apt velvet sound that ensured chart success. While Roulettes came and went, Faith sent three singles to the top 10 (‘The Time Has Come ‘, no. 5, October 1961; ‘Lonesome’; no. 12, February 1962; ‘As You Like It’, no. 5, May 1962) and placed one album at no. 20... 

That too was about to change. With original guitar player Thorp (the only survivor of the first line-up) and well-trained Hunters Bob Henrit, John Rogers and Henry Stracey on board, Faith finally seemed to have assembled the backing band he had looked for. It had him cost nearly a year and he had sacked a considerable number of musicians along the way. Soon, The Roulettes would enter the studio as an autonomous unit and fly to Australia.

© Eddy Bonte, based on research and my group interview with Roulettes Peter Thorp, Bob Henrit, Russ Ballard and John ‘Mod’ Rogan conducted at Russ Ballard’s home on Thursday 15th December 2016. My article on The Roulettes appeared in Shindig! Magazine no. 84 of October 2018 (as edited by Andy Morten)