MOVE IT ON THE BACKBEAT (Part Two)
MOVE IT ON THE BACKBEAT!
JOSIE + THE PUSSY CATS IN LONDON
1956-57
MAGIC POTION
This is where I came in. My name is Albert Fox; I’m a booking agent and talent manager. For weeks, I was hearing great things about The Pussy Cats by word-of-mouth. Finding the time to catch their act was a challenge, but I eventually did when Normans Music Store hired them for a special promotion. Women are used to sell everything imaginable, so why not guitars? The band was set up to play right in the big store window.
All three lasses were easy on the eyes, but when I heard them sing and play a song called “Somebody Else’s Sweetheart” with vibrant Flamenco chords, I was blown away! Their vocals were fabulous, and the boy percussionist was exceptionally good. It wasn’t easy, convincing Josie that I should manage the group; having worked as a stripper among predatory males, not to mention her bad experience with The Jazz Babies, she was wary of being taken advantage of. And let me tell you, she was as fiercely protective of the girls as of her son! I got past her suspicious nature, though, and once I was in harness The Pussy Cats started playing better venues and earning good money.
Let me stop here and tell you in advance: This story takes some altogether strange turns, and that’s an understatement! Some of the people and situations that I’m going to tell you about are not at all what they seem to be. However, for the purpose of advancing the narrative, let’s pretend otherwise for the time being; the reason why will become apparent when my recollections are fully up to date.
Popular music in Great Britain was about to undergo a sea change. Rock ‘n’ Roll was breaking out all over and the parade of Elvis Presley clones had begun: The Cliff Richards, the Billy Furys, The Tommys, Martys, Dickies, Vinces and all the rest. I’ve always had something of a contrary nature and I just didn’t want to go down that teen idol route!
The Elvis imitators were aimed squarely at teenage girls. With a strong female act, I hoped to corral a young adult market that I felt was being neglected. Little did I know that soon enough, I’d be bollocks-deep in that Fifties Rock scene; but at the moment I was busy grooming what was going to be the hottest novelty act in the country. It was time to take The Pussy Cats to the next level, and for that they needed a recording contract!
My childhood mate Alexander just happens to be heir to a huge fortune. Very old money, too: The Cabots are not only one of the wealthiest families in England, but in all of Europe. Lex and his twin sister Alexandra are both enfants terribles - wild and impulsive, always pushing the envelope and keeping the pot stirred up! British high society clucks its collective tongue at their transgressions on a regular basis; yet there’s something adorable about the Cabots. That endearing quality has allowed them to get away with lots of mischief over the years.
For as long as I’ve known them, both Lex and Xandi have been absolutely obsessed with popular music! Xandi in particular is au courant with all the latest trends in Pop, and she can tell you anything you want to know about this or that recording artist. In late 1956, the Cabot siblings launched an independent record label called Triumph Records. They’d accumulated a small roster of artists that included a Skiffle group and a Cocktail Jazz crooner. I was a partner in their venture, so it was natural that I should recommend Josie + The Pussy Cats to them. I believed they’d be the breakout act that Triumph had yet to find.
Lex, the business side of the partnership, agreed with me that the lasses looked and sounded great - especially Valerie who he fell for almost immediately! Even so, he was against signing them. “Girl groups haven’t really been popular since The Andrews Sisters,” he warned, “and the Calypso craze is petering out. Besides that, can we break a group with two Black and two White members? And what about the White mother with a coloured son? Nothing wrong with it, of course, but you know how people are.”
Lex wanted to ditch the group and offer Val a solo contract, but I pushed back hard. “We don’t have to publicize that family relationship,” I reminded him. “The boy will be Greg James; just switch his first and middle names and drop the surname. And since he’s part of the group it isn’t just girls, is it? Greg can sing lead as well as harmony. What’s more, Caribbean Folk material isn’t all The Pussy Cats have going for them: they do Pop standards, too. They’re versatile, stylish and different; dammit, man, at least give them an audition!”
He still wouldn’t budge, but I got Alexandra to side with me. Her support was the most important, anyway, because she was the musical side of the partnership. Though Lex got the credit, she was in charge of recording activities. Xandi ran the audition, and when she joined in singing harmony with the girls I knew they’d clinched a deal! After some heated discussion with her brother, The Pussy Cats got a conditional thumbs-up.
“Their voices have got just the right blend,” Xandi told me, “especially with me adding a fourth part.” Subsequently, she’d lend background harmony to all of their early record dates. “If they follow my instructions to the letter, maybe I can do something with them. Remember those strange songs we got from America? I think they can be adapted to a Caribbean music style. Of course, we’ll augment their sound with studio musicians.”
MANAGER ALBERT FOX AND THEIR
PRODUCERS, THE CABOT TWINS.
The “strange songs” she referenced came from Famous Music, an American publisher affiliated with Paramount Pictures in Hollywood. Famous had provided most of the start-up funds for Triumph Records, and that investment had given Famous executives some say over the label’s output. They’d been urging the Cabots to have Triumph artists cut songs by an up-and-coming composer named Burt Bacharach.
However, these songs had odd time signatures and melodic changes that you just didn’t hear in Pop songs; our artists found them daunting to sing and play! Frankly, neither Lex nor I cared for them but Xandi, whose tastes were somewhat avant-garde, found them intriguing. “Let’s sign The Pussy Cats to a singles contract,” she suggested, “and cut some Bacharach songs with them. Whether we go forward with the group will depend on how successful the songs are, and vice-versa.”
I delivered the good news to the band over a slap-up dinner at Simpson’s in the Strand. Greg squeezed his mum’s hand and blurted: “You’ll never have to shake your arse for horny bastards ever again!” An elderly woman at an adjoining table was so startled, she nearly choked on her biscuit! Well, Greg James didn’t have an ordinary upbringing, did he? The lad boasted a colorful show business vocabulary, and as time passed he’d be provocative in other ways. The Pussy Cats’ demo session was set for right after Saint Valentine’s Day, 1957.
Prior to that session, I insisted on a group makeover. I got them a choreographer, a top-notch make-up woman and a hair stylist. However, neither Valerie nor Melody were happy about this! Val balked at the heavily permed hairdos the stylist proposed for them. “It’s gonna make me flippin’ mop fall out!” she gasped. “Shan’t let that King’s Road cow touch me!” Her mother, who earned a living as a beautician, had warned Val against letting White people style her Caribbean curls. Black women’s hair can be very fragile, something I didn’t understand until she schooled me.
As for Melly, she considered herself the group’s de facto wardrobe mistress. The prospect of being dressed like Grace Kelly clones didn’t sit well with her at all. “Here now, we ain’t Hollywood rich bitches, are we? We’re working-class birds. And where’s our Pussy Cats motif?” she wanted to know. “That’s our trademark!”
We reached a compromise; the girls would have final say over changes in hair and clothes. Using to advantage what her mum taught her, Val tinted Josie’s brown hair Abbe Lane red and cut it into a stylish bob. It was a fabulous look! Marilyn Monroe’s tousled waves were her template for Melody, a natural platinum blonde; and she favored a Dorothy Dandridge “Carmen Jones” flip for herself. I daresay the most expensive Bond Street hair salon couldn’t have done a better job!
Melody made peace with the couturier’s strapless gold lamé party dresses, but she accessorized with animal print bodices and pumps, and a tiger stripe tuxedo jacket for Greg. Opaque black cat body stockings were her other contribution to the new look; I’m not sure what kind of material Myrna Munro used for them, but it was very sleek and resistant to rips and runs. The new costumes looked just shy of tacky to me, but I had to admit, they were awfully damn cute . . . and sexy, too!
IN THEIR FUTURE!
The Pussy Cats took to the other changes readily; within weeks, the dance instructor had them as lithe and light on their feet as ballroom competitors. Val could sing in Spanish, so I suggested they add some Latin standards to the act. Lex was right about the Calypso trend; by the end of ‘57 it was truly “stone cold dead in the market!” Latin music remained popular, though, and we managed a smooth transition away from the West Indian repertoire.
In fact, the new bilingual set list worked so well, I felt the group was ready for significantly more upscale venues. Goodbye to coffee bars and folksinger hangouts, hello to gentleman’s clubs and ballrooms! Alexandra caught their new act at Dublin’s Palm Beach Ballroom and quite liked what she saw. “They’ve got the right looks and the right moves,” she observed. “Now they need original song repertoire to complete the package.”
The demo session at Regent Sound Studios saw the group successfully track two songs by Burt Bacharach: “Move It On The Backbeat”, an up tempo number featuring the girls singing in unison, and “The Miracle Of Saint-Marie”, a Folk-flavored ballad led by Greg. Since they were only demos, there was no augmented studio crew; once again, Alexandra sang background and played the organ, while the group members accompanied themselves on guitars and percussion. Though satisfied with the results, Xandi didn’t feel that either song met her requirements for advancing to a singles session.
So instead of scheduling one, she gave The Pussy Cats several other Bacharach tunes to rehearse. “Make them work for you on stage,” she instructed, “and in three months, we’ll see which ones are ready to be recorded.” Among the songs added to their repertoire were “Walk On By”, “Anyone Who Had A Heart”, “Another Tear Falls”, “London Life” and “Keep Away From Other Girls!” They were difficult to sing, but Josie was the sort of bandleader who loved a challenge; what’s more, Val, Melly and especially Greg had good ears for variations in tempo.
After intense rehearsal, they introduced the new numbers. Those songs, along with the changes we’d already put in place invigorated the Pussy Cats’ stage show. Word began to spread about their unusual material; but soon enough, we realized that that word-of-mouth wasn’t always about anything music-related!
Put three buxom beauties on stage in form-fitting tiger-stripe costumes, and queer characters are sure to come leaping out of the woodwork. Certain sorts of people thought Josie + The Pussy Cats were spicy Lesbians or singing prostitutes (with young Gregory as their pimp)! Then there were the animal fetishists, about which the less said the better; but however freakish the attraction to them may be, the band always sets the record straight. They impress with their seriousness of purpose and the high quality of their music. In my opinion, The Pussy Cats are the equal of The Shadows and every other top instrumental group; they sing up a proper storm; and their set lists are nothing less than superb.
At IBC Studios, The Pussy Cats convened for their first official singles session in June of 1957. Waiting for them there were me, the Cabot Twins and the group of session horn players that Alexandra called her “Kool-Tyme Katts.” They were led by a sprite of a female piano player named Priscilla Potts; she was Alexandra’s go-to arranger. Everybody called her “Pepper Pot!” Pep was a joy to work with: A quick study, very professional and not “peppery” at all.
The rest of the band was male: Peter Tosh, Bunny Wailer, Robbie Shakespeare, Jimmy Cliff, Byron Lee and Lee Perry were all coloured men and mostly from the Caribbean. They spoke in rapid-fire island dialect, which only Valerie could understand; but somehow that never hurt their working relationship with Pepper! Her level of musicianship was extraordinary, and they all had the utmost respect for her. The Kool-Tyme Katts functioned like a well-oiled machine and were the perfect complement to my Pussy Cats; ironic, isn’t it, that they started out as a Calypso band, only to transition to Pop with the help of Caribbean musicians?
JOSIE AND THE PUSSY CATS AT IBC STUDIOS
WITH JOE MEEK AND PEPPER POTTS.
The group also met the very eccentric Joe Meek, Triumph’s in-house engineer. He’s since become quite the runaway success, but we knew him when he was just starting out. Greg and Val found Joe amusing; Melly seemed a bit wary of the man, as was I. Josie got her fill of him straightaway: she thought he was arrogant and bossy! True enough, Joe could be a brusque man to deal with, but he was always deferential to Lex, Xandi and I. The bloke knew damn well which toes not to step on! He wasn’t the main engineer at IBC, but Xandi thought he had a special way in the sound booth.
That “special way” of Joe’s included lots of unconventional methods of creating and recording sound. Josie was often alarmed by his tricks: Augmenting the percussion with cutlery tapped on soda bottles and shaken boxes of parking lot gravel; having the girls play their guitars with matchbooks instead of picks; overdubbing the trap drum with foot stomping, and other bizarre innovations.
He also liked to put special microphones on Xandi and Pepper’s keyboards and feed the sound into a daft-looking audio processor - his own invention! Sometimes it distorted a piano something awful, and Alexandra had to reign him in a bit. For the most part, though, she gave Joe free reign and he relished that freedom. He used her productions as a stepping stone to a producing career of his own.
Alexandra decided that “Walk On By” and “Anyone Who Had A Heart” would be among the four songs tracked, and Josie had high hopes for them. However, more time was lavished on a brand new Bacharach tune that The Pussy Cats didn’t think much of. “What’s this, then? ‘Magic Potion’ is a twee song!” Melody complained. Valerie agreed: “I don’t think the audiences we play for will like it much.” Xandi responded that it wasn’t meant for audiences but for record buyers: “We need to break you on the charts with something people can click their fingers to!” Sometimes, she went on to explain, there’d be a difference between what the band performed on stage and what they recorded. “I know it isn’t right for any of you girls to sing, so young Gregory will take the lead.”
Triumph X 703
MAGIC POTION/
WHO'S BEEN SLEEPING IN MY BED?
JOSIE + THE PUSSY CATS
A CABOT TWINS PRODUCTION
Arranged by “PEPPER”
- November 1957, mid-chart hit
With Xandi coaching him, the thirteen-year-old lay down a very professional-sounding vocal. When they heard the playback, The Pussy Cats had to admit that she’d produced a charming little record - though they still didn’t fancy it! Regardless, they were excited when the record broke for a modest hit upon its release in the Fall. “Now that the public has been introduced to you,” Lex told them, “we can position Valerie as lead singer and move you in a more adult direction.” He was keen to date Val up, and had already begun making moves on her! To be fair, I should stress that he really did think she had the best voice. So did I at the time.
But nobody foresaw the amazing growth spurt Greg James experienced between the first and second recording sessions. At just fourteen, he completely lost his boyish charm and started looking (and acting) like a cocky young man! His voice also changed dramatically: From a crisp Laurie London boy soprano to a rich Nat “King” Cole baritone. Suddenly, there were no songs in his key! Pepper tried to modulate chords for him, but without success; Xandi had to request some new songs from Famous Music.
In the meantime, Valerie and Melody began singing all the leads. They did so at the second and last IBC recording session in November of ‘57. I thought both of them sounded fabulous, but Alexandra wasn’t satisfied: “I just don’t hear any A-sides among the new tracks we recorded. Sorry, but we can’t release a new single yet!”
During this transition period, The Pussy Cats embarked on their first concert tour. Along with up-and-coming British stars like Cliff Richard, Adam Faith and Émile Ford, they stopped at Edmonton’s Granada Theatre, The Gaumont in Southampton, Odeon Theatres in Exeter, Cheltenham, Birmingham, Leeds and Glasgow, and London’s Coventry Theatre. They broke in additional Burt Bacharach songs, polished their stage act and introduced audiences to the “new” Greg James.
Even at this early stage, it was apparent to me that Greg would become the group’s lead vocalist; but Josie preferred to think the leads would continue to be shared. What we agreed on was that fresh ground had been laid on tour; The Pussy Cats were ready to record adult material!
END OF PART TWO!
