The startling “Wimoweh” – issued on the deep-blue Decca label in its orange-striped bag, was masterminded by Jack Good as Karl’s third single. For British 1961 Pop, this was the big time. Then a major forty-three date Larry Parnes ‘Star Spangled Nights’ package-tour from October through to December with Mike Sarne, Joe Brown, Jimmy Justice, Marty Wilde, Mark Wynter, plus Peter Jay & The Jaywalkers, all compéred by Al Paige. Gigging at the ‘Yew Tree’ in Wythenshawe, Brian was soon replaced by Mancunian Kevin Neill (born 25 July 1931) who had previous big-band experience working with both Joe Loss and Geraldo, as well as backing Anthony Newley’s 1960 tour! And it was here they were talent-scouted, and invited onto Jack Good’s ‘Wham!’ TV-show, leading to a tour with Jess Conrad and Billy Fury. It was on his return to the north of England that he formed a trio with Brian Horton and Gerry Cottrell (born 18 December 1933 in Manchester), who provided long-term musical and logistical support. He had a hard-drinking storyteller’s gift of invention, retaining the raw Glasgow burr to knock years off his official biog-age, so his claims of playing the ‘Grand Ole Opry’ broadcasts while hanging out with Faron Young and Lefty Frizzell, should be treated warily, but then again, who knows? It was here he adopted his stage-alias, taking ‘Karl’ to commemorate a dead son, and the surname from the American city, before he was deported by the US Aliens Department as an illegal immigrant in 1959. Yet Karl had wild tales and authentic country credentials, having jumped ship and lived in Nashville for a space, without a work permit. At a time when Rock ‘n’ Rollers were up-switching to solid-body bass guitars, the stand-up has a special organic jazz-resonance, but it’s not quite cool. Portly bespectacled Gerry (Gerard) Cottrell – who stands to one side, plays lead guitar, but Kevin Neill – standing on the left, has a big stand-up double-bass. Onstage he wore built-up Cuban heels to compensate for his unprepossessing pint-size stature. Those years were written into the rugged lines of his face. He had history, he’d enlisted in the Argyll & Sutherland regiment and seen action in Korea, and sailed as a deckhand with the Merchant Navy. And in truth, he never quite fits easily. But no-one was quite like Karl Denver.īorn 16 December 1931, as Angus Murdo McKenzie in Springburn, Glasgow, by the time of “Wimoweh” he’d already tipped over the generationally-sensitive thirty watershed, in a realm of photogenic teenage poster-boys. Other singers had falsetto swoops into stratospheric highs. Watch the blurry black-and-white TV-clip, see his mouth working scat-wise around the gymnastics of sound, shaping and modulating a sheer cacophony of noise, remoulding it into new configurations. His “Wimoweh” straddles a switchback of multi-octave contortions, a foreign nonsense-language of throat-shredding clicks, brrrrr’s and death-defying yodels. So – my theory goes like this, to stand out in the tacky Pop shallowness, a certain vocal extremism provides the edge. The producer’s role was primarily down to reproducing the sound as accurately and cleanly as possible. But largely making a record came down to a live studio performance into a couple of strategically positioned pick-up microphones. There were novelty effects that included speeded-up vocals, dual-tracking to add voice depth, and the kind of electronic distortion favoured by mavericks such as Joe Meek. Early 1960s studio technology was fairly limited.
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