From:   "Dik de Heer" 
Date:  Tue Dec 17, 2002  6:21 am
Subject:  Born To Be With You : Tommy Steele

TOMMY STEELE

Born Thomas Hicks, 17 December 1936, Bermondsey, South London,
England

Tommy Steele was undoubtedly Britain's first great Rock and Roll idol.
Like many who followed him, Tommy started his musical career by
playing in a skiffle group. He was also the first of the London based
artists who would precurse their fame by singing at the 2 'I's Coffee Bar,
a venue which later hosted the virtually unknown Adam Faith and Cliff
Richard. Although Tommy's brand of Rock and Roll was nearer to 'easy
listening' than that of some of his American contemporaries, he more
than made up for it with his personality. His manager, Larry Parnes,
once said "Tommy Steele was the greatest entertainer that I ever had
on my books", and Tommy Steele's rise as a teenage star was probably
attributable to charisma rather than sex appeal.
During the spring of 1956, Hicks met Lionel Bart and Mike Pratt, two
songwriters who were also working as performers and had an interest in
this new brand of music that was coming over from America. With them,
Hicks formed a band called The Cavemen, which began playing in coffee
bars in London's Soho, where young people were congregating in ever-larger
numbers to hear the skiffle bands that were performing there. After being
discovered by impresario Larry Parnes, Hicks was rechristened Tommy
Steele and signed to Decca Records. For his recording debut, he cut an
original song by Lionel Bart, "Rock With the Caveman," with help from some
British jazz notables, who got billed at the Steelmen. The new singing star
made his television debut in October of 1956, and was immediately booked
for a second appearance when thousands of letters arrived requesting to see
him again. Only a month after "Rock With The Caveman" made the British
Top 20, Steele was voted one of the top 10 male British singers in a New
Musical Express poll, and on his first major tour found himself greeted by
hoards of screaming fans. His second single, "Doomsday Rock", failed to
chart, but his third, "Singing The Blues," bumped Guy Mitchell's version
from the No. 1 spot on the British charts. By early 1957, Steele had made
his first screen appearance, in a small role as a singer in the thriller Kill Me

Tomorrow and by February of that year, the production of the movie The
Tommy Steele Story had begun. Shot in less than three weeks, it was in
the theaters in May of 1957, just in time to herald his second major British
tour, on which he was billed with the American rock 'n roll band Freddie Bell
& the Bellboys.
Everything associated with Steele seemed poised for success. He continued
to record some rock 'n roll, including versions of Ritchie Valens' "Come On,
Let's Go" (produced by Joe Meek) and Freddy Cannon's "Tallahassee Lassie",
but increasingly, his output consisted of pop-style numbers, including show
tunes. By mid-1958, Cliff Richard and his backing band the Shadows had
ushered in a new wave of British rock 'n roll with "Move It", which sounded
more authentic than Steele's somewhat contrived brand of R&R.
By the end of the 1950s Tommy Steele had moved away almost completely
from his Rock and Roll beginnings and instead concentrated on recording
novelties, and his stage act. He soon became established as a family
entertainer, broadening from - probably mostly dispensing with - his original
teenage following. He became a master of the stage musical and an arche-
typal performer of the British pantomime. He continued successfully in this
role for more than three decades, but faded somewhat from the scene during
the 1990s. Most of Tommy's later recorded work concerned his stage and
film musicals which included 'Half A Sixpence', 'Finian's Rainbow', 'The
Happiest Millionaire' and 'Hans Andersen' , for which Tommy later received
an award from the Danish government.

The most complete CD overview is "The Decca Years, 1956-63", a 2 CD-set
(68 tracks) issued by Decca in 1999 at a budget price.
There are also two compilations on See For Miles, "The Rock 'n' Roll Years"
and "The EP Collection".
There is a 1958 biography, "Tommy Steele" by John Kennedy (London :
Souvenir Press), but it's been out of print for decades.