| 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 simple sex appeal. | |
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The EP illustrated on the left was a sound-track released to coincide with that of the movie from which it came, "The Tommy Steele Story" (Anglo Amalgamated Film Distributors Ltd). The film gave a glamorous account of his rise from a singer in a Soho coffee house to "the top in a matter of weeks". So confident were the record distributors in the future of rock and roll, they wrote .."the vogue for rock 'n' roll may pass but this sound-track proves conclusively that Tommy Steele is here to stay."- this was the middle of 1957! |
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By the end of the 1950s Tommy Steele had been urged to move away almost completely from his Rock and Roll beginnings and instead concentrate 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 archetypal 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 Anderson' -for which Tommy later received an award from the Danish government. Tommy Steele is an artist who is frequently asked after by visitors to this web site. Although Tommy has had an absence from any stage musicals for more than ten years, at the time of writing this paragraph (December 2003) he was appearing in a new production of an adaptation of Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' called 'Scrooge'. Playing the lead in this shows just how far this talented performer has moved on since his beginnings as the UK's premier rock and roll act. |
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