Most days, a singer called Irene Carroll, dressed in furs regardless of the weather, would sweep in, arm-in-arm with an older man. About an hour later, they would swish out again, and leave in a gaudy limo, with the driver delicately negotiating his way out of the tiny mews. Most of our income was generated by leeching acts from other more well known agencies, and trying to flog the then unknown Cockney Rebel & Queen (for £175.00) to reluctant college social secretaries the length of Britain. (For more on this, listen to Word Podcast 96)
Our agency still had a deep well of acts that had been regulars, twenty years previously, on the Music Hall circuit, and despite television, The Beatles and Psychedelia leaving them behind on a cultural desert island, these artists would drop in, with the vain hope that some gig had been found for them at some long forgotten Gaumont or Variety Theatre. Thus would Hilda & Her Performing Poodles (I could write a thousand words on her act alone), Frank Strong (“You can never go wrong, with a smile and a song” ran Frank’s business card), and the bloke who sculpted elephants out of balloons, rubbed shoulders with, say, The Doobie Brothers, or Tower of Power, over on a tour, and picking up their itineraries and daily allowances. Transatlantic travel was still rather rare in those days, and to find Hilda (who had a close resemblance to Esma Cannon from the Carry On films) in a tricky conversation with a Californian sax player was a wonder to behold.
As a very junior 19 year old, it was my job to look after Hilda and her peers, and also to book out the agency’s stable of folk acts. This was never going to make me a fortune as the agency received ten per cent of the fee, and I received twenty-five per cent of that ten per cent. As most folkie acts were lucky to get twenty five quid, I would receive the less than handsome reward of just over sixty pence for each gig I booked.
The best way to get a folk/blues/acoustic musician some exposure and higher fees was to try and convince a mainstream act to give the aspiring muso a support spot. This worked really well if I teamed up Gordon Giltrap with the Fairports, but what possessed me to get Dave Ellis a support slot with... wait for it... The Edgar Broughton Band, at the Rainbow Theatre, is still a mystery to me today. At the time, Dave, a very quiet, calm, folk musician with an amazing guitar style, was used to playing in candlelit folk clubs, often the ‘back room’ of pubs. The Broughtons, after an introspective period, were about to sign to NEMS, and so we promoted a showpiece gig at the Rainbow. Ticket sales were slow; I pulled on some favours from Capital Radio, where I had worked, and Nicky Horne plugged the gig on his ‘Your Mother Wouldn’t Like It’ show. We pretended to give away a pair of tickets to a caller to his show, but in fact I dropped off fifty pairs of tickets and all callers were ‘winners’.
I’m not sure if Dave has ever forgiven me, for placing him in an environment where his gentle acoustic playing was somewhat overshadowed by confused Capital Radio listeners, and straggle haired hippies yelling “Out Demons Out!” I remember speaking with Dave, in the wings of the Rainbow, after his set. He seemed even quieter than usual...
I think this mad moment of ‘artist placement’ was one of my final activities in Praed Street, before I left and decamped to Mallorca for the summer. But that story is for another day...
Terence Dackombe, 2009
