5/16/2023 0 Comments Ricky king death 2003![]() He was a professional entertainer for 60 years. “I hated being regarded as a one-hit wonder,” Valance told me, “I sold 40,000 copies of some of my other records.” However, the only time he made the news was when he crashed his new Anglia or fought with Peter Chester, the son of the comedian Charlie Chester, for which he was fined £15 in 1962. Valance toured with package shows, usually supporting major performers such as Gene Vincent. Valance made good pop records but his contemporaries Craig Douglas and Mark Wynter were choosing better compositions. In 1961, he submitted the song Why Can’t We for the Eurovision song contest, but the Allisons’ Are You Sure won the UK nomination. Sticking with plaintive Brill Building songs, Valance followed his hit with Movin’ Away (1960) and then Jimmy’s Girl (1961), which missed the charts. The record was restricted but not banned by the BBC and most of its airplay was on Radio Luxembourg. Ironically, this attention on a high-rated Saturday teatime TV show encouraged sales and Valance was No 1 for three weeks, displacing another of Paramor’s acts, the Shadows. It’s a song in a lifetime.” The panel on the BBC’s Juke Box Jury, which included Petula Clark, did not agree and voted it a “miss”. ![]() Valance said, “I had a lot of faith in that song because it stirred something in me and the melody was so beautiful. While RCA hesitated, Columbia and Top Rank rush-released UK cover versions from Ricky Valance and John Leyton respectively. The American singer Ray Peterson had recorded the original version of Tell Laura I Love Her for RCA Records, and the song made the US Top 10 in June 1960, but campaigners asked its British subsidiary not to release it. In 1960 he was signed by Norrie Paramor to Columbia Records, which was part of the EMI group. Taking his name from a racehorse trainer, Richard Valance, David renamed himself Ricky Valance, perhaps not appreciating that this sounded similar to Ritchie Valens, who died with Buddy Holly in a 1959 plane crash. Once demobbed, he and Evelyn moved to London and he accepted cabaret bookings, often with the Sid Phillips band. He joined the RAF when he was 17 and served for three years, meeting his wife, Evelyn, in Malta. ![]() He followed his father into the collieries when he was 15, but he tired of the work and had a succession of jobs. His father, Ronnie, was also an amateur boxer and his mother, Emily, encouraged him to join the choir at the village church, where he became a fine tenor. Valance was born David Spencer in the village of Ynysddu in south-east Wales, one of seven children in a coal-mining family. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |