Back to photostream

My Mersey Beat Memories

Posters spotted off Liverpool's famous Mathew Street (home of the original "Cavern Cub"), which earlier this year awakened many magical memories of my personal (wild but wonderful) scouse-prime.

 

My own (very short lived) contribution to the legendary "Mersey Beat/Mersey Sound" consisted of me playing banging drums at countless practice/rehearsal sessions -- then, actually performing in public ... at just two (bloody jokes of) gigs.

 

I soon realised that I was a rubbishy drummer but, had already recognised the terrific and extremely special talent(s) of one of our three guitarists, Keith Dodd.

Keith went on to much better things with some great Liverpool groups, including "The Swinging Blue Jeans", "Ricky Gleason & the Topspots" and "The Principles". It wasn't just "The Cavern Club" he played, he also played at Hamburg's equally famous "Star Club", where he met his German wife, Marja. Incidentally, Keith only retired from performing a mere five years ago.

 

Although it's not officially mentioned/recorded ANYwhere (and rightly so), the first group Keith ever played with (approx 1961) was our own band, called "The Debonairs", which consisted of Keith, Doug, Vinny ; all guitarists - plus 'drum banging' yours truly.

 

One other great thing Keith did was to introduce me to (the amazing talents of) some greats of the day ; Django Reinhardt, Stéphane Grappelli, and Les Paul & Mary Ford.

Learn a little more about Keith (far right in pic) at the links below - and about other relevant/related stuff.

www.liverpoolbeat.com/rocknroll/wp-content/uploads/2013/0...

jkhmusic.co.uk/topspots/history.html

merseycats.com/Maja's-Memories-of-the-Star-Club.html

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Cavern_Club

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Django_Reinhardt

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/St%C3%A9phane_Grappelli

www.gibson.com/News-Lifestyle/Features/en-us/les-paul-and...

 

 

 

2,538 views
5 faves
11 comments
Uploaded on December 11, 2016
Taken on March 31, 2016