My mother loved The Sheik of Shake. Considering that most UK acts of the time merely imitated American stars, Dickie Pride was a stand out, and it's baffling how his star never rose to the heights reached by Cliff Richard/Marty Wilde/Joe Brown/Billy Fury. The poor guy was proof positive that great talent doesn't always get the rewards it deserves.
You should get a listen to the Jazz Standards album Dickie Pride recorded. I lived in a house with dickie and a bunch of Musicians in the early 1960’s. Dickie was way ahead of the pack…singing jazz Standards and King Pleasure songs.
Thank you for uploading this. There definitely used to be a higher-quality version online here on YT but it perished. Still, grateful to see it survives in some form.
Shows like these provide a great document of life at the time and it's a pity that the tv companies never thought of how fascinating they'd be to kids of today....just think of how popular the re-runs of "Ready Steady Go!" were, ther's nothing quite like nostalgia.
I saw Marty live, at a gig with my parents. Because the old man was a snide gob@hite full of self loathing, he had to get a dig in. The venue was small and as Marty squeezed past our table, the old @hit said loudly "He's wearing a rug!!" I felt embarrassed. I'd recently bought a Marty Wilde greatest hits LP, because I'm a guitarist and a big fan of Eddie Cochran & Gene Vincent, and because of this, the old man actually bothered to ask if I wanted a ticket to the show. Marty put on a good show, and the old @hit actually admitted that Marty and his band were a lot better than he was expecting. I doubt there were any disappointed people in the audience.
