Terry Dene
Encyclopedia
Terry Dene is a former British
pop
singer
popular in the late 1950s. He achieved three Top Twenty
hits between June 1957 and May 1958.
, and was discovered by Paul Lincoln at the 2i's Coffee Bar (the London club that helped launch Tommy Steele
, Adam Faith
and Cliff Richard
) in Soho in the late 1950s. Jack Good
, producer of Six-Five Special
, and Dick Rowe
helped him obtain a recording contract
with Decca
. At the time he was regarded as the British Elvis and recognised as one of the best voices of the rock and roll
era of pre-Beatles
Britain
. His first single
"A White Sport Coat" in the first seven weeks sold in excess of 300,000 copies, together with "Stairway Of Love", which remained in the chart for eight weeks, and his own version of "Start Movin'" at number 14, put his records in the Top 20 twice in the same year UK Singles Chart
and secured his name in the Guinness Book of Records. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=terry+dene&aq=f He toured Britain, was one of the first to appear in the BBC Television
's first pop show, Six-Five Special
, and appeared in a film
, The Golden Disc.
Dene was branded as a 'bad apple' and the exemplifier of the 'evil of rock and roll' by the press after being arrested for public drunkenness and breaking a shop window in 1958, and ripping out a telephone box from the wall whilst claiming his passionate love for Edna Savage. After Dene was conscripted in 1958 into the Army
for National service
. where he was originally expected to report to Winchester
Barracks
, he was due to join the King's Royal Rifle Corps
on 7 July 1958, but his call-up was initially deferred until contractual commitments had been completed. When he finally did go in, it was so badly handled by the press (who filmed and publicised his arrival at the barracks) that after two months Dene had to be discharged on medical grounds as he received threats from his fellow conscripts. By that time the press had almost ruined his career. and the Army offered him a pension as a form of compensation which Dene refused. He later joined the Larry Parnes
' stable of stars and toured with them around Britain.
Disheartened by the bad publicity in 1964 Dene turned his back on the British pop scene and became an Evangelist crossing over to singing and writing spiritual and gospel music, recording three gospel
album
s. He travelled abroad as an itinerant preacher playing in churches, prisons and other venues and preached in the Scandinavian Lutheran Church for five years in Sweden
where he married for the second time. Two of the gospel albums were released in 1972–73 on Pilgrim Records.
In 1973, Dene released a book, I Thought Terry Dene Was Dead, and around 1984 reformed his group, the Dene Aces, with Brian Gregg. He released an album, The Real Terry Dene, in 1997 which was voted as one of the top 40 best listening CDs, and has continued to appear in rock and roll shows. His Decca compilation
was released in December 2004 by Vocalion Records
. In October 2007, Dene created his own company and label with his partner, Countess Lucia Liberati, LLTD.COM, and in July 2011 will be releasing in the UK his new CD, The Best Of Terry Dene, featuring his own version of "Mystery Train", a remix
of "Com'in And Be Loved, So Long", which was written by Dene, and a selection of his own choice.
, who died in 2000 at the age of 64. He married and divorced another three times and he is now settled with an Italian countess, Lucia Liberati, 21 years his junior, whom he met in London in 2000.
, in a condensed biopic of his life, and played in September 2004 at the Rock 'n' Roll Weekend Festival in Chippenham
, alongside Little Richard
, the Comets and Charlie Gracie
. In February 2005, appeared in the Best of British magazine dedicated to British music, and on 2 November 2006, as a 'mystery guest' on series 19 episode 2 of Never Mind the Buzzcocks
.
He performed at the 100 Club in London in October 2007, January 2008 and January 2010, in comnemoration of the first Six-Five Special, where he was a regular guest. He performed on 29 February 2008 at Borough Green Rock 'n' Roll Club, backed by Dave Briggs New Ravens, and appeared in Pop Britannia, broadcast by BBC Four
.
Dene appears at The British Music Experience, at the 02 Arena in Greenwich, dedicated to the history of British popular music in the UK over the past 60 years.
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
pop
Pop music
Pop music is usually understood to be commercially recorded music, often oriented toward a youth market, usually consisting of relatively short, simple songs utilizing technological innovations to produce new variations on existing themes.- Definitions :David Hatch and Stephen Millward define pop...
singer
Singing
Singing is the act of producing musical sounds with the voice, and augments regular speech by the use of both tonality and rhythm. One who sings is called a singer or vocalist. Singers perform music known as songs that can be sung either with or without accompaniment by musical instruments...
popular in the late 1950s. He achieved three Top Twenty
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
hits between June 1957 and May 1958.
Career
Dene was born in Lancaster Road, Elephant & Castle, LondonLondon
London is the capital city of :England and the :United Kingdom, the largest metropolitan area in the United Kingdom, and the largest urban zone in the European Union by most measures. Located on the River Thames, London has been a major settlement for two millennia, its history going back to its...
, and was discovered by Paul Lincoln at the 2i's Coffee Bar (the London club that helped launch Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele
Tommy Steele OBE , is an English entertainer. Steele is widely regarded as Britain's first teen idol and rock and roll star.-Singer:...
, Adam Faith
Adam Faith
Terence "Terry" Nelhams-Wright, known as Adam Faith was a Teen idol English singer, actor and later financial journalist. He was one of the most charted acts of the 1960s. He became the first UK artist to lodge his initial seven hits in the Top 5...
and Cliff Richard
Cliff Richard
Sir Cliff Richard, OBE is a British pop singer, musician, performer, actor, and philanthropist who has sold over an estimated 250 million records worldwide....
) in Soho in the late 1950s. Jack Good
Jack Good (producer)
Jack Good is a pioneering former TV television producer, musical theatre producer, record producer, musician and painter of icons.-Career:...
, producer of Six-Five Special
Six-Five Special
The Six-Five Special is a British television programme launched in February 1957 when both television and rock and roll were in their infancy in Britain.-Description:...
, and Dick Rowe
Dick Rowe
Richard Paul Rowe was an A&R man at Decca Records from the 1950s to the 1960s.He was one of the most important producers and record executives in the United Kingdom in the 1950s and early 1960s and is the man who signed The Rolling Stones, Them , The Moody Blues, The Animals, The Zombies, John...
helped him obtain a recording contract
Recording contract
A recording contract is a legal agreement between a record label and a recording artist , where the artist makes a record for the label to sell and promote...
with Decca
Decca Records
Decca Records began as a British record label established in 1929 by Edward Lewis. Its U.S. label was established in late 1934; however, owing to World War II, the link with the British company was broken for several decades....
. At the time he was regarded as the British Elvis and recognised as one of the best voices of the rock and roll
Rock and roll
Rock and roll is a genre of popular music that originated and evolved in the United States during the late 1940s and early 1950s, primarily from a combination of African American blues, country, jazz, and gospel music...
era of pre-Beatles
The Beatles
The Beatles were an English rock band, active throughout the 1960s and one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed acts in the history of popular music. Formed in Liverpool, by 1962 the group consisted of John Lennon , Paul McCartney , George Harrison and Ringo Starr...
Britain
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...
. His first single
Single (music)
In music, a single or record single is a type of release, typically a recording of fewer tracks than an LP or a CD. This can be released for sale to the public in a variety of different formats. In most cases, the single is a song that is released separately from an album, but it can still appear...
"A White Sport Coat" in the first seven weeks sold in excess of 300,000 copies, together with "Stairway Of Love", which remained in the chart for eight weeks, and his own version of "Start Movin'" at number 14, put his records in the Top 20 twice in the same year UK Singles Chart
UK Singles Chart
The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ...
and secured his name in the Guinness Book of Records. http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=terry+dene&aq=f He toured Britain, was one of the first to appear in the BBC Television
BBC Television
BBC Television is a service of the British Broadcasting Corporation. The corporation, which has operated in the United Kingdom under the terms of a Royal Charter since 1927, has produced television programmes from its own studios since 1932, although the start of its regular service of television...
's first pop show, Six-Five Special
Six-Five Special
The Six-Five Special is a British television programme launched in February 1957 when both television and rock and roll were in their infancy in Britain.-Description:...
, and appeared in a film
Film
A film, also called a movie or motion picture, is a series of still or moving images. It is produced by recording photographic images with cameras, or by creating images using animation techniques or visual effects...
, The Golden Disc.
Dene was branded as a 'bad apple' and the exemplifier of the 'evil of rock and roll' by the press after being arrested for public drunkenness and breaking a shop window in 1958, and ripping out a telephone box from the wall whilst claiming his passionate love for Edna Savage. After Dene was conscripted in 1958 into the Army
British Army
The British Army is the land warfare branch of Her Majesty's Armed Forces in the United Kingdom. It came into being with the unification of the Kingdom of England and Scotland into the Kingdom of Great Britain in 1707. The new British Army incorporated Regiments that had already existed in England...
for National service
National service
National service is a common name for mandatory government service programmes . The term became common British usage during and for some years following the Second World War. Many young people spent one or more years in such programmes...
. where he was originally expected to report to Winchester
Winchester
Winchester is a historic cathedral city and former capital city of England. It is the county town of Hampshire, in South East England. The city lies at the heart of the wider City of Winchester, a local government district, and is located at the western end of the South Downs, along the course of...
Barracks
Barracks
Barracks are specialised buildings for permanent military accommodation; the word may apply to separate housing blocks or to complete complexes. Their main object is to separate soldiers from the civilian population and reinforce discipline, training and esprit de corps. They were sometimes called...
, he was due to join the King's Royal Rifle Corps
King's Royal Rifle Corps
The King's Royal Rifle Corps was a British Army infantry regiment, originally raised in colonial North America as the Royal Americans, and recruited from American colonists. Later ranked as the 60th Regiment of Foot, the regiment served for more than 200 years throughout the British Empire...
on 7 July 1958, but his call-up was initially deferred until contractual commitments had been completed. When he finally did go in, it was so badly handled by the press (who filmed and publicised his arrival at the barracks) that after two months Dene had to be discharged on medical grounds as he received threats from his fellow conscripts. By that time the press had almost ruined his career. and the Army offered him a pension as a form of compensation which Dene refused. He later joined the Larry Parnes
Larry Parnes
Laurence Maurice "Larry" Parnes was an English pop manager and impresario. He has been described as "the first major British rock manager... Parnes' stable encompassed most of the most successful pre-Beatles British rock singers."...
' stable of stars and toured with them around Britain.
Disheartened by the bad publicity in 1964 Dene turned his back on the British pop scene and became an Evangelist crossing over to singing and writing spiritual and gospel music, recording three gospel
Gospel music
Gospel music is music that is written to express either personal, spiritual or a communal belief regarding Christian life, as well as to give a Christian alternative to mainstream secular music....
album
Album
An album is a collection of recordings, released as a single package on gramophone record, cassette, compact disc, or via digital distribution. The word derives from the Latin word for list .Vinyl LP records have two sides, each comprising one half of the album...
s. He travelled abroad as an itinerant preacher playing in churches, prisons and other venues and preached in the Scandinavian Lutheran Church for five years in Sweden
Sweden
Sweden , officially the Kingdom of Sweden , is a Nordic country on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. Sweden borders with Norway and Finland and is connected to Denmark by a bridge-tunnel across the Öresund....
where he married for the second time. Two of the gospel albums were released in 1972–73 on Pilgrim Records.
In 1973, Dene released a book, I Thought Terry Dene Was Dead, and around 1984 reformed his group, the Dene Aces, with Brian Gregg. He released an album, The Real Terry Dene, in 1997 which was voted as one of the top 40 best listening CDs, and has continued to appear in rock and roll shows. His Decca compilation
Compilation album
A compilation album is an album featuring tracks from one or more performers, often culled from a variety of sources The tracks are usually collected according to a common characteristic, such as popularity, genre, source or subject matter...
was released in December 2004 by Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records
Vocalion Records is a record label active for many years in the United States and in the United Kingdom.-History:Vocalion was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Piano Company of New York City, which introduced a retail line of phonographs at the same time. The name was derived from one of their...
. In October 2007, Dene created his own company and label with his partner, Countess Lucia Liberati, LLTD.COM, and in July 2011 will be releasing in the UK his new CD, The Best Of Terry Dene, featuring his own version of "Mystery Train", a remix
Remix
A remix is an alternative version of a recorded song, made from an original version. This term is also used for any alterations of media other than song ....
of "Com'in And Be Loved, So Long", which was written by Dene, and a selection of his own choice.
Personal life
Dene was married in 1958 to, and subsequently divorced from, fellow pop singer Edna SavageEdna Savage
Edna Savage was a traditional pop singer in the United Kingdom.She was born in Warrington, Cheshire, England. She had two sisters, both older. Her father was a landscape gardener, her mother an amateur singer. She left school at age 15...
, who died in 2000 at the age of 64. He married and divorced another three times and he is now settled with an Italian countess, Lucia Liberati, 21 years his junior, whom he met in London in 2000.
More recent appearances
Dene appeared on Juke Box Heroes in 2011 broadcast by BBC OneBBC One
BBC One is the flagship television channel of the British Broadcasting Corporation in the United Kingdom. It was launched on 2 November 1936 as the BBC Television Service, and was the world's first regular television service with a high level of image resolution...
, in a condensed biopic of his life, and played in September 2004 at the Rock 'n' Roll Weekend Festival in Chippenham
Chippenham
Chippenham may be:* Chippenham, Wiltshire* Chippenham * Chippenham, Cambridgeshire-See also:* Virginia State Route 150, also known as Chippenham Parkway, USA* Cippenham, Berkshire, UK...
, alongside Little Richard
Little Richard
Richard Wayne Penniman , known by the stage name Little Richard, is an American singer, songwriter, musician, recording artist, and actor, considered key in the transition from rhythm and blues to rock and roll in the 1950s. He was also the first artist to put the funk in the rock and roll beat and...
, the Comets and Charlie Gracie
Charlie Gracie
Charlie Gracie is an American rock pioneer and singer. He was born the same day as another rock and roll singer, Bobby Darin.His father encouraged him to play the guitar...
. In February 2005, appeared in the Best of British magazine dedicated to British music, and on 2 November 2006, as a 'mystery guest' on series 19 episode 2 of Never Mind the Buzzcocks
Never Mind the Buzzcocks
Never Mind the Buzzcocks is a comedy panel game television show with a pop music theme, currently without a permanent presenter. It stars Phill Jupitus and Noel Fielding as team captains. The show is produced by Talkback Thames for the BBC, and is usually aired on BBC Two...
.
He performed at the 100 Club in London in October 2007, January 2008 and January 2010, in comnemoration of the first Six-Five Special, where he was a regular guest. He performed on 29 February 2008 at Borough Green Rock 'n' Roll Club, backed by Dave Briggs New Ravens, and appeared in Pop Britannia, broadcast by BBC Four
BBC Four
BBC Four is a British television network operated by the British Broadcasting Corporation and available to digital television viewers on Freeview, IPTV, satellite and cable....
.
Dene appears at The British Music Experience, at the 02 Arena in Greenwich, dedicated to the history of British popular music in the UK over the past 60 years.
Singles discography
| Year | Title | UK UK Singles Chart The UK Singles Chart is compiled by The Official Charts Company on behalf of the British record-industry. The full chart contains the top selling 200 singles in the United Kingdom based upon combined record sales and download numbers, though some media outlets only list the Top 40 or the Top 75 ... |
Label |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1957 | "A White Sport Coat"/ "The Man In The Phone Booth" | 18 | Decca |
| 1957 | "Start Movin'"/ "Green Corn" | 15 | Decca |
| 1957 | "Come And Get It"/ Teenage Dream" | - | Decca |
| 1957 | "Lucky Lucky Bobby"/ "Baby She's Gone" | - | Decca |
| 1958 | "The Golden Age"/ "C'min And Be Loved" | - | Decca |
| 1958 | "Stairway Of Love"/ "Lover Lover!" | 16 | Decca |
| 1958 | "Seven Steps To Love"/ "Can I Walk You Home" | - | Decca |
| 1958 | "Who Baby Who"/ "Pretty Little Pearly" | - | Decca |
| 1959 | "I've Got A Good Thing Going"/ "Bimbombey" | - | Decca |
| 1959 | "There's No Fool Like A Young Fool"/ "I've Come Of Age" | - | Decca |
| 1959 | "Thank You Pretty Baby"/ "A Boy Without A Girl" | - | Decca |
| 1960 | "Geraldine"/ "Love Me Or Leave Me" | - | Decca |
| 1961 | "Like A Baby"/ "Next Stop Paradise" | - | Oriole |
| 1963 | "The Feminine Look"/ "Fever" | - | Aral |
| 1984 | "The Real Terry Dene" | - | Rollercoaster Records |
| 2004 | "Terry Dene" | - | Vocalion Vocalion Records Vocalion Records is a record label active for many years in the United States and in the United Kingdom.-History:Vocalion was founded in 1916 by the Aeolian Piano Company of New York City, which introduced a retail line of phonographs at the same time. The name was derived from one of their... |
| 2007 | "Mystery Train" | - | LLTD.COM |
External links
- Terry Dene on 45rpm.org
- [ Allmusic]
- NE lookback at Terry Dene