Label: Major Minor
Year of Release: 1968
Now here's another good old mystery. The Dallas Boys were clearly not from Dallas in the USA, or if they were they had no records out in that country. So who were they, then? Nobody seems to be sure. Major Minor's output often had a strong Irish flavour and it's possible that they were from that country, but it's equally probable that they were a UK-based club act who were just offered the chance to record a couple of singles.
The sound of both is clearly incredibly Righteous Brothers influenced, but "Night of Love", the flipside of "Can't Fool My Heart" is a rare exception, being something of an unlikely Northern Soul pounder with all the thudding melodrama you'd expect. Burying something as kicking as this on a B-side seems foolish, but you can't blame all involved for trying to coin in on the boy's ballads - ballads, after all, always seem likely to sell.
Prior to the release of this single, The Dallas Boys had another release out which I'll cover below (beneath the soundfiles) for the sake of completion...
Label: Major Minor
Year of Release: 1967
Both sides of this single are trying to trade on the boys rich-as-Bisto baritone vocals, and are slow, considered ballads. It's unlikely that either side is going to be of major interest to "Left and to the Back" readers, but I've made the soundfiles available to assuage everyone's curiosity.
Obviously, if anyone knows who The Dallas Boys were, I'd love to have further information.
4 comments:
The group formed in Leicester and comprised four former pupils of Moat Boys School (Joe Smith, Stan Jones, Bob Wragg, and Leon Fisk) and London-born Nicky Clarke.[1] After winning a Butlins talent content, they became a fixture on the TV show Six-Five Special, becoming household names.[2] They went on to be regular performers on Oh Boy! in the late 1950s.[2][3][4] They continued to perform through the 1960s, and appeared on other British TV shows such as Val Parnell's Startime, Thank Your Lucky Stars, All That Jazz, Sunday Night at the London Palladium, Comedy Bandbox, Frost on Sunday, and Sez Les, and on US television on Showtime.[5][6] They split up in the early 1970s, but reunited in 1988 to perform at fellow Oh Boy! star Cliff Richard's concert celebrating thirty years in the entertainment business in 1988, and continued to perform around the UK.
The group have been described as "Britain's first boy band".
Joe Smith died in 2012, aged 78.
Singles
"He Won't Love You (Like I Do)" (1967)
"I Can't Fool My Heart" (1968)
Albert
Wow - thanks for that Albert! Obviously they were prolific and did a lot of work throughout the fifties and sixties, which makes it both surprising that I'd never heard of them, and also that they only released these two singles...
Nice to know they're still going.
They must have got back together in the mid 70s (or at least some of them did) as they made a lot of club and cabaret appearances. Signed privately pressed albums by them used to be quite common in charity shops. They seemed very versatile singing ballads, covers and comedy numbers and in 1983 they released 1 12 inch single of "Love is a Manny Splendored Thing" with photos. of them on 6.5 Special on the sleeve. They must ha e been almost as busy as Emile Ford or the Barron Knights (Their signed 70s albums were always around too)
One of their early singles was the immortal "One Finger, One Thumb"
See also Major Minor singles by the Grumblweeds and Freddie "Parrot Face" Davies (which I'm sure you have mentioned.
I worked on the single He won’t love you in 1967 I was able to get a number of plays on radio one and radio two. I was also able to get it played on jukebox jury bbc the producer told me he thought it was a good song and it should played on the program.Unfortunatly they voted a miss which sunk its chances in the hit parade. The company blamed me for that and so sacked me l think they thought I owned the bbc When I told them I was able to get it on jukebox jury They told me they hadent had a record on the program for five years so for ten minutes I was the blue eyed boy but when it was voted a miss I was voted a miss too. I have to tell you I survived and I am still going at 76 years of age MWj
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