Label: Pye
Year of Release: 1964
Daryl Quist was part of Larry Parnes' stable of artists in the early sixties, which was filled to the brim with young, professional artistes who would excite the teenagers but not upset the Mums and Dads too much by being needlessly uncouth or raucous. Arriving on these shores fresh from Canada as the dancer in Tommy Steele's panto "Humpty Dumpty", he was promptly spotted by Parnes and groomed for success - a challenge, as Parnes claimed "he hadn't sung a note in his life, except in the bath" - but despite a good contract with Pye and four singles on that label, he just couldn't break through. A further release on Decca in 1965 also paid no dividends.
To be brutally honest, there's nothing on either side of his third release "True To You" that's going to excite readers desperate for a bit of mod pop or freakbeat, and the A-side in particular is a rather twee Merseybeat-lite production. The flip "Above and Beyond", on the other hand, is a nice enough skip through sixties beat pop, zinging along at speed, and impossible not to find cheering. You have to wonder if this single would have fared better if the sides had been switched.
All this is speculation, of course, and Quist, along with the otherwise unrelated but equally unfortunate likes of Tommy Quickly, Ted "Kingsize" Taylor, The Undertakers, The Lancastrians and others is now a naggingly familiar name to record collectors and teenagers of the early sixties beat era, but certainly not often heard on oldies radio. His whereabouts these days aren't easy to trace, but it seems safe to assume [citation needed - ed] that once his singing career hit the skids, he returned to dancing and the theatre stage.
6 comments:
"he was promptly spotted by Parnes and groomed for success"
IIRC Mr Parnes was an avid groomer of talent he'd spotted.
Yes, I've seen the Peter Sellers sketch! Not that this has anything to do with, er, anything...
groovey! thx!
After his pop career failed to ignite, Daryl Quist quit the music business and returned to his native Canada to marry his teenage sweetheart in 1966. He set up a (vacuum equipment ( chimney sweeping company which was remarkably successful. Thus, he became a wealthy and philanthropic businessman. He was married for 49 years (3 children, 7 grandchildren) before passing away on April 20th, 2015 at the age of 69. He did occasionally revive his dancing / singing abilities for charity and fundraising events for good causes,
I hold very fond memories of working with Daryl Quist when we performed a Summer season of Sunday night shows at the then "Royal Aquarium theatre" in Great Yarmouth back on 1964.
We appeared with Brian Poole and the Searchers on alternate Sunday night concerts.
I found him to be a really pleasant professional entertainer and a really nice guy. I actually appeared under the name "Shel Naylor" , later I , along with Nigel Fletcher - went on to form the hit band "Lieutenant Pigeon" and fortunately had the number one hit Mouldy old Dough in October 1972.
I'm very sorry to hear that he is no longer with us - those were great memories.
Rob Woodward.
Rob - thanks so much for dropping by here and leaving those memories. I'm a fan of your work so it's lovely to see you, although I wish this particular blog entry had brought you better news.
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