As we all know,
Liverpool has a long history of providing the entertainment world with great
musicians. The Merseybeat era is and always will be remembered for some of the
great bands that came out of the city and went on to great things. But
magnificent as they were, not all of them took the world by storm.
Kingsize Taylor
and the Dominoes were a British rock and roll band, formed in Liverpool in the
late 1950s. One of the first beat groups in the Merseyside area, they were a
locally popular and influential group who were contemporaries and rivals of The
Beatles, and featured Cilla Black as a guest singer before her solo career, but
had little commercial success except in Germany.
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| Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes |
The Dominoes
were originally formed in north Liverpool, in 1957, from a school skiffle group
called the Sinners. The original members were Arthur Baker (vocals), George
Watson (guitar), Charlie Flynn (guitar), Sam Hardie (piano) and Cliff Roberts
(drums). The following year, Ted "Kingsize" Taylor (born Edward W.
Taylor, 12 November 1939, in Crosby, Liverpool, Lancashire) so called for his
6' 5" height - joined as lead vocalist and guitarist. Over the next two
years, Baker, Watson and Flynn all left, and the group was completed by Bobby
Thompson (bass and vocals) - with whom Taylor had played in another skiffle
group, the James Boys - and John Kennedy (rhythm guitar), with Geoff Bethell
often standing in for Hardie on piano. The band played local clubs, and Taylor
developed a reputation as one of the best rock and roll singers in the
Liverpool area as well as being noted for his vivid chequered jackets.
By summer 1960,
the group were being billed as Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. They first
performed at the Cavern Club in January 1961, when they featured 17 year old
singer Cilla White, who was mistakenly renamed Cilla Black later that year by
Bill Harry in an article in his magazine Mersey Beat. Soon after that
appearance, Kennedy and Roberts left the band to join another group, Ian and
the Zodiacs, and were replaced by John Frankland (rhythm guitar) and Dave
Lovelady (drums). At the beginning of 1962, the band were placed sixth in a
Mersey Beat readers' poll, topped by the Beatles. Cilla Black sang regularly
with the group until 1962.
In early 1962,
Ken Shalliker replaced Bobby Thompson on bass for several months when Thompson
temporarily joined Rory Storm and the Hurricanes. In the summer, the band
(without Cilla Black) went to Hamburg, where they began making regular
appearances at the Star-Club. Dave Lovelady left later in the year, and was
replaced briefly by Brian Redman and then by Gibson Kemp, after Ringo Starr
turned down the opportunity to join having been offered more money to join the
Beatles. In December 1962, Taylor recorded several performances by The Beatles
at the Star-Club, on reel-to-reel tape; the recordings were eventually released
in 1977 as Live! at the Star-Club in Hamburg, Germany; 1962, after legal proceedings
over their ownership were resolved.
Kingsize Taylor
and the Dominoes were signed by Decca Records in Germany, and also recorded
there for the Philips and Ariola labels. They added saxophonist Howie Casey in
1963; later that year, Sam Hardie left to join Tony Sheridan's band, and was
replaced by a second sax player, Dave Woods. In 1963 they recorded an album,
Live At The Star Club for Ariola, with whom they had a recording contract, but
were also persuaded to make a separate album for Polydor. The album, Let's Do
the Slop, Twist, Madison, Hully Gully..., was released under the pseudonym of
The Shakers. Three singles from the album - "Money", "Whole
Lotta Lovin'", and "Hippy Hippy Shake" - were released by
Polydor in the UK. All the recordings by Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were
covers of rock and roll and rhythm and blues songs by other artists; they wrote
no songs themselves. Their biggest success in Germany was a version of Solomon
Burke's "Stupidity", also released on the Decca label in the UK.
While in Germany, they also performed regularly in Kiel and Berlin, and acted
as backing group for Alex Harvey, before returning to the UK to back Chuck
Berry and Carl Perkins on tour in 1964. They also appeared on the British TV
show Ready Steady Go!.
The original
Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes split up at the end of 1964, with the Dominoes
- Frankland, Casey, Thompson and Kemp, with singer Paddy Chambers - remaining
in the UK to work. Taylor returned with his German wife to Hamburg, where he
played lead guitar for the Griff Parry Five before forming a new version of
Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes with Baz Davies, Mamoud Hari, Kenny Rees and
Cliff Roberts. After recording a solo single for Decca in London in 1964, "Somebody's
Always Tryin'", with Jimmy Page on guitar, he gave up the music business
and returned to Crosby on Merseyside. There, and later at Birkdale, he ran a
family butcher's business for over thirty years until his retirement. Thompson
joined Cliff Bennett and the Rebel Rousers, and then The Rockin' Berries in
1965. Frankland and Kemp formed a new group, The Eyes, with future actor Lewis
Collins, before Kemp formed the trio Paddy, Klaus & Gibson, with Paddy
Chambers and Klaus Voormann; he later worked in A&R. Taylor reunited
with Hardie, Davies, Frankland and others for occasional performances from the
1990s onwards.
In 1999, Bear
Family Records issued the complete Ariola recordings by Kingsize Taylor and the
Dominoes. Taylor returned to live in Germany in 2006, and continued to perform
with a band called The Brotherhood of Rock 'n' Soul.
Sources
Merseybeat
Merseybeat Nostalgia
Central Library
Wikipedia
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