THE FOUR PENNIES - “Juliet”
(23rd May 1964)
Genteel, repetitive ballad whose soft, trained vocals and precise lyrics (”reminiscent of you”) initially seem to drape the record in a smothering courtliness. Repeated listens make “Juliet” seem no less quaint, but its charm starts to show through the gauze. Eventually I’ve come to find it soothing, like a lullaby. You could draw a crooked path from this to Mick Jagger’s mock-chivalric oddities, but the Four Pennies let no humour or threat into their world. 6
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Anonymous on March 23rd, 2006
Hi,
I seem to remember that Lionel Morton, lead singer with the four pennies was married to Julia Foster who is Ben Fogle’s mother. Is this correct?
bramble on September 7th, 2006
Yes, Lionel Morton was married at the time to Julia Foster, then riding high with Half a Sixpence.I think they were divorced by the time Ben Fogle came along.
Azanti on March 15th, 2007
Lionel was indeed married to Julia, he had one child with her, Emily. Julia went on to marry Bruce Fogel and then had son Ben with him. He (Lionel) had two other children, both sons from previous relationships and then would have another six children from two other marriages, the last four being with his current wife.
Alistair(allyboi)Wilshaw. on May 22nd, 2008
Can you contact me a.s.a.p. as i have tried to get Sue”s adress for Mike iam his Nephew contact me @allyboi62@hotmail.co.uk
Alistair on July 25th, 2008
Please contact me as i would be most greatfull for the contact as i cant locate Sue or anyone else and i would like to see you all again as it has been a while and the family are always asking after all of you….. i look forward to hearing from you soon Chreers Allyboi.x
wichita lineman on July 25th, 2008
This and Don’t Throw Your Love Away make for two of the least remembered number ones of the mid-sixties. Never quite got Juliet, which - like Maggie May - proudly boasts a ‘B’ on its label (can’t remember the original A-side off the top of my head). It’s one of the hits - like Where Are You Now a year on - that makes me think THIS is what the sixties felt like for most people, and not All You Need Is Love. It gives the impression of having a work ethic. Julia Foster must have been impressed anyway, which impresses me.
rosie on July 28th, 2008
wichita @ 6: which all goes to show that one person’s ‘least remembered’ is another’s milestone. Or maybe millstone, I’m not sure, but I loved this at the time and like it a lot even now.
DJ Punctum on July 28th, 2008
If oldies radio is anything to go by, I would have thought that both songs were pretty well remembered.
wichita lineman on July 28th, 2008
Didn’t think I was being controversial there - Sweets and Needles have had more spins than Don’t Throw over the years, and I’m fairly sure would register with 45-and-unders a little more readily. But it’s all relative - number ones are never obscure by definition (with the strange, solitary exception of Baby Jump). I don’t think I’ve ever heard Juliet outside of Sounds Of The Sixties. Oh, I was born the year it came out.
Out of interest, DJP and Rosie, what would you say were the least remembered no.1s of the sixties?
rosie on July 28th, 2008
I think of Jackie Trent’s offering as perhaps the most obscure.
I’m not trying to be controversial, just pointing out that, actually, my sister and I between us bought both this and DTYLA, so they weren’t obscure to me!
wichita lineman on July 28th, 2008
Jackie T was played on SOTS last week, funnily enough! But, yes, I remember a friend having an Arcade comp called 20 Number Ones Of The Sixties or somesuch - and Jackie’s cut was entirely new to us.
On The Rebound, maybe?
Spoiler Bunny forbids me from suggesting the least remembered 70s number one….
rosie on July 28th, 2008
On The Rebound was a theme tune for something on Radio 1 in the late 60s. Was it Savile’s Travels? I’m sure somebody must know. Anyway, I didn’t think I remembered it when I first encountered it in Popular but when I obtained an mp3 to listen to it was very familiar in a brings-back-Sunday-afternoons kind of way. I’m pretty sure it came between Jimmy Savile and John Peel.
(Actually, now that I have had a look, everything currently waiting in the warren for the 70s I remember quite clearly. If I’d had to name the least memorable 70s single it might well be Float On which has already slipped out of Bunny’s paws.
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Now you’ve got me thinking. I’m not sure whether it was used on Savile’s Travels; it might have been used for Speakeasy, which was the other show Savile had on Sunday afternoons on R1 for a time. Google’s unhelpful on this front but I’m absolutely certain that R1 did use it for something.
(My favourite one was the version of “Soul Serenade” they used as the theme for the Mike Raven show if anyone other than me - Rosie? Waldo? - remembers him…ultra-hip soul and R&B jock who pursued a bizarre parallel career as a Hammer horror actor…)
Least remembered number ones of the sixties? Not too many candidates, but most of them would come from the pre-Beatles era; “I Love You,” “Surrender” and “Temptation” in particular spring to mind (and I’d guess not too many folk recall “You’re Driving Me Crazy” these days either).
As for the seventies, I really don’t think we can top “Baby Jump”; the remaining seventies chart toppers will I suspect be very familiar to most, with just two possible and partial exceptions…
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Then again, “I Remember You” aside, one could argue that the Frank Ifield quattrain of number ones also counts, which I think is a pity…
rosie on July 29th, 2008
But there again, my Dad liked Frank Ifield and bought at least three of the quattrain so they were familiar in our house.
The paradox is, somebody must have been buying even the most obscure number ones for them to be number ones, so they’ll be familiar to somebody.
The name Mike Raven rings bells but I can’t hear anything in my head. If I find an mp3 of Soul Serenade it may jog a memory.
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
The tendency seemed to be automatic number ones for big name acts but they haven’t gone on to become “classics” in the oldies radio sense of the term; I occasionally hear “Temptation” but that’s about it.
Again this highlights the randomness of time, popularity and circumstance which defines chart performance; plenty of Billy Fury’s hits remain fondly remembered and played but statistically his biggest hit (”Jezebel”) is probably the one least remembered these days.
Mark G on July 29th, 2008
Well, the song is well known/remembered, but Billy Fury’s version probably not.
A bit like Little Richard’s biggest hit being his version of “Baby Face”
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Speaking of which, whatever did happen to the Wing and a Prayer Fife and Drum Corps?
Mark G on July 29th, 2008
Oh yeah, they were very “Kid Creole” style, but nothing came afterwards.
Seems like it was a one-off for http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harold_Wheeler
mike on July 29th, 2008
Count me in as another one who remembers “On The Rebound” as a Radio One signature tune. This must have been early 1970s, as I didn’t own a radio until 1971. I’ve also got vague memories of it being used on one of the Savile shows, but no idea as to which.
(Incidentally, Savile’s Speakeasy was responsible for introducing me to the terms “gay” and “straight”, circa 1972. Quite bold for its time, really.)
As regards the Four Pennies, I’m one of the generation that had Lionel Morton as one of their regular Play School presenters. Sporting the longest hair of any of the male presenters, he struck me as being “the trendy one” - and I thought it was ever-so-ever-so cool that he was a former pop star to boot…
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Although I guess the coolest Play School presenter, in retrospect, must have been young Judi Dench…
mike on July 29th, 2008
Or what about folk-rock godmother Toni Arthur, who was very much one of the “faces” on the London hippy scene (or so I was told by a fellow survivor)…
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Oh yeah, she graduated to Play Away, didn’t she? I was very fond of her when I were a lad…she’s also been on the folk scene for donkey’s years and still turns up on the Mike Harding Show etc. from time to time.
Mark G on July 29th, 2008
Lionel Morton used to pop up a lot on the Sooty and Sweep show. I think he was a mate of Matthew’s.
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
So did Gerry Marsden and Peter Butterworth. It was all very strange.
rosie on July 29th, 2008
There was a childrens TV series called If You Were Me, which followed the fortunes of kids who went on exchanges. A kind of precursor to Wife Swap, if you will. It had a very catchy theme song with the same title sung by Lionel Morton.
Anybody else remember it? Or am I hallucinating in my old age?
DJ Punctum on July 29th, 2008
Even I can’t remember that one, I’m afraid.
Mark G on July 29th, 2008
Dimly…
“If You Were Me, (if you were me)
and if I were you (if I were you)….”
wichita lineman on August 1st, 2008
Re 22. Yes, Toni Arthur is a gen-u-ine witch, too. Hearken The Witches Rune, with (ex) husband Dave Arthur is a properly eerie album. I went to school with their son Jonathan who was a nasty piece of work, a psychological bully. Not that it affected me so much I still remember 30-odd years later… He also had an enviable David Cassidy mane, the bastard!
Talking of Play School presenters Julie Stevens also made a couple of very nice singles in a similar posh-pop vein to Julie Covington’s The Beautiful Changes.
wichita lineman on August 1st, 2008
Re 16 Billy Fury’s highest chart position was with the ok Jealousy in 1961; Jezebel was a Marty Wilde hit from the following year, arguably his best, a raucous update of one of Frankie Laine’s best singles (1951, so pre-chart).
DJ Punctum on August 1st, 2008
“Jealousy,” of course…I really am in the grip of incipient Alzheimer’s… :-(