Featured Artists
It featured most successful artists of the era, among them The Beatles, The Hollies, The Zombies, Dusty Springfield, The Supremes, The Temptations The Walker Brothers, The Kinks, Gerry & the Pacemakers, The Fourmost, The Rolling Stones, Donovan (discovered by RSG!), The Fortunes, Helen Shapiro, P.J. Proby, Otis Redding, Freddie and the Dreamers, The Dave Clark Five, Bobby Vee, The Animals, Cilla Black, The Searchers, The Who, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames, Billy Fury, Lulu, Marvin Gaye, Gene Pitney, The Beach Boys, Sandie Shaw, Burt Bacharach, Jerry Lee Lewis, Kenny Lynch, Small Faces, James Brown & The Famous Flames, The Yardbirds, Them and The Four Pennies. During the 4 October 1963 episode — The Beatles' first appearance — Paul McCartney judged a contest between four teenage girls miming to Brenda Lee's "Let's Jump the Broomstick" (the group had opened for Lee before becoming famous), choosing 13-year-old Melanie Coe as the winner. Three years later, after Coe's disappearance made the front page of the Daily Mirror, McCartney would immortalize her in song, using the article as the basis for "She's Leaving Home".
Jimi Hendrix made his first TV appearance in England on RSG! with "Hey Joe". After this appearance his club tour sold out and he was quickly added to a nationwide tour headlined by the Walker Brothers.
Dusty Springfield devised and introduced the RSG Motown Special in April 1965, featuring the Supremes, Stevie Wonder, The Miracles and Martha and the Vandellas. The Supremes performed their "Stop! In the Name of Love" dance routine for the first time on the show.
The Who proved particularly popular and in 1966 had an episode to themselves entitled Ready Steady Who. The programme no longer exists, but an EP of the name marked the show (although no recordings were from the show). The Walker Brothers were also popular and had a special live edition in 1966 but again the tape was wiped, although extracts surfaced on YouTube in 2009 proving the group did not mime.
Read more about this topic: Ready Steady Go!
Famous quotes containing the word artists:
“The mere mechanical technique of acting can be taught, but the spirit that is to give life to lifeless forms must be born in a man. No dramatic college can teach its pupils to think or to feel. It is Nature who makes our artists for us, though it may be Art who taught them their right mode of expression.”
—Oscar Wilde (1854–1900)