History
All of the Applejacks (except Jackson) were members of the same scout troop as children. Baggott, Cash and Freeman began playing together in a skiffle group named The Crestas in 1961, occasionally performing at a local youth club. Davies joined the group in 1961, Gould the following year. Lacking a vocalist, they were strictly an instrumental band until the addition of singer Al Jackson in 1963; they began playing rock and roll songs and secured a residency at Solihull Civic Hall. During that time they changed their name to The Jaguars before finally becoming The Applejacks in July 1962.
Signed to Decca Records late in 1963, their success was largely due to the strength of their first single, "Tell Me When". Written by Les Reed and Geoff Stephens, "Tell Me When" was released in February 1964 and shot to #7 in the UK. After the group met The Beatles during rehearsals for a television appearance, John Lennon and Paul McCartney provided the Applejacks with a song which was to be their second single: "Like Dreamers Do". However, the record only reached number 20 in the UK chart, whilst their final hit, "Three Little Words (I Love You)" (also in 1964) made it to #23.
The group quarrelled with Decca over their next single. Decca wanted them to record "Chim Chim Chiree", but the group disliked this song. Although the single had been announced (and is therefore listed in most discographies), it was never released. According to Megan Davies, the group did not even record "Chim Chim Chiree". Thanks to this quarrel their next single, "Bye Bye Girl", was released half a year after "Three Little Words".
Although Decca continued to issue Applejacks recordings during 1965 (including the first released version of Ray Davies's "I Go to Sleep"), they met with little response from the public, leading to a rapid return to playing local gigs. After 1966 the group became an act on some of the world's cruise liners, working for Cunard until the end of the decade and frequently aboard the RMS Queen Mary, RMS Queen Elizabeth and RMS Queen Elizabeth 2.
Freeman and Davies were married in 1965, with the other band members serving as groomsmen. Davies eventually retired from music to become a nurse and hospital administrator for the National Health Service.
They were once described as the "Solihull Sound", and Chris May and Tim Phillips compared their music to the bijou doorbells popular in Solihull at the time.
In 2010 the band came together to perform a one-off concert at St Mary's Church, Solihull, in which church the Applejacks practised in the early days. Tickets for what became a phenominally well-supported event sold quickly, with local television company ATV News recording on the night that one fan had travelled from Sweden. Another, having heard on BBC radio on the morning of 11 December 2010 that the Applejacks were performing that very evening, dropped everything and made the journey to Solihull.
Read more about this topic: The Applejacks (UK Band)
Famous quotes containing the word history:
“There is one great fact, characteristic of this our nineteenth century, a fact which no party dares deny. On the one hand, there have started into life industrial and scientific forces which no epoch of former human history had ever suspected. On the other hand, there exist symptoms of decay, far surpassing the horrors recorded of the latter times of the Roman empire. In our days everything seems pregnant with its contrary.”
—Karl Marx (1818–1883)
“In history as in human life, regret does not bring back a lost moment and a thousand years will not recover something lost in a single hour.”
—Stefan Zweig (18811942)
“The history of every country begins in the heart of a man or a woman.”
—Willa Cather (1876–1947)