Monday 18 June 2012

The Beatles and the Blue Genes

On June 19th 1962, one day after Paul McCartney's 20th birthday, The Beatles played the Cavern Club twice, once for lunch and also later that evening.
On the bill with them were Ken Dallas & the Silhouettes and The Blue Genes.

Interestingly, the Blue Genes didn't like the Beatles a lot. When Ray McFall booked the Beatles for the first to play in his Cavern Club, he scheduled them on Tuesday 21 March 1961. This was the Blue Genes fixed day when normally they could invite guests. Ray couldn't put the Beatles on another day. Wednesday was out of the question because the Beatles were playing at Litherland Town Hall, Thursday the Cavern was closed or open for jazz-only, the weekend was traditional jazz.

The Blue Genes wanted clean groups who didn't make too much noise, but the beat music of the Beatles was definitely not described as clean & silent!

The Blue Genes later became the Swinging Blue Jeans. Singer Ray Ennis recalls the first time the Beatles played after their own group. Apparently the Beatle fans had taken up the front rows and gave the Blue Genes a hard time.

Guitarist Ralph Ellis thought the Beatles played dismal and he didn't understand why they had such a great following.

A nice touch to the story is that The Swinging Blue Jeans recorded a version of Chan Romero's 'The Hippy Hippy Shake" which reached number 5 in the charts. But recently it became clear that The Beatles had actually recorded this song before the Swinging Blue Jeans, as The Beatles performed this at the BBC sessions in July 1963.

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