Best remembered for recording Six-Five Jive, written
specifically for Jack Good’s TV show Six-Five Special, and their cover
versions of Standing on the Corner (a number four hit in 1960), and A
White Sport Coat (And A Pink Carnation) (number six in 1957), the group was
composed of three brothers – Michael, Anthony and Denis King - who first
performed together professionally on the TV show Shop Window in 1952.
The trio had eight chart hits and were named "top vocal
group" in the NME reader's poll in 1957 and 1960, the same years that they
enjoyed their two biggest hits. But by 1961 things were changing, and although
they would continue to record together until 1967 they would not have another
chart entry after their cover of 76 Trombones made number 19 in the
spring of 1961.
But that’s not the reason we love the King Brothers here at
The World’s Worst Records. Oh no.
In 1967, at the very tail end of their career, the brothers
recorded a four track EP – There’s no Business Like Our Business – to be
given away to people attending that year’s Tupperware Distributors Conference,
held in London. Three of the songs were hastily re-recorded versions of
Broadway or Hollywood standards (There’s No Business Like Show Business,
High Society and Good News), with the Kings accompanied by piano and
drums, but the fourth track was a song specially written and recorded for the
conference itself.
The Tupperware Brigade was co-written by the youngest
King brother Denis (his name misspelled Dennis on the EP sleeve) and comic
actor and scriptwriter John Junkin, Shake the roadie in the Beatles' A Hard Day’s Night and
a well-known face on British TV and in films since the start of the Sixties. Junkin,
who was once described as ‘looking like a lugubrious potato’, was also the
first voice broadcast by pirate station Radio Caroline, appearing in their very
first test transmission.
The
King Brothers would not record again in the UK, although they did release a
one-off 45 in Italy in 1969 with both sides co-written by Denis King and John
Junkin - and by the end of the Sixties had broken up. Denis King became an award-winning composer for
television, film, and musicals, writing the theme music for The Adventures
of Black Beauty (which won the Ivor Novello Award), and composing themes
and incidental music for over two hundred television series including Within
These Walls, Dick Turpin, Two's Company, and Lovejoy as
well as written over one hundred jingles for radio and television adverts. He
has also worked on films, writing the scores to films including Holiday on
the Buses (1973), Sweeney! (1977), and Privates on Parade
(1982).
Anyway, here is the thoroughly wonderful The Tupperware
Brigade along with the title track to the EP, There’s No Business Like
Show Business.
Enjoy!
Download Tupperware HERE
Download Business HERE
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