Two years ago, for Pride Month, I
introduced you to the Brothers Butch (or the Butch Brothers, at the time no one
knew for sure which version of the name to use), and speculated about who
exactly was behind the wonderful camp classic, Kay, Why? Just
before Christmas 2021, I was contacted by one of the people involved in the
disc and for the last few months I have been researching this incredible
story.
Back in February, I wrote a piece
for The Guardian that
told some of the history behind the record. More of the tale appeared in this
month's issue of Record Collector magazine, but the whole
story has not been told until now. It's a long read, but if you're interested
in the truth behind the incredible Kay,Why? then grab yourself
a cuppa and read on.
For LGBT people, and especially for gay
men, the summer of 1967 offered much promise. The new Sexual Offences Act
(which introduced some of the recommendations of the decade-old Wolfenden
Report) had just been passed, meaning that homosexuality – well, homosexual
acts between two consenting adult males aged over 21, in the privacy of their
own home at least – was no longer a criminal offence, and the atmosphere was
filled with a palpable sense of change for the good. Hippies in kaftans with
flowers in their hair walked the streets of London barefoot, and around the
world people were protesting for equal rights and an end to war. Love was
indeed in the air: the Beatles told a global television audience that it was
all we needed, and it felt like the world believed them.
As the summer of love turned first into
autumn and then winter, a strange little record issued by a tiny, London-based
independent label appeared. Very few copies were sold, but it has gone on to
become one of the most sought after, and highly cherished, examples of
typically British camp humour. Its origins have been debated in books, online
and in academic papers, but for more than half a century no one has known the
true identities of the musicians behind this disc, with their Beatle-y ‘ooohs’
and camp archness.
Credited on the picture sleeve
(correctly) to The Brothers Butch, but on the disc to The Butch Brothers, the
innuendo-laden
Kay, Why? (titled, if you did not already know,
after the leading brand of water-based lubricant, K-Y Jelly) was apparently
penned by one Eileen Dover, a wonderfully silly pseudonym that would befit many
a drag queen. All double entendres and limp wrists,
Kay, Why? was
not the first queer pop record, but it was one of the earliest – and most
blatant - to be issued here in the UK.
It appeared just a few
months after maverick producer Joe Meek and his band The Tornados issued their
final single,
Is That a Ship I Hear, which featured, as its B-side,
a tune with a spoken middle eight entitled
Do You Come Here Often.
With its wink-wink reference to trolling the ‘dilly,
Do You Come Here
Often was the first British pop song to include
polari,
gay slang used to such great comic effect by Hugh Paddick and Kenneth Williams
as Julian and Sandy in the hugely popular BBC radio show
Round the
Horne.
There is a fairly
good chance that the men behind Kay, Why? had heard of
California’s Camp Records, a label that issued a dozen ribald,
under-the-counter singles and two albums between 1964-65. Claiming to employ
the talents of ‘Hollywood TV and screen personalities’, they also used silly
pseudonyms to hide the identity of writers and performers – Byrd E. Bath, the
Gay Blades, Sandy Beech, Rodney Dangerfield (no, not that Rodney
Dangerfield) – and the titles of their releases, including Homer the
Happy Little Homo and Florence of Arabia leave little
to the imagination. But Kay, Why?’, and the flip, I’m Not
Going Camping This Winter, owe more to the British school of campery than
its US cousin.
‘Oh George, isn’t it nice having a group backing us?’
‘You always were greedy, Clo!’
‘Oh, I can’t say the right thing, can I?’
‘So why don’t you shut your face until you’re supposed to sing?’
Who were the real
people hiding behind the name the Brothers Butch, or for that matter who was
Eileen Dover? For more than half a century there has been no trace of
information on them anywhere. Despite one or both sides of the disc turning up
on various collections over the years, including the Jon Savage-compiled Queer
Noises 1961-1978: From The Closet To The Charts, no one seems to have been
able to uncover any of the people involved. Until now.
The disc was the only release from
Thrust Records (fnarr fnarr), based at 494 Harrow Road, London. Now a flat
above a fast food takeaway, at that time it was also the address of Eyemark
Records, a tiny independent record label that had previously issued I
Got You by Sheil and Mal, a Sonny and Cher parody from actors Sheila
Hancock and Malcolm Taylor, and the album Recitals are a Drag by
legendary drag ball organiser Mr. Jean Fredericks. To add to this eclectic
roster, in December 1966 the company announced plans to launch Railwayana
Productions, a series of field recordings of train sounds, an odd and
potentially suicidal move considering that the Beeching cuts were in full swing
and steam was being replaced by diesel.
Eyemark (or Eye Mark as it
occasionally appeared) was set up by Mark Edwards, a former BBC cameraman who
was moving into music video production, and Malcolm Taylor, an actor, stage
director and acting coach. Taylor also ran, with his actress mother Margaret
Taylor, an employment agency, Domestics Unlimited, providing work for ‘resting’
actors and musicians, and one of the musicians he was finding work for was Eric
Francis, singer with a four-piece psychedelic rock group from Fulham, the
Purple Barrier. ‘It was a good way to earn a little money when we didn’t have any
gigs,’ says Francis. It was through Taylor that Francis met Edwards and
introduced him to the rest of the group (Francis and Purple Barrier drummer
Alan Brooks had previously been in The Wanted, with David Bowie’s future guitar
maestro Mick Ronson), and Edwards quickly became the band’s booking agent and
de facto manager.
.jpg)
The Purple Barrier recorded one
(unreleased) single for Eyemark before, in 1968, changing their name to the
Barrier, to avoid any confusion with Deep Purple, friends from the same part of
London, who had just issued their debut 45, Hush!. In the spring of
1968, the Barrier issued their first single, Georgie Brown,
co-written by Mike Redway, who the previous year had sung the closing theme for
the James Bond spoof Casino Royale, Have No Fear, James
Bond is Here. Georgie Brown was backed with a song that
has gone on to become a psychedelic classic, Dawn Breaks Through,
composed by Francis and bandmate Del Dwyer. ‘”Georgie Brown” was absolutely
horrendous,’ says Francis. ‘We didn’t want to do it and it didn’t represent
what we sounded like. It did nothing over here, thank goodness, but it proved
popular in some other countries, which meant that we had to go and do TV shows
to promote it in places like Belgium and Germany. We absolutely hated it!’
Booked to appear on a TV show in Belgium, the band were horrified to find brass
instruments laid out for them to play. ‘It had an oompah-band backing,’ Francis
explains. ‘There were tubas and trumpets and god knows what in the middle of
the floor of the studio, and they expected us to play them. We were just a
four-piece pop band! We were on the show with the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, and
they were so talented, they picked these instruments up and they were away. We
ended up miming to the record, and they played alongside us.’
With his connections Edwards was also
able to get the Barrier included on a pilot for a new BBC pop show, featuring
Julie Felix, and had them slated to perform the title song for a film starring
Terry-Thomas and Phyllis Diller, The Pubs of London, which was
never made. Georgie Brown did well enough for Philips to sign
the band, with Eyemark and Mark Edwards staying on as producer.
Could Mark Edwards be Eileen Dover,
or perhaps one of the two singers featured on the disc? Edwards was a man
fizzing with ideas, many of which would involve his own small circle of gay
friends. As well as running his record label, he was also working on a music
video project for TV broadcast around the world, filming acts associated with
songwriters Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley, including Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick
& Tich, and The Herd. The giant Philips corporation offered financial
backing for the project, and Edwards produced clips for several Philips acts,
including Dusty Springfield, Manfred Mann and Esther and Abi Ofarim. When not
on tour, Francis would often get involved in the filming, and he and Edwards
worked on a number of projects together, including the Bee Gees’ television
film Cucumber Castle. ‘At one point, we were probably doing 60
or 70 percent of this country’s pop promotion films,’ Francis states. ‘The kind
of thing they would show on Top of the Pops when the band were
not available.’
With companies in Japan working on a
viable home video system, Edwards and his backers were discussing how they
could make these half-hour music compilations available to home consumers,
almost a decade before domestic video players became available. When Philips
withdrew their backing, Howard and Blaikley stepped in, forming a new company,
Video Supplement, with Edwards. Their first project together – announced in
February 1971 - was to be a half-hour special entitled the Festival of
Light. That does not appear to have been successful, however they did
produce one programme, Europop, in early 1972 that featured The
Electric Light Orchestra, John Kongos Lindisfarne, Mott The Hoople, and Slade.
As well as participating in Edwards’
video project, Howard and Blaikley were also involved with Eyemark Records,
writing Uh!, the A-side of the Barrier’s second single, and debut
for Philips, as well as the follow-up, Tide is Turning. Their
distinguished, decades-long careers include two UK number ones, Have I
the Right? for The Honeycombs (produced by Joe Meek) and The
Legend of Xanadu for Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich (for which
Edwards and Francis shot the promotional film), as well as more outré material
with a decidedly queer theme. They even wrote for Elvis. I contacted Ken and
Alan to ask if they knew anything about Kay, Why?’, but they
informed me that neither of them was involved.
That might have been the end of it,
but, just a few days before Christmas 2021, I was contacted by Eric Francis,
lead singer, occasional fire eater, and one of the principle songwriters for
the Barrier. Eric told me that it was they who provided the instrumental backing
for Kay, Why?. ‘At the time of recording we had no
idea what it was for other than the fact it was for a comedy record,’ he
recalls. ‘Mark Edwards was responsible for the production and distribution, but
he had nothing to do with writing or performing on it. Howard and Blaikley,
although they were connected with us as a band, had nothing to do with it
either.’
Kay, Why? was recorded in early November
1967 at Olympic Studios, Barnes, where just a few months before the Beatles had
put down the backing track to the anthemic All You Need is Love,
and its B-side Baby, You’re a Rich Man. Other acts including Led
Zeppelin, Queen, the Rolling Stones and David Bowie would also use the studios
before they closed their doors in December 2009. The Purple Barrier performed
on the instrumental track for Kay, Why?, but were not involved with the vocal. After finishing the session,
they were off to Europe on tour. ‘We were told it was for a comedy record,’
says Francis. ‘There was no fee involved, we just did it as we were all mates,
and we were missing by the time they came in to do the vocals.’
So who wrote the songs and performed
vocal duties on the disc? ‘It was written and performed by Roy Cowan and Iain
Kerr,’ says Francis. ‘They were a talented duo who, in the late 60s and early
70s, performed as “Goldberg and Solomon”, a comedy Jewish version of Gilbert
and Sullivan. Iain also played piano on “Georgie Brown”, and he’s on “Shapes
and Sounds” and the Howard and Blaikley song “Uh!”. He was just a nice chap who
was always around. Iain and Roy were at the session, but they didn’t record
their vocals at the time. No one was more surprised than we were when we
finally got to hear it!’
Now in his late 80s, and a decade into
his fight with Parkinson’s, Iain Kerr has never spoken about his involvement
in Kay, Why? before.
Iain Kerr was born in Edinburgh, although he was brought up in New Zealand, and
he gave his debut performance there, billed as the Wonder Boy Pianist, at the
age of four. After building a reputation for himself on the local musical and
opera scene, in 1961 he returned to the UK with his cabaret partner Daphne
Barker. The duo were an instant hit on the London cabaret circuit, and released
an album of risqué songs,
Banned!, in 1962 which was itself banned
by the BBC.
Not long afterwards, while Barker and
Kerr was performing at a London night club – ‘The kind where you pay five
shillings for a glass of water and extra for the glass’, he later recalled –
they were introduced to Roy Cowan. Cowan, born in Hampstead, London of Russian
parents, had trained to be a rabbi but discovered his knack for writing
parodies of hit songs while serving in the army. The budding song satirist, who
had previously written lyrics for Charles Aznavour among others, impressed Kerr
with an on-the-spot parody of Moon River, entitled Chopped
Liver, and an immediate, and lasting, partnership was formed. As well as
working with Cowan, Kerr continued to perform in clubs and hotels in London,
becoming friendly with visiting US stars including Bob Hope and Sammy Davis
Jr., and was regularly featured on the popular BBC radio programme Music
While You Work.
The pair wrote songs for Kerr’s
nightclub act as well as for other artists, including both sides of the 1966 45
issued by septuagenarian cabaret singer Miss Ruby Miller, Daphne Barker’s aunt.
They also wrote My Poem For You, the B-side to Mike Redway’s James
Bond single, and Cowan wrote the lyrics for the huge international hit A Walk
in the Black Forest. Perhaps the most bizarre commission came from tractor
manufacturer Massey Ferguson, who had the pair compose a full opera for the
company, that was staged in a corn field in Greece in front of sales delegates
from around the world.
‘We met Mark Edwards and Malcolm Taylor
at a recording session for Philips,’ Kerr explains. ‘They liked what we were
doing and asked if we had anything else. I said, “well, we’ve got this song
called “Kay, Why?”, but we need a backing group. That’s how we got the Purple
Barrier. They were very good, but the Brothers Butch were terrible! The band
were very good, very professional, and Mark and Malcolm both liked “Kay, Why?”
so we let them get on with it and didn’t ask questions. We had a very friendly
relationship with the boys, and thought that they were trying their best.’ With
no promotion, sales of ‘Kay, Why?’ were tiny, but it was for their unique take
on Victorian light operetta, Gilbert and Sullivan Go Kosher, that
Cowan and Kerr would achieve international fame.
As Goldberg and Solomon, the pair
recorded their first album, for Edwards and Eyemark, the same year as the Butch
Brothers tracks were laid down. The Tailors of Poznance (subtitled the
Best of Goldberg and Solomon, Volume Two) featured actress Miriam Karlin,
star of the hit TV show the Rag Trade, who Kerr had
coached for her role in the hit stage musical Fiddler on the Roof.
Karlin also recorded a pair of Howard and Blaikley numbers that year for
Eyemark, which were licensed to Columbia. Various sources have suggested that
the pair had intended to issue a prequel – The Chandeliers: the Best of
Goldberg and Solomon, Volume One – but Kerr denies this. ‘There never
was a Volume One,’ he laughs. ‘Gilbert and Sullivan’s first opera
failed [the music for Thespis is now lost]; they didn’t have a
“number one”, and we decided that we would not have a “number one” either.’
Kerr was also involved in another
Eyemark release around the same time: QPR – The Greatest, performed
by Queens Park Rangers footballer Mark Lazarus. ‘I did it because I was
asked!’, he says. The flip side features what is probably the most peculiar,
psychedelic football anthem ever recorded, a song called Supporters -
Support Us, credited to the Q.P.R. Supporters, of which, says Francis, ‘I
have heard it suggested many times that it may be something to do with us, but
not guilty!’ A third Barrier single, again produced by Eyemark for Philips, was
issued when the company demanded a follow up to Uh!. Howard and
Blaikley produced The Tide Is Turning, a track from the latest Dave
Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick & Tich album, and Edwards provided the B-side, A
Place in Your Heart, but although the Barrier recorded the vocals, none of
the band actually played on the disc: ‘The tracks were laid down while we were
on tour in Germany,’ Francis explains. ‘We came back and we were told “this is
your next single”!’
Very little – if anything – was done to
promote Kay, Why?, and by December 1967 Cowan and Kerr
were in Johannesburg, with their show An Evening With Goldberg and
Solomon. Kerr recalls the trip well. ‘Roy and I went out to South Africa on
the ship the Windsor Castle,’ he adds. ‘Halfway through the journey were
invited to drinks at the Pig and Whistle, the crew’s bar. They had decorated
the bar out for us, and as we went in there were two fellows miming to our
“Kay, Why?” record!’
By 1970 Eyemark was no more, but by
that time, Edwards had already moved on. ‘For a while I took over the office,’
says Francis. ‘I was running an entertainment agency, Amberlee Artists, with a
guy called Ray Perrin.’ Francis had left the Barrier, who would continue on for
another couple of years with a different vocalist. ‘It was all very amicable,’
he explains. ‘In fact, I was at the audition to replace me. They found a guy
called Ian Bellamy… He was a very good singer. Better than I was!’ Francis made
one more single with Howard, Blaikley and Edwards, the bubblegum novelty Alcock
And Brown, credited to The Balloon Busters, but by now Edwards had signed a five year
production contract with MCA records for a husband-and-wife team he managed,
John and Anne Ryder, and the pair scored a hit in several overseas territories
with the Marty Wilde/Ronnie Scott-penned I Still Believe in Tomorrow.
The Eyemark back
catalogue was taken over by a new company, Amberlee Records Limited, headed by Eyemark’s former
sales manager John Peters (initially based at the same address: in 1973 they
would move across the road
from the former Eyemark offices), who would continue the railwayana series and
expand into organ recitals. sadly the company chose not to reissue Kay, Why?
Edwards’ hit his peak as a producer
in 1970, with Curved Air’s debut album Air Conditioning; that same
year Eric Francis managed to score a number one hit in Japan, with the band
Capricorn, and another song from the team of Wilde and Scott, Liverpool
Hello, but apart from the occasional session (including one for soul singer
Doris Troy, then signed to the Beatles’ Apple label) that would be his last
shot at stardom. ‘By 1971 I had a small baby, and I decided to get out. I had
been a professional musician for about ten years,’ he says, ‘But I would have
been better off financially stacking shelves in Morrisons. I did some driving
for a car hire company; one of my customers was Greg Lake, the bass player with
Emerson, Lake and Palmer, which was a bit embarrassing because he was a mate!’
Edwards would later manage (well, mismanage would be more accurate) gay
singer-songwriter Steve Swindells, who in turn would go on to work with
Hawkwind and Roger Daltrey among others. ‘Mark Edwards was beginning to drink too much
by the time we split from him,’ says Eric Francis. ‘He died quite a few years
ago after throwing away what could have been a good career.’
Five years after Kay, Why? was recorded, an advert appeared
in Gay News. ‘Have a Thrust for Christmas’ it announced, before
promoting the record, albeit with its sides flipped, making the more
seasonal I’m Not Going Camping This Winter the plug track. No
one knows why the company decided to give the disc another push, it could have
been that someone in the office merely unearthed a box of 45s while getting
ready for their move to new premises, but the world of 1972 was a very
different one to that of 1967. By the time the advertisement appeared, the Gay
Liberation had been established for two years, Britain’s first pride march had
taken place and pop stars including David Bowie had helped make androgyny big
business.
A few years ago a peculiar digital
release turned up on Amazon and iTunes, coupling both sides of Kay,
Why?’ along with the very similar sounding The Girls In the
Band and Bald, a pastiche of Age of Aquarius,
the hit song from the free love musical Hair. This MP3 EP also
included three other songs, one of which was Waltzing with Hylda,
from Cowan and Kerr’s mid-70s revue Slightly Jewish and Madly Gay. Credited to the daisy Chain Duo,
Kerr now admits that the performers are Cowan and himself. ‘Roy and I went to
see the Boys in the Band [it opened at Wyndham’s Theatre,
Leicester Square, in February 1969], and I had coached Oliver Tobias for his
role in Hair.’ The plan had been for a second Brothers Butch
single, but this did not materialise. ‘Roy and I were extraordinarily busy at
the time,’ he recalls.
Indeed they were. During the decade
following the recording of ‘Kay, Why?’, Goldberg and Solomon recorded three
further albums and toured the world, playing several return seasons in
Australia and South Africa and appearing in front of more than 1,000,000 people in more than 200 venues. The curtain fell on their highly
successful act when Cowan died of a heart attack, aged 54, in Sydney in June
1978; at that time the two men had been working on a musical based on the life
of Ruby Miller, alongside her niece Daphne Barker. That same year Malcolm
Taylor - the actor who co-founded Eyemark Records and later teamed up with
Howard and Blaikley to write a novelty single for actor Wilfred Bramble - gave
up acting and songwriting for a seat in the director’s chair. He would go on to
direct many episodes of TV serials, including Coronation Street, Crossroads and EastEnders.
Taylor died in January 2012. The Barrier’s drummer Alan Brooks is no longer
with us, neither is guitar player Del Dwyer (Brooks and Dwyer would both later
become members of cult r’n’b band the Downliners Sect) who sadly passed away at
the end of December. Ken Howard and Alan Blaikley continued to have a massively
successful, if somewhat eclectic, career and are both still around today, and
records by the Barrier have become some of the most sought-after from the
British psychedelic era: a copy of Georgie Brown in its
ultra-rare picture sleeve sold in 2020 for over $1,500.
Kay, Why? appeared at a time when LGBT
people in Britain were beginning to find their voice. It may not have changed
the world, but despite its commercial failure, it is an important footnote in
the history of LGBT music. ‘We were aware,’ says Kerr, ‘That we were sticking
our oars out and making a few ripples.’ Those ripples would soon become waves.
‘Kay, why don’t you bring out the best in me?
‘Why did you have to make a mess of me?
‘Why did you slip through my fingers?’
.jpg)
