I bought the Carl Perkins and the Jerry Lee Box set and the second volume of a Johnny Fuller collection and imagine my surprise when some of my favourite songs didn’t seem quite as exciting as I remembered them. I have compared those takes with other versions I have heard and come to the conclusion […]
1958 National Association of Teddy Boys
About 2005, John Facer set up the Federation of Teddy Boys in the hope it would bring teds together. If I remember correctly, some dissent was expressed from the ranks of teddy boys who visited his forum and John didn’t continue with the idea (one which I liked, especially as John has never badmouthed 70s […]
1954 Vicky Boys
Ernie Hill. 1954. ‘Dressed in styles of 1830’s: ‘Vicky Boys’ all rage in London’. In Pittsburgh Press 03.09.1954, p.10. Chicago Daily News Foreign Service. LONDON. Sept. 3 – The gay young blades of London are going wild over a new fashion fad. They are having their tailors cut them suits similar to those worn during […]
1955 ‘Momma Don’t Allow’
Teds in the 1955 documentary ‘Momma Don’t Allow’ The Fishmongers Arms, Wood Green, north-west London (Part 1) I went searching for some details concerning the Fishmongers Arms, the first London venue played by Crazy Cavan and the Rhythm Rockers in the 1970s when I discovered it was the same venue portrayed in the short film […]
1962 ‘Some People’
Part 1 Dressing in velvet collared long drapes seem to have gone out of fashion in Britain after the summer of 1958 with the Notting Hill Riots having equated teds not only with hooliganism but with out-and-out racism. Coincidentally the rock’n’roll hits from America were beginning to soften the beat and to add orchestral arrangements […]
1942 The Zazous
Part 1 The origins of the Edwardian style in late 1940s London It has often enough been written that the teddy boys were a wholly British phenomenon and that their sartorial style was influenced by the revival of an Edwardian style after World War II – whence the name. The style as developed by the […]
