The original Blue Cats (since known as the Blue Cat Trio for reasons explained below) was probably the fiftiest group of the revival era of the 1970s and 1980s, something like Gene Vincent and the Bluecaps resurrected. Here are two of their performances ‘bi-i-bickey-bop’ followed by ‘rockabilly boogie’ from the rock’n’roll tv shows ‘Oh Boy !/Let’s Rock !’ which impressario Jack Good steered between 1979 and 1981. I can’t find the Blue Cats credited anywhere in notices about these shows but Tony Martin who was involved with them says they recorded some performances for the show in August 1980. These, which are watching, must have been broadcast in the summer of 1981 by which times the group had lost its singer and double-bassman Dave Phillips (September 1980) and found a replacement in Clint Bradley from Southampton’s Tony and the Tennessee Rebels. The Blue Cats from mid 1980 to 1982 became quite a different band from the Blue Cats of 1979 to 1980 (hence the practice by some of referring to the earlier band as The Blue Cat Trio); under Bradley they became a neo-rockabilly group.
These are two smashing performances by the original Blue Cats with nothing to choose between them except for the dance crowd : with ‘b-i-bickey-bop’ we have a crowd of teds and rock’n’roll fans from the audience, whereas with ‘rockabilly boogie’ we have the show’s professional studio dancers. Does it need pointing out which are excellent and which stink to high heaven ? Jack Good had begun with no dancers and an in-house big band in the first series of 1979, copying the original format of his 50s show, but by the second and third series he had understood that dancers and especially audience participation in the dancing added to the excitement created by the music. Unfortunately for posterity the professional dancers were not given their marching orders …
Whilst Dave Phillips was the Blue Cats’ singer, the group adopted an almost religious approach in recreating the sound of their 50s musical heroes, most clearly the early Gene Vincent and the Bluecats of 1956-57. Their album simply entitled ‘The Blue Cats’ which came out on te Dutch Rockhouse label just before the split showed them dressed as ‘Bluecaps’ in black and white photographs.
The new Blue Cats kept the same sartorial style for a short while but they soon went into a neo-rockabilly direction both sartorially and musically and, after their disbandment in June 1982, went under new names into to other unspeakable territories throughout the 1980s before reviving for an album in 1993 and more permanently after 2008. But they never returned to the feel of the original Blue Cats. From late 1980 they had become a wholly different group from the earlier iteration and a big disappointment to the many rock’n’roll fans who had seen the promise the Blue Cats had for one brief moment held. I remember buying their single of April 1981, and despite the excellent B-side ‘jump, cat, jump’, it is the A-side ‘wild night’ which portended the future …
In retrospect, the summer of 1980 seems to have been a watershed in the musical direction of the British rock’n’roll revival, by early 1981 the bouffant-quiffed Polecats and especially the Straycats were dominating the scene and many teds would soon start to feel a little lost with the neo-rockabilly and psychobilly tendencies ; in a way it hardy mattered because the whole British rock’n’roll scene by 1982 was retreating into a specialist interest which only took off at far-interspaced weekender get togethers.
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