Rainbow Valley is a monthly podcast where your host, Scott takes a look at key events and personalities that shaped one the most influential, vibrant, tumultuous and swinging decades in history. Join us as we celebrate the 1960's with the stories surrounding the music and news events of the decade that shook the world.
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A dustbin, a donkey jacket and one of the biggest singalongs of 1960. This time on Seven Inches of History, we reach one of those records that seems to have been part of British life forever — Lonnie Donegan's "My Old Man's a Dustman." By 1960, Donegan was already the undisputed king of British skiffle. He had helped launch a musical craze with a washboard, a tea-chest bass and the encouraging…
A song about doomed love, written by a man who never lived to see it top the charts. "Running Bear" is a cheerful record about two people who drown. That tension between the bouncy production and the tragic storyline is part of what makes it so fascinating, and part of why it shot to number one in March 1960 and stayed there for two weeks. But the real story here isn't Johnny Preston. It's the man…
"Just remember this - in this country they drive on the wrong side of the road" In 1969, British cinema delivered one of its most enduringly cheerful acts of grand larceny. The Italian Job had Michael Caine, three Mini Coopers, a coach balanced rather inconveniently above a precipice and a plan that looked perfectly sensible provided nobody examined it too closely. In this episode of Rainbow…
Two number ones before breakfast. Adam Faith was just getting started. Adam Faith was not an accident. While some artists stumble into the charts through luck or timing, Terence Nelhams-Wright from Acton arrived at number one in the spring of 1960 as the result of a series of very deliberate decisions. The name. The image. The sound. All of it carefully assembled, and all of it working perfectly.…
The accidental pop star who couldn't wait to get back to the theatre. Anthony Newley never really wanted to be a pop singer. He wanted to be in the theatre. The trouble was, the British public had other ideas, and in February 1960 they kept "Why" at number one for four consecutive weeks, making it very difficult for him to pretend the whole pop star thing wasn't happening. The route to the chart…
One week at the top, a lifetime of sadness behind the smile. The first brand new number one of the 1960s belonged to a man from Liverpool with a voice like warm honey and a stage name chosen for its lightness. Michael Holliday. It suited him perfectly. What it didn't tell you was anything about the anxiety and depression that shadowed every step of his career. "Starry Eyed" went to number one on…
The record that started a decade, and made history doing it. The 1960s didn't begin with a fanfare. They began with a carry-over. Emile Ford and the Checkmates had reached number one back in November 1959 with "What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For" and when January 1st 1960 arrived, they were still sitting comfortably at the top of the British chart. The new decade started mid-song. There…
Episode 018 of The Rainbow Valley podcast – telling the stories that made the swinging decade. Join me as I tell the story of the movie that nearly brought 20th Century Fox crashing to the ground. The longest and most expensive movie ever made at the time. The movie that nearly killed it's leading lady, Elizabeth Taylor. The movie that sparked one of the greatest romances of the twentieth century.…
In London in the 1880s, the city was gripped by fear. A killer was prowling the cobbled, fog heavy streets of Whitechapel murdering prostitutes in a chilling reign of terror. Fast forward seventy years and a new killer was on the loose, this time, not in the impoverished Victorian East End, but towards the west. Again his victims of choice would be prostitutes. Believed to have claimed anything up…
It can certainly be safe to say that the 1960s produced some of the most dramatic changes in the world of popular music. From the early days of rock and roll, through to the swinging beat scene, the British invasion, American surf music and right through to the San Francisco sound of the peace and love generation, there was a voice that was there from the beginning. That voice was still there at…
