Joe Brown
In August 1959, unknown guitarist Joe Brown was recruited to deputise in the backing band on a Larry Parnes package tour, playing behind a succession of frisky colts from his ‘stable of stars’. The sound-check for the first date, at Southend Odeon, was doubling as an audition: Jack Good was talent-spotting for his forthcoming television series Boy Meets Girls. None of the singers impressed him that afternoon – but he was knocked out by the new kid on the bus, who he signed up immediately. That autumn, Joe became one of the stars of the show, working his magic on the girls and his music on the boys – a guitar hero and a cocky Cockney funster to boot. Here we see him rehearsing for a show with visiting American star Gene Vincent.
Read all about him in ‘The Restless Generation’ by Pete Frame.
(Photograph courtesy of the John Braley Collection)
