Music (299)

In the years prior to music videos, live TV programs had a problem when artists were unable to appear. The viewers needed something to take their visual attention while the record was being played and producers decided to use ‘Go Go Girl’ dancers fashionably dressed in mini-skirts and high boots. In the UK, Top of the Pops (BBC 1) was the premier pop chart program and used a girl dance troupe called The Go-Jos, They were formed by Jo Cook in 1964 and she also was the choreographer.

Billy “The Big Yin" Connolly was born in Glasgow in 1942. He started off as a folk sing and played banjo. His first band was an old time country music group called The Skillet Lickers and was formed in the 1960s. Later he joined a novelty musical group called The Acme Brush Company.

 Shirley Veronica Bassey was born in 1937, in Tiger Bay, Cardiff. Her father was a Nigerian seaman and her mother came from Yorkshire. Tiger Bay was a tough neighbourhood and Shirley was the youngest of seven children. At age two her mother was left a single parent.

Marie McDonald McLaughlin Lawrie was born in 1948 in Lennox Castle, Lennoxtown, Scotland, the daughter of a butcher. Marie grew up in Dennistoun, Glasgow, where she attended Thomson Street Primary School and Onslow Drive Junior School.

The Four Tops came from Detroit and started as a high school band called The Four Aims (1954). The lineup was lead singer and Jackie Wilson‘s cousin, Levi Stubbs (1936 -2008) , Abdul "Duke" Fakir, Renaldo "Obie" Benson (1936 – 2005), and Lawrence Payton (1938 – 1997) and signed to Chess Records in 1956.