IN a smoke-filled Hongkong dance hall a young British Army lieutenant was persuaded to sing a number with the band. He got enthusiastic applause, and resolved then to take up a new career as a “pop” singer.

Now, two years later, the lieutenant, Gary Marshal, is established on the British popular music scene. On Wednesday, he sings with the Ted Heath Orchestra in Granada’s Bandstand. He has reached an objective.

After Sandhurst, and winning his commission, he was posted to Hongkong. There, after his military duties, he wanted something to do with his spare time, so he applied for an announcing job with the English language commercial radio station – and got it.

“They took me on as a board announcer, doing 14 hours a week of news and disc jockeying in the evenings,” said Marshal. “After a few months I was not only a board announcer, I was a bored announcer.”

The other English language station, the non-commercial Radio Hongkong, offered him more work, so he switched stations. He then found time to write two newspaper columns a week — a short story and a record review feature.

He courted and married an American girl born in China. “We now have a year-old son, Jamie, who — I swear — was born with a real cool haircut. He loves music and already looks like an out-of-work tenor sax player,” said Marshal.

How did he find the time for soldiering, married life, radio work and newspaper writing? His explanation: “I am a ‘night person’ and don’t like going to bed early.”

Marshal left the Army in August, 1958, at the end of his five-year term. A month later, a friend took him along to an agent. The agent looked up, noted his good looks, and said: “Bernard Delfont’s Sunday Night at the Prince Of Wales … The Frankie Howerd Show.”

Marshal, astounded, said “Fine.” And that was how he found himself playing a “wide boy” in a sketch with Frankie Howerd on ITV.

“After the show I dashed home and asked my wife ‘How was I?’ She said ‘I blinked and missed you!’” said Gary.

Later, he acted in TV commercials. “One of them was made at the Guards depot, Pirbright, where I found myself wearing a steel helmet, a pack on my back, and all the gear I hadn’t worn in years,” he said.

He went into cabaret, where he insisted on using his own drummer and pianist. “The extra expenditure was worth it,” he says. ITV talent spotters saw him and, as a result, he appeared in a number of shows. He also landed a recording contract.

Singing in front of the Ted Heath Orchestra in Bandstand is for Gary Marshal the realisation of a long-standing ambition. It was always his favourite band and, two years ago, hearing that Ted Heath was looking for a male singer, he took him a recording.

He said I was as good as any he’d heard, but there was a technical fault in my voice.” said Marshal. “He told me to come back when I had got rid of this fault. But I never found time to re-apply. Now, at last, I am to sing with him.”

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AS far as the money went, it didn’t matter to the 16-year-old coloured girl whether she cooked hot meal or sang hot songs. She was paid 35 dollars a week either way.

Donna Hightower, who sings as a guest in the next two Granada Bandstand programmes, “realised that sleeping all day and doing three or four hours a night in a club was better than standing in front of a stove for eight hours.”

So she threw away her apron, bought a couple of evening gowns and started singing.

For a long time she thought her voice was not good enough to take her to the top. “What, me sing professionally?” she said, and dismissed the idea as a lot of hard work with no returns.

“My father was a musician, and we were very poor,” said Donna. “He was also a farmer. Sometimes he worked his own land; sometimes he worked for others.

“It didn’t seem to make much difference; we were still poor.

“He taught music, too, and could play any instrument he could lay his hands on — harp, piano, accordion, harmonium.

“But I never saw a trumpet or anything like that when I was a kid. I reckon they were out of our class.

“He tried to teach me to read music, but I could never learn.”

Now she wishes she had. For, in addition to singing, Donna composes.

“A tune comes into my head and, as I think of the melody, I make up the words. Then I sing it over and over again until it is photographed in my memory. Then I go to sleep.

“When I wake up I find I’ve forgotten it. But it comes back and I sing it into a tape-recorder.”

It sounds a rough and ready way to compose. But she has reached the Top Twenty in America too often for her methods to be laughed away.

It all began in a Chicago restaurant when a customer asked the girl behind the counter to turn up the radio. There was no radio … Donna was singing over the stove.

The customer persuaded her she had talent, and she started singing at weekends in a club for five dollars. Then a newspaperman took her on a tour of Chicago, trying to get her a booking. They began by asking for 100 dollars a week. They ended by accepting 35.

“A woman from a record company came down and she said I had a kinda unique style,” Donna went on. “I guess I had. I could hardly keep time.”

She recorded, and waited for success to come. But nothing happened.

She went back home to Los Angeles. “I must have been pretty good, because I won a talent contest; and then I made some more records for another company.”

But they brought in little money, so New York was the next stop, “knocking around, doing practically nothing.”

Then, a year ago, she met a group of song-writers, who asked her to make some demonstration records of their songs.

They liked her voice even better than they liked the songs. “We’ll try to get you a recording,” they said.

In her smooth caressing voice Donna told what happened then. “I picked out my best tunes, and we just went in and sorta jammed something. The disc came out last January.”

It was a hit. The 35 dollars a week cook turned out to have a million dollar talent – both as singer and song-writer.

It has brought her to London and soon maybe it will take her to Paris. And though she still likes cooking she is in no hurry to get back to her home in Brooklyn.

“Things are just beginning to break for me,” she said. “I’ll be around for a while.”

Musicians say that this girl, at 24, is a singer’s singer — which is their way of bestowing high praise.

I’m no musician, but Donna Hightower is my kind of singer.

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A FIVE-FOOT-NOTHING girl with dark hair and twinkling brown eyes stands in a corner of the studio, her fingers snapping and her feet tapping as the Ted Heath band rehearses.

Viewers will see her next Wednesday as a guest singer in Granada’s Bandstand. Nineteen-year-old Maureen Evans has come a long way from the school plays and concerts in which she appeared at home in Cardiff.

In fact, she has been a success ever since she got her first real taste of show business at the age of 15.

She told me: “I began appearing at local concerts when I was 12. At 15 I was asked to sing two songs at a Lord Mayor’s charity matinee at the New Theatre, Cardiff.

What happened? Maureen scored a big success. The theatre manager signed her up for a week’s variety.

“That was the most thrilling day of my life,” said Maureen, her eyes alight with excitement at the memory.

It was exciting, too. for Maureen’s mother, Mrs Lavinia Evans. She sat in the stalls watching the daughter who had blossomed in three years from just a schoolgirl soprano to “pop” singer.

Maureen switched to “pop” songs because she enjoys them more. It was a switch that led to three summer seasons at Llandudno, many TV appearances and a disc contract.

She confessed: “I suppose it is just as well that I am in show business, because I do not think I could do any other job.

“I got plenty of encouragement from my music and drama teachers at school and produced and acted in a few plays. I enjoyed producing more than acting. But I always wanted to be a singer.”

Maureen loves her work, but she is still a home girl at heart. This commercial traveller’s daughter likes nothing better than to have her family and friends around her.

Travelling about the country is something Maureen detests. She told me: “I have never quite got used to it.

“I was only 15 when I did my first four month summer season.

“Four months! It was the first time I had been away from home, and every night I rang Mother to cheer myself up.

“I love to be with the people I know, and at home I often have my friends in to parties. Sometimes we have three parties in a week.”

She also enjoys lending a hand with the household chores, decorating — “I did out my own room” — and helping her aunt make the dresses she wears on TV.

“If I had not become a singer. I might have gone in for dressmaking,” said Maureen.

For a girl who is only 60 inches high — “I wear 4in heels all the time” — clothes are something of a problem.

Said Maureen: “I have the greatest difficulty when it comes to buying new outfits. That is one reason why my aunt makes most of my dresses.”

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TOP stars of London’s jazz clubs will be seen on Thursday in Granada’s Bandstand. They are the Tony Kinsey Quartet, tenor sax player Ronnie Scott, and pianist Eddie Thompson.

Ronnie Scott recently embarked on a venture that is binding these musicians, and others who have appeared in Bandstand, even closer together: he opened his own jazz club. The Kinsey Quartet have played there and Eddie Thompson is more-or-less the resident pianist.

Eddie Thompson was born blind in 1925. At a Wandsworth school for the blind, he played a few piano duets with George Shearing, who emigrated to America.

“I think we usually played Let’s Have A Basin Full of Fun in G flat — the first key I learnt. They tried to stop me playing jazz at school because they said it was degrading. But my mother bought me records and soon I was collecting early Basies, Shaws, Goodmans and Ellingtons,” Eddie told me.

“So I grew up with the idea of playing jazz for a living. But at another school for the blind, I was trained to be a piano tuner and repairer, a job which has stood me in good stead because some club pianos are appalling. After leaving school I nearly starved for a year, tuning a few pianos, trying to get a job as a musician. Then for six months I landed a regular job as a solo pianist touring as one of Brian Michie’s discoveries.

“After that I did various jobs, including working as a Dixieland pianist with Freddy Randall’s band. Went to the States as part of an exchange scheme for the Louis Armstrong All Stars, who toured Britain.

“America was gruelling — we were put in a rock ’n’ roll show — but very interesting. A year later I went again with Tommy Whittle’s band. I had a marvellous time — even stayed a week with the great pianist Thelonius Monk.”

These days, Eddie is spending his spare time learning to play the saxophone, which he may eventually play professionally. He can read Braille music, but seldom needs to because, like most blind musicians, he has developed an exceptional memory.

He only needs to hear a piece of music once or twice to be able to play it.

Kinsey’s quartet have appeared in earlier Bandstands, but this time Tony will have a different saxophonist.

“Kathleen Stobart used to play tenor with us, but now she has three children and she has had to leave to look after them.” said Tony. “Now, we’ve got Alan Branscombe on alto. The others are Bill LeSage on vibraphone and Joe Muddell on bass.”

Drummer Kinsey told me he has recently moved to a house at Sunbury-on-Thames “where I can play all I want”.

Pianist Denis Wilson’s Trio will also be appearing in the programme. Wilson, who has often broadcast and arranges accompaniments for “pop” songs, says his music has “wide popular appeal and enough ingenuity, I hope, to appeal to musicians.”

The other member of the trio are Frank Clarke (bass) and Alan Ganley drums.

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BRITAIN’S best small bands will play weekly for viewers, beginning on Thursday. The series, presented by Granada, is called Bandstand and the first four programmes will star Mr Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band at one end of the studio and the Ray Ellington Quartet, with Valerie Masters, at the other.

“Each week we’ll have at least one guest. The first will be Don Lusher, the modern trombonist in the country,” director Dave Warwick told me. “The week after, it will be harmonica player Max Geldray, an old friend of Ray Ellington. Then we’ve booked a veteran star, trumpeter Nat Gonella, followed by Johnnie Gray, a good tenor saxophonist with a flair for comedy.

“We will have comedy only where it is involved in the music, as it often is with Ellington. We won’t go in for comperes with a lot of comic patter. The bandleaders will do the announcing and will be encouraged to develop their own personalities.”

Warwick, a blond, outspoken man from Southport, will book jazz and near-jazz groups of all kinds. He knows the subject well because for years he was a dance band drummer and vibraphone player, but he found the going hard as a drummer because the market was glutted — “by about 20,000 people who had learned to play in the Services, fooling around with small groups in NAAFI canteens.”

Whenever he directs a band programme – he did seven of a Humphrey Lyttelton series, Here’s Humph and a dozen Ray Ellington Shows — he does a bit of drumming, strictly for fun, by sitting in with the bands during run-throughs. He looks forward to a reunion with the Lyttelton band later in the Bandstand series.

Others he hopes to have on the show eventually are the Tony Crombie Quartet, Georgia Brown (“a talented singer who recently returned from America, where she has been making records with jazz stars”), trumpeter Kenny Baker, the Dill Jones Trio, Joe (Mr Piano) Henderson and singers Dick Francis, Rosemary Squires and Maxine Daniels.

“Ray Ellington’s original pianist, Dick Katz, has become a manager. I’d like to get him back on one programme to do a solo spot,” Dave Warwick said. “I’d also like to see Ray Ellington’s original girl vocalist Marion Ryan, come back and do a song with Valerie Masters, the girl who replaced her.”

Although there will be a good deal of jazz, Bandstand will not be aimed entirely at teenagers.

“In America, jazz appeals to an older public,” Dave pointed out. He believes Bandstand may make some adults take a stronger interest in it.

“I’ve noticed that teenagers who like jazz even “educate” their parents by pointing out some of the good things to listen for,” he said.

“If you take a well-known number — say, I’ll Be With You In Apple Blossom Time – and play the first eight bars straight you can then go into the most advanced modern jazz idiom and people will appreciate it. But if you start off playing intricate jazz, you won’t hold the audience.”

Some of the guest musicians Granada hope to feature are not necessarily big stars, but they are all well-known in the music world.

“I don’t suppose Don Lusher, for example, means much to the mass of viewers, but every serious fan in the country knows about him,” said Dave.

The programme may not be confined to jazz and dance groups. There may be a gipsy band, or a Trinidad steel band.

“Our policy is flexible,” concluded Warwick. “We don’t know yet whether to concentrate on bands of contrasting styles or groups of the same sort. We would like to hear from viewers about their musical preferences.”

The post For Britain’s best small bands – a weekly… Bandstand appeared first on THIS IS GRANADA from Transdiffusion.