- Place – London
- Time – 1952- 1965
- Author – Kenny Denton
As a Young Child.
I spent most of my time living within my imagination, believing that no dream was out of reach.
As time passed I realised that to achieve my dreams there would be many mountains to climb. Throughout my life, I have been lucky enough to clamber to the top of many of them.
To my surprise on reaching the summits the view was never as I thought it would be.
Now semi-retired, I finally reached the summit that I had always craved for where the outlook was exactly how I had imagined.
Before long this would turn into the scariest sight imaginable, for as far as you could see there were no more mountains to climb, so I immediately set about creating one.
My blogs are a part of that quest.
My First Addiction in Life.
I was born in the early fifties, the last decade in which the world appeared to exist in black and white.
I was the youngest of three children. There was my eldest sister Roberta, who married and left home before I ever really knew she was there.
Then there was my brother Harry, he was ten years my senior. I never knew my father; he died just before I was born. This left my Angel of a Mother to spend her every breath loving me.
In the summer of 56, I was four years old when I heard the most amazing sound coming from my brothers bedroom.
This sound would transform my life forever. I discovered he had a strange box that he would turn with a handle on the side to wind it up, and then lift up this heavy arm onto a black circular object.
When he went out, I would sneak into his room and copy the process and listen to the sounds repeatedly.
I couldn’t read the label but I could easily remember the words ‘Well since my baby left me I found a new place to dwell it’s down at the end of lonely street at Heartbreak hotel.”
When I had finished I would place everything back so my brother would have no idea that I had entered his room.
On his return, I would hear him shouting at my mother that I had been in his room playing his records.
I was so careful how did know?
I then discovered that there were small needles on the end of the arm that needed replacing after every few plays.
My naivety, would ensure my brother locked his room each time he went out, so my desire to play music was curtailed for the time being, but my first addiction in life had begun.
As Popular as a Condom on the Pope.
During the mayhem of puberty I was chosen by my school to become a choirboy for Southwark Cathedral. Why I agreed I would never know.
The choirboys were all very upper class snobs who I had nothing in common with whatsoever.
The choirmaster was always telling me off for extending my notes longer than anyone else during the services.
I did this so I could hear my voice lingering throughout the Cathedral.
This made me as popular as a condom on the Pope. After six months and a couple of fisticuffs with my choirboy cohorts it was decided that I should leave.
Listening to Music Was My Mainstay in Life.
When I was thirteen, I managed to get a weekend job working on a market stall in East lane in South London selling ex-jukebox records.
My payment was any four singles or one album each week.
My record collection and taste in music was expanding monthly.
Although I would pick chart singles I also started to listen to and collect artist as diverse as, Dinah Washington Johnny Cash and Peter Paul and Mary.
Oh How We Laughed.
Many of the kids I went to school with, had fathers or uncles who were involved in various criminal activities.
A good friend of mine, Louie was very popular at school, he wore the finest clothes and was never without a porn magazine, which made him very popular with all the school kids.
I was around thirteen when he got things rolling with my first ever introduction to a Jamaican woodbine, Oh how we laughed.
Everyone wondered where he used to get all this adult material from, but he would never say.
Some years later, I discovered that Louie’s father was the West End club-owner and pornography King, Jim Humphrey’s.
His mother was Rusty Gaynor, exotic dancer, the queen of SOHO and the best-known stripper of the 1960s.
Louie’s father was the man whose revelations about bent police officers led to Scotland Yard’s biggest postwar corruption scandal and ended with the jailing of a dozen detectives who had taken large amounts of protection money from him.
Billy the Kid and Colin the Con.
Another classmate was nicknamed Billy the Kid or mad Billy to his enemies.
His father was Colin the con.
One of Colin’s legendary gems came about when he bought a thousand commemorative coins from the Exchange and Mart for a shilling each, (5 pence in today’s money) from some country no one had ever heard of.
He soon realised that they were worthless, so he went to see a friend in Bond Street and asked him to place four of these coins in the window of the shop at a price of ten shillings each, (50 pence into days money).
His friend pointed out that they were worthless, but Colin begged him to leave them in the window for two weeks, which he reluctantly agreed to do.
Colin set about advertising them in the South London Press for five shilling each.
A few days later a punter came along took one look and said, “Five shillings you must be mad these coins are rubbish you should throw them away.”
Colin told him, “They make look like rubbish to you mate, but they’re selling them in Bond Street for ten bob each.”
The punter visited Bond Street and returned to Colin the same day and bought the lot.
Colin the con told his son Billy, “If you appeal to people’s greed you will always make money.”
Teenage Hormones Raging.
On Saturday nights my friends and I with our teenage hormones raging would visit Soho in the West End, where we could see photographs of almost naked girls around the doorways of the strip clubs.
On one occasion we decided to chance our luck and asked the doorman how much it was to go in.
He first asked our age, well the oldest was a kid called Mickey O’Grady who was almost sixteen but looked twelve; the rest of us were fifteen but looked fourteen, so we all replied almost in unison eighteen.
To our complete surprise he told us the price and let us in.
We paid at the little kiosk and eagerly rushed down the staircase into a small dark room.
There were about twenty people facing a brightly lit stage, where we just caught a glimpse of a naked girls bum as the curtains closed.
Like a group of mad Bulls charging at a matador we pushed our way to the very front of the stage just as the music started playing Shirley Bassey’s, Big Spender.
The curtains opened to reveal not the greatest looking girl in the World, Mickey whispered to me.
“If ugly was a crime she would have been sentenced to life.”
She was scantily dressed as a cave girl, carrying a polystyrene club.
After strutting up and down this small stage a couple of times, flashing her breast, she stopped right in front of Mickey, tapped him on his head with her club, and said in a loud voice,
”Does your mother know you’re here?”
The audience roared, as the laughter died down Mickey shouted,
”Does your mother know you’re here?”
The place erupted with cheers and laughter.
Her act finished with us seeing very little of what we came for.
When the curtains closed we were all escorted out of the premises.
Leaving School with Ten No-Levels.
Around this time I had various part time jobs one was working on the phones at night in a minicab office in Blackfriars Road.
This was the time when there was a war going on between the black cabs and minicabs.
I cannot remember ever being phased by a brick crashing through the office window, or the phone threats from anonymous callers threatening to beat up anyone who was working for the company.
I left school when I was fifteen graduating with ten no levels.
I remember failing my maths exam more time then I could count.
Working for a member of the notorious south London Richardson gang.
Soon after leaving School I took a part time job working in a small Newsagents shop in Braganza Street on the corner of Delaune Street Kennington.
The proprietor Roger Puree was the manager of the band I was in at the time.
Roger was a stocky mean looking guy with an almost shaven head.
He was a member of the notorious south London Richardson gang.
His wife Mary was the sister of George Cornell, who Ronnie Kray had murdered a year earlier, so the violence between the Krays and the Richardson’s gang was prevalent.
Often Mary would ring me at four in the morning to ask me to come to the shop to mark up the newspapers as Roger had not returned home because he had been involved in some encounter, which seemed to always result in stitches to some part of his body.
Looking back at this time I witnessed many things that would have been unthinkable today but during this time nothing seemed to be unusual.
When you have no life experience outside your own surroundings everything seems to be normal.
All blogs are excerpts from the forthcoming book. There Ain’t No Rules In Rock n Roll
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