Go Man Go

Go Man Go was another of those BBC Light Programme lunchtime music shows that proliferated during the 1950s and 1960s. Recorded before a frenzied young audience they offered the latest hits as interpreted by an orchestra, resident singers and weekly guests. In the words of the programme billing it was a ‘lunchtime session of rock, cha-cha, jazz and the top of the pops’. In this case the music was provided by the Oscar Rabin Band under the direction of David Ede, who also introduced the majority of the shows. Go Man Go ran for 256 shows between December 1958 and March 1964. The programme’s origins lie with the self-effacing band leader Oscar Rabin, whose own broadcasting career goes back to the 1920s.

Oscar Rabinowitz was born in Riga in 1899 and his family moved to London when he was aged just four. The story goes that on his way to school in the East End he regularly met and guided a blind fiddler who, in return, gave him violin lessons By the time he was 15 he’d become a professional musician, playing the violin and later the bass saxophone, and studying at the Guildhall School of Music.  After the war, in 1919, he formed his first band called the Syncomaniacs Jazz Five changing their name a year or two later to the Romany Five. Rabin met guitarist and banjo player Harry Davis in Liverpool in 1924 and they joined forces, starting at the Palace Hotel in Southend. Adding more members to the combo they became the Romany Band and enjoyed a long residency at Hull’s Palais de Danse from July 1926 to October 1927. They made their first broadcasts from the venue on the city’s BBC relay station 6KH in February and June 1927. Their next radio appearance was on 2LO in 1929.

From 1929 the band was touring the dance halls on the Astoria circuit and regularly appearing at the Astoria on Charing Cross Road. The Romany Band was billed as ‘led by’ or ‘under the direction of’ Oscar Rabin but he generally sat behind his bass sax. It was Harry Davis (pictured above left with Oscar Rabin right) who acted as the front man and vocalist with Rabin saying “I’d rather leave that kind of job to someone who can do it well”. In the words of one later press review “Oscar Rabin is a dance band leader who has no desire to stand in front of his band making vague gestures and seems quite content to produce grunting sounds from his bass saxophone”. (1)

During the 30s the Romany Dance Band, as it was now known, continued to tour, had a long residency at the Hammersmith Palais, cut a few records and, from 1935, make increasingly regular BBC radio broadcasts and even some appearances on Radio Normandy in a show sponsored by the House of Seager. It was claimed that the band was run on an entirely co-operative basis. Profits and losses were shared equally by members and there was a £2,000 band fund from which was paid full wages for sickness or vacant dates.   

By 1938 the Romany Dance Band was one of the main bands heard on the wireless, alongside those led by Joe Loss, Ambrose and Henry Hall. On 22 October that year they also appeared on BBC television in the first ever broadcast from a dance hall, with cameras being present at Hammersmith’s Palais de Danse. They made a couple more pre-war TV appearances and in the 1950s provided the music for Come Dancing.

With the outbreak of World War II Oscar Rabin continued to appear in Hammersmith and make at least weekly, sometimes even daily, broadcasts. After some personnel changes, in the summer of 1940 they dropped the ‘Romany’ reference from the band’s name.

The Oscar Rabin Band appeared at Portsmouth's
Savoy Ballroom in September 1949

Throughout the 1940s and 1950s Oscar Rabin and his Band made hundreds of broadcasts, including Music While You Work. Meanwhile, by 1950 David Ede had joined the band as a clarinet and saxophone player and also appeared on the bill with his own vocal quartet when the band toured. In 1951 Harry Davis left for the States to live with his daughter and son-in-law (2). David Ede took over duties as the band’s compere of what was then billed as “Britain’s foremost broadcasting band”.  

It was in September and October 1957 on the Light Programme that Oscar Rabin and his Band started weekly lunchtime shows billed as Break for Music. The singers employed were Scottish-born Patti Forbes, Mel Gaynor (described, when he joined the band, as the “new Anglo-Indian pop-chorus specialist) and singer-songwriter Johnny Worth, real name John Worsley who also worked professionally as Les Vandyke. They were back on Tuesday lunchtimes from 31 December 1957 in a programme now called Dancing Time – it would run until September 1958. (3). Joining Mel and Johnny on vocals was Lorie Mann (real name Barbara Burke) who along with David Ede meant they were cheesily referred to as ‘Three Men and a Mann’. Making the introductions was staff announcer Bruce Wyndham.

But during that run of Dancing Times there was bad news. Hours after his show on 17 June 1958 Oscar Rabin he was admitted to Putney Hospital suffering from exhaustion, He suffered two heart attacks and died on the Friday. The band continued under Ede’s direction.

Radio Times billing for the show 14 July 1961

By 1958 the Rabin Band had a long residency at the Wimbledon Palais de Danse and, at the end of the year, on 29 December, they were back on-air for the start of the five and a bit year run of Go Man Go. With Lorie Mann and Mel Gaynor were Ray Pilgrim (also going by the name Bobbie Stevens), Colin Day and vocal group The Hound Dogs. (4)

Production duties changed from John Hooper to Terry Henebery (5) in September 1959 and “the show with the most” now also included ‘The Grooving Guitar of Don Sanford’. The band’s pianist and arranger Arthur Greenslade (later Shirley Bassey’s music director) also started to be featured with his own ‘Arthur Greenslade and the Gee Men’.

Celebrating the first anniversary of Go Man Go.
L-R Terry Henbery, David Ede, Lorie Mann
& studio manager Frederick Harris (Alamy)

Changes in musical tastes necessitated a change in approach for the programme. From April 1962 David Ede was no longer doing the chat between tunes, that role was now taken by jazz guitarist Dis Disley. As well as regular guests from the jazz world there are increasingly more artists from the pop charts such as Craig Douglas, The Brook Brothers, Joe Brown, Ronnie Carroll and Susan Maughan. In later shows the guests ranged from The Rolling Stones, The Swinging Blue Jeans and Billy J. Kramer and the Dakotas to Roger Whittaker, Kenny Lynch and, a rare US performer, Gene Vincent.

For the 200^th show in January 1963 Alan Freeman made the introductions, followed by Tony Withers and Don Moss. Don George, later at Radio 1, became the show’s third and final producer from October 1963.   

At least two editions of Go Man Go survive in the BBC archives, one from 28 December 1959 and another from 1961 that was repeated in 1995. This off-air recording also dates from 1961. My original information was that the show was from 28 November 1960, but checking some of the release dates of the songs covered and the helpful mention of a weekend football result it’s the broadcast from 13 February 1961. (6)

In this recording, which is not quite complete as its short by about six or seven minutes (a number of announcements have been clipped and the 1.30pm news bulletin that interrupts the programme isn’t included), the band are joined by singers Barbara Kay (she’d provide the vocal on Johnny Reggae in 1971), Colin Day and Ray Pilgrim plus Don Sanford on guitar and sax player 'Rockin' Rex Morris (he’d played with Lord Rockingham’s XI). This is yet another home recording made by the late Eric Bartington and kindly donated to me by Gerad de Roo.

The tunes included in the show are:

Three Blind Mice – a jazz version of this nursery rhyme. Jazz arrangements of the tune had been in existence since the 1930s and Duke Ellington recorded a version.

Rubber Ball – a hit for both Bobby Vee and Marty Wilde that year

Autumn Tears – sung by Barbara Kay, a song by Norman Newell and Cyril Ornadel

Ginchy – a Bert Weedon tune played by Don Sanford  

C’est si bon – the French popular song performed by Colin Day

Dixieland One-Step – a 1917 jazz standard in the ‘Jazz Bag’ feature

Will You Love Me Tomorrow – the Goffin-King song that was the current US number one for The Shirelles

Miss Annabelle Lee – an old twenties tune. Apparently listeners wrote into the BBC asking for more dance music to be played in the 1920s style (7)

The Story of My Love – a hit at the time, but only in the US, for Paul Anka

Naomi – played by Arthur Greenslade and the Gee Men

Are You Lonesome Tonight – Ray Pilgrim’s sings his mum’s favourite song that was also the Juke Box top play of the time

Stay – a rendition of the doo-wop song that had just charted for Maurice Williams and The Zodiacs

Many Tears Ago – a current hit for Connie Francis

Walk Right Back – at the time a brand new release by The Everly Brothers that would top the hit parade at the end of the month

Red Wing – a trad jazz version

First Taste of Love – a new release for Ben E. King

And there the recording ends without the closing announcement.

Further off-air recordings of Go Man Go from 21 December 1962 plus some other extracts are on YouTube uploaded by user HonestArry, who has also written a very informative Wikipedia article. The 2 January 1961 show is also on YouTube from user Bits N Pieces. You can also find a recording of a 1936 show featuring The Romany Band uploaded by Jonathan Holmes.

Radio Times billing 2 January 1961

Go Man Go continued on the Light Programme until its last show on Friday 27 Match 1964, just a day before Radio Caroline sailed into the airwaves. Similar lunchtime shows continued to be broadcast such as Parade of the Pops (see blog post Back in Time On the Light –Part 1), The Beat Show and, replacing Go Man Go the following Friday yet another veteran of the pre-war dance era, The Joe Loss Pop Show.

The Rabin Band (at this time billed as ‘David Ede and the Rabin Band’) continued to tour for the next year but tragedy struck the following year. In April 1965 they had a long-term engagement at the newly opened Blackpool Locarno Ballroom but under the name of David Ede and his Orchestra. On 25 June it was reported that David was missing at sea after a 14-foot dinghy capsized in choppy waters off Blackpool. Also on board was singer Michael Taylor who managed to swim ashore and raised the alarm; twelve hours later David’s body washed ashore. A month later the coroner’s verdict recorded “misadventure”. The band continued to perform at the Locarno under the leadership of trumpeter and deputy bandleader Terry Reaney, eventually becoming the Terry Reaney Showband and playing at the Locarno until 1970.  

Members of the Rabin family have show business connections. Of Oscar’s four children two sons, Ivor and David, were in the music agency business near Cambridge Circus and both then joined the Mecca Agency after a merger, David as MD and Ivor as Assistant MD along with Phil Tate. Another son, Bernard, also became an agent and managed the band following his father’s death, he also managed the Wimbledon Palais.  Bernard’s son Michael performed as Mike Rabin and the Demons in the late 1960s/early 1970. Meanwhile David’s daughter Rachel (stagename RAIGN) is a singer, songwriter and producer who came to fame after appearing on The X Factor in 2014.

(1) Quoted in Western Daily Press 11.11.40

(2) Harry’s daughter Beryl was a singer with the Oscar Rabin Band and she was married to Peter Potter who would devise and chair the US version of Jukebox Jury

(3) Jerome Kern’s Dancing Time had been Rabin’s signature tune since 1935

(4) Other singers performing with The Rabin Band, though not on any radio broadcasts, included Mike Redway and Bernard Manning

(5) Henebery also worked on Saturday Club and produced BBC2’s seminal Jazz 625 series

(6) Monday 13 February 1961 from 1300 to 1345 on the BBC Light Programme

(7) By coincidence there was a singer called Annabelle Lee who toured with the Oscar Rabin Band in the 1940s and in the 1950s sang with the Fraser Hayes Four

This is the first in a short series of posts marking the launch of the BBC Light Programme 80 years ago.