Tommy Steele biography

 

Singer

Before landing a singing career, Steele tried his hand at a number of odd jobs and had a brief spell as a merchant seaman. Like many singers of his era he never did National Service, having failed the medical examination because, at eighteen years old, he was diagnosed as suffering with cardiomyopathy. However, according to his autobiography, Bermondsey Boy: Memories of a Forgotten World, he failed the medical because he had flat feet. While on leave or during dock strikes, he played guitar and banjo and sang in The 2i's Coffee Bar and The Cat's Whisker where hand-jiving was devised, two coffee houses in Soho, both as a solo performer and with Wally Whyton's Vipers Skiffle Group. When a ship Steele was serving on docked in Norfolk, Virginia, he heard Buddy Holly and fell in love with rock and roll, turning his back on the British skiffle craze. He was discovered by freelance photographer John Kennedy, who believed Steele could be Britain's answer to Elvis Presley. Later co-manager Larry Parnes was incorrectly credited with creating the stage name 'Tommy Steele.' It was Steele who adapted the surname of his Scandinavian paternal grandfather, Thomas Stil-Hicks (pronounced Steel-Hicks), adding another E to the spelling.

Steele shot quickly to fame in the UK as the frontman for a rock and roll band, the Steelmen, after their first single, "Rock With The Caveman," reached number 13 in the UK Singles Chart in 1956. Steele and other British singers would pick known hit records from the United States, record their cover versions of these songs, and release them in the UK before the American versions could enter the charts. Most of Steele's 1950s recordings were covers of American hits, such as "Singing the Blues" and "Knee Deep in the Blues". Although Steele never proved a serious threat to Presley's popularity in the UK, he did well on the 1950s UK chart and "Singing the Blues" got to Number 1 in the UK before Presley did so. Guy Mitchell was number 1 with "Singing the Blues" on 4 January 1957 and Tommy Steele on 11 January 1957. Steele's 1957 album, The Tommy Steele Story, was the first by a UK-based act to reach #1 in the UK. Only four months after his first chart presence, he was filming his life story. To do so, Steele and his songwriting collaborators, Lionel Bart and Mike Pratt, wrote twelve songs in seven days. His first three single releases were issued at a rate of one every three weeks. in 1957 Steele bought a four-bedroomed house in South London for his parents. In August 1959, Steele undertook a three-day concert visit to Moscow.

In late 2009 his greatest hits collection, The Very Best of Tommy Steele, reached the Top 40 in the UK Albums Chart. This was the first UK chart entry, of any kind, that Steele had enjoyed for over forty eight years.

Actor

The increase in home-grown musical talent during the 1960s allowed Steele to progress to a career in stage and film musicals, leaving behind his pop idol identity. In the West End he appeared in the title role of Hans Christian Andersen. On film, he recreated his London and Broadway stage role in Half A Sixpence, and played character roles in The Happiest Millionaire and Finian's Rainbow, although many criticsfound his personality to be somewhat overwhelming on screen. In this latter film, probably his best known appearance in the movies, he played Og, the leprechaun turning human, and co-starred with Petula Clark and Fred Astaire. In April 1971, Steele starred in his own show Meet Me in London at London's Adelphi Theatre.

In 1983, Steele directed and starred in the West End stage production of Singin' in the Rain at the London Palladium. In 1991 he toured with Some Like It Hot the stage version of the Jack Lemmon and Marilyn Monroe film. In 2003, after a decade-long hiatus, save his one man shows An Evening With Tommy Steele and What A Show!, he toured as Ebenezer Scrooge in a production of Scrooge: The Musical, an adaptation of Scrooge. Following this return, he reprised his role at the Palace Theatre, Manchester over Christmas 2004, and brought the production to the London Palladium for Christmas 2005. In 2008, at the age of 71, Steele toured in the lead role of the stage musical Doctor Dolittle, and reprised his role as Scrooge during the Christmas season in 2009.