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Georgie Fame
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
| Georgie Fame | |
|---|---|
| Born | June 26, 1943 |
| Occupation | musical artist |
Georgie Fame (b. June 26, 1943) is a British rhythm and blues and jazz singer and keyboard player whose real name is Clive Powell.
Fame was born in Leigh in Lancashire. At sixteen years of age he entered into a management agreement with Larry Parnes, who gave artists new names such as Marty Wilde and Billy Fury. Fame was already playing piano for Billy Fury in a backing band called the Blue Flames, which later became billed as Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames. The band had great success with R&B. Their greatest success was "The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" in 1968, which was a number-one hit in the United Kingdom and in the United States; they also had UK No. 1 hits with "Yeh Yeh" (1965) and "Get Away" (1966). Though he enjoyed regular chart success with singles in the late 60s, it was a peculiar quirk of chart statistics that his only three Top 10 hits all made No. 1.
Fame continued playing into the 1970s, enjoying a hit with Alan Price (ex-keyboard player of The Animals), "Rosetta", in 1971. He has also toured as one of the Rhythm Kings, with his friend Bill Wyman playing bass.
From the late 1980s, until the 1997 album The Healing Game he was a core member of Van Morrison's band, as well as his musical producer, playing keyboards and singing harmony vocals on tracks like "In the Days before Rock'n'Roll", whilst still recording and touring as an artist in his own right. He frequently plays residences at jazz clubs such as Ronnie Scott's. He has also played organ on Starclub's album..
Fame attained a place in broadcasting history when Ronan O'Rahilly began to relate various stories of how he had managed Fame and ended up with his first record which he could not get played by the BBC. As the fable goes, O'Rahilly took the Georgie Fame record to Radio Luxembourg who also turned him down, following which (O'Rahilly claims) he reacted by stating he would start his own radio station in order to promote the record. The station supposedly became the offshore pirate radio station Radio Caroline.