Rock
Cuddly Dudley
Sobre Cuddly Dudley
Data de nascimento
May 22, 1924
Género
Rock
Cuddly Duddly sounds like a name out of a very different time in popular culture, and it -- and he -- was. Born Dudley Heslop in the 1930s, he became a professional singer in the early '50s and started recording in the mid-'50s for Oriole Records, a family-owned concern and perhaps the smallest of England's major labels. He worked with the Charles Ross Orchestra, distinctly singing in a big-band idiom just prior to rock & roll's starting to make inroads into British music. Heslop had an advantage: He had a strong voice and could handle rock & roll. Taking on the professional moniker of "Cuddly Duddly," he was positioned by his manager as England's answer to the Big Bopper. With his big voice and flashy suits -- highlighted by large, ornate ties -- he fit the role and then some, and he did have a good rock & roll crooner's voice.
He was probably already England's top homegrown Black rock & roll singer when he got his big break. Producer Jack Good had put together a rock & roll showcase on TV called Oh Boy! and was in the market for resident artists -- Cuddly Duddly ended up as one of them alongside Cliff Richard, Marty Wilde, and other new U.K. rock stars. He became a star on the show, and cut a single of "Later" b/w "Lots More Love" in 1959 on EMI's HMV imprint, and he made it onto the Oh Boy! tie-in LP that was issued with two of his featured songs. By 1960, he was fronting his own combo, an all-Black band billed the Embraceable Four, and they released a single -- a cover of Chuck Berry's "Too Pooped to Pop." He later had a white band called the Redcaps backing him. They released one single together, "Sitting on a Train," but never made the charts. The Redcaps' bassist and drummer, Johnny Spence and Frank Farley, later became part of Johnny Kidd & The Pirates. By the time of the Merseybeat boom, Heslop was working in cabaret and recording for Pye Records' Piccadilly imprint, as well as his old friends at Oriole, and by 1963/1964 had switched his sound to ska and bluebeat, which had found significant audiences in England. He disappeared from the pop music scene in the mid-'60s. Since then, his name has turned up in various accounts of British rock & roll's first 50 years, and his songs have appeared on reissues, principally associated with Oh Boy! ~ Bruce Eder
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