Barry Band: Drum roll please... but keep it down as Britain’s very first rock’n’roller Tommy Steele crashes into resort

The filing cabinet clear-out continues and here’s a ‘50 years ago’ item, the best of a bunch of old theatre programmes.

It’s The Tommy Steele Show, the 1970 summer season attraction at Blackpool’s ABC Theatre.

This was Tommy’s third summer show in the resort. To quickly recall the story of Cockney merchant seaman Tommy Hicks, he was discovered busking in a Soho coffee bar, his first record, Rock With the Caveman, reached Number 13 in the charts in October, 1956, and ten weeks later he topped the charts with Singing the Blues.

By the time he came to Blackpool in July 1957, for a month of afternoon shows at the old Palace Theatre, he had filmed his life story. He was only 21!

Billeted at the sedate Majestic Hotel, in St Annes, he was asked to leave after playing the drums in the ballroom at 3am.

By the time of his first full Blackpool summer season, The Big Show of 1960, at the Opera House, he had ditched rock’n’roll to become an all-round entertainer.

A little known Blackpool visit saw him topping a variety bill at the old Queen’s Theatre in October, 1962.

In March, 1963, he opened at London’s Cambridge Theatre for 678 performances in the musical Half A Sixpence (Kipps, by HG Wells) followed by an eight-month run on Broadway.

A film version was made in 1967 with Tommy reprising his role of Arthur, with Julia Foster as Ann.

This was followed by two Hollywood films, The Happiest Millionaire, with Fred McMurray and Lesley Ann Warren, and Finian’s Rainbow, with Fred Astaire and Petula Clark.

When Tommy returned to Blackpool for the 1970 summer season, he had been voted fourth most popular film personality by British film exhibitors.

With Tommy in the ABC season was Welsh singer Mary Hopkin, who had come to fame by winning TV’s Opportunity Knocks in 1968, following it with a chart-topper, Those Were the Days, and number two placings with Goodbye and Knock, Knock, Who’s There?

The latter song was her 1970 Eurovision Song Contest entry, just pipped by the winner, Dana’s All Kinds of Everything.

Moving ahead to 1979, Tommy was back at the ABC in a song and dance show with a big orchestra, An Evening With Tommy Steele.

His fans adored him but the show was too slick for the seaside and attendances were not up to expectations.

In 1986, Tommy brought his West End song and dance show to the Opera House for a series of summer Sunday nights and it fared well.

We had to go to Manchester to see Tommy in his tours of the musicals Singing in the Rain and Some Like It Hot and didn’t see him again until he came to the Grand in February, 2008, as Dr Dolittle in the fantasy musical by Leslie Bricusse. That was 51 years after his first Blackpool appearance. But there was more to come!

Tommy brought his Palladium success, Scrooge, to the Opera House for Christmas, 2013, and was back at the big theatre in October, 2015, as Major Glenn Miller.

Have I missed anything?