The Big O’s eight dates in Blackpool

Hard to believe it was 50 years ago.

Roy Orbison headed a three-night Spring Bank Holiday show at Blackpool’s ABC Theatre.

And hard to believe that 1970 was the first time that comedians could appear in Sunday concerts.

Promoter Harold Fielding had smartly engaged Ken Dodd to top the Opera House bill on Easter Sunday and also the Spring Bank Holiday Sunday.

Until 1970 all stage acts had to be of a musical nature because of Sunday Observance laws that dated back a century.

But the law had become a joke in itself as many musical acts, for example Morton Fraser’s Harmonica Gang, were also comedy acts.

Musical acts still dominated Sunday show bills and American stars like Roy Orbison were a “must” for autograph collectors.

The artists would arrive during the late morning or afternoon for a sound check or a confab with the MD.

Were you star-struck? As someone who sat with Paul McCartney and George Harrison and never asked for an autograph, you can include me out, as Damon Runyan wrote.

I remember writing a piece in 1970 that asked: Who on earth would call a pop band Mungo Jerry? Wasn’t he an African explorer?

No, singer Ray Dorset had named his “jug band” after one of TS Eliot’s Practical Cats, soon to be better known as a character in Andrew Lloyd Webber’s Cats.

And, you history buffs, of course I know the African explorer was called Mungo Park!roy or

Mungo Jerry, the group, had been unknown until May, 1970, when they were the unlikely success of a rockfest on a Staffordshire farm and had an immediate hit with In the Summertime.

In August they topped the bill of a couple of Blackpool Opera House Sunday concerts.

Roy Orbison, in his eight visits to Blackpool, was particularly popular with fans. The Big O, the Man in Black, had that air of mystery, his eyes hidden behind thick shades, but was very obliging.

My correspondent Ray Dolling, a former ABC circuit man, tells me that on the 1970 weekend the hit recorder of Only the Lonely, Pretty Woman and It’s Over (to name a few) was presented by pop promoter Arthur Howes.

Roy had just starred at the Batley Variety Club and was due to appear at the Nashville Festival.

He was backed on his tours by a British band called the Art Movement because Equity didn’t allow him to bring his American band.

Six of Roy’s Blackpool visits were at the ABC and two were at the Dickson Road Odeon, which is now the Funny Girls venue.

His first ABC visit was on Saturday, March 20, 1965. Roy’s next two tours came to the Odeon - on April 11, 1966, and March 27, 1967.

In 1968 he was back at the ABC on Sunday, August 4, and again in 1969 for a three-night Spring Bank Holiday show.

After his ABC weekend of 1970 he was to make two more appearances there; on September 3, 1972, and on Easter Monday, April 7, 1980.

Tribute artist Barry Steele will be touring The Roy Orbison Story this autumn.