Welcome to a Breath of Fresh Air with Sandy Kaye. Hello, I’m so glad you decided to join me today. Before I introduce you to our guest, I just wanted to say a very big thanks to everyone who sent me emails and left comments and messages on social media.
It appears you’re enjoying my interviews and that makes me really happy. A reminder, if you’ve missed an episode and I’d like to go back through my catalogue, you’ll find all the episodes on the website abreathoffreshair.com.au. Now on with it. I tracked down our feature artist today a little while ago and was really chuffed when he agreed to have a chat.
He was born and raised in Texas, but as a rock and roller never really hit it big in his homeland. Fans, however, couldn’t get enough of him in the UK as his trouser busting stage antics helped turn him into a genuine pop star at the height of the British invasion. I know you know his name.
You may even be aware that he was a bit of a wild man. Now let’s meet PJ Proby. Hey there.
PJ Proby, are you okay if I take you back a bit and we talk about some of your life? Sure, go ahead. Lovely. I know you were born as James Marcus Smith.
You were the great-grandson of an Old West outlaw. John Wesley Harden. How did that affect you growing up? Well, it only affected me in playing Cowboys and Indians.
I was always John Wesley. We did a lot of playing Cowboys and Indians when we were young, didn’t we? Oh yeah, I lived it. I bet you did.
After your parents divorced, you were actually sent off to military academy. How did that go for you? Well, it went pretty bad. Put me in a full uniform immediately, like I was in the army.
We had the same exact clothes as the soldiers in World War II. And daddy saw me crying. He said, Jimmy, stop that.
You’re 10 years old now. You’re a grown man. I cried for about three weeks.
I had my ass beat for not doing things right. So I started learning how to become an officer right there so I wouldn’t get whipped anymore. So I went from a private to a You were my first and you’ll be my last.
I will never make you blue. I’ll be true to you. You can love but one girl.
Let me be that one girl to you. It was sometime after you left school that you decided that you wanted to have a career in the movies. I decided that when I was like five and six years old, when I saw my first movies.
I was completely hooked when I saw Bambi, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Everything that had to do with movies, I wanted to be in. So acting was there from the beginning? Totally.
What took you then to California? Well, when I was a teenager, I knew a boy named Tommy Sands, and he was called Little Tommy Sands because he was only 12 years old when he made it. He was a singer. He had hit records in the country field, and he was going with my step sister, Betty Moore’s.
Hey, me and my baby are going steady. We ain’t married, but we’re getting ready to tie the knot. And I’m gonna make her my own.
Now that I found her, I’m gonna keep her. Fighters, keepers, losers, weepers. She’s my baby.
She’s going steady with me. He got me on a television show, Cracker Barrel Corner. Biff Colley came to us one day and said, boys, I want to take you out to meet a new boy this Saturday at the Hitchin Post where you’re singing.
And he’ll be singing out there with you. He’s new on the scene. His name’s Elvis Presley.
And so we went out there Saturday night, and we met this guy. Long sideburns, speckled pink and black jacket on with a speckled pink and black pants and alligator shoes with short shoe shoelaces. We were introduced and everything.
Elvis said, please meet you, boy. Pleased to meet you. Looked over at my sister, Betty, and he just completely flipped out.
And he got on stage that night and sang every song to Betty. The next morning, his Cadillac was in our driveway, and Mama had fixed him a chicken dinner and everything. And he sat back and he ate his dinner.
At the end of a meal, he said, Mr. Morris, that’s one of the best chicken dinners I’ve ever had. So would you mind if Betty and I got up in the living room and listen to some music? Mother said, no, Elvis, do anything you want. He said, thank you very much.
And Mother had set the whole table with Irish linen tablecloths, her best, and her best Irish linen napkins. And he picked up the table cloth and wiped his mouth with the tablecloth. Thank you very much, ma’am.
Thank you very much. And my mother almost fainted. And I said, Mama, he was born poor.
He’s a country boy. And country boys even wipe their mouth on their sleeves, much less the tablecloth. So that’s the only thing Elvis knew when he was growing up.
I forgot to remember to forget her. I can’t seem to get her off my mind. I thought I’d never miss her, but I found out somehow.
I think about her almost all the time. That is what led me to Hollywood. Tommy Sands was waiting for me once I got there.
I went to him to ask him what my next step was when we got to Hollywood and got to a gas station. I called Tommy and he said, there’s not too much I can do for you right now, Jimmy, because I’m doing a picture with Nut Funicello and Pat Boone and I haven’t got very much time. He said, why don’t you go up to Lillian Goodman, the vocal coach, and if you can get her to teach you, you’ll run into all kinds of people that will help you.
So I went up there, I sang for Lillian, and she accepted me. My daddy said, how much is it going to cost me? He said, it’ll cost you quite a bit. So daddy put me with Lillian for a year.
Within two weeks, Lillian had introduced me to Ray Gilbert, who wrote Zoot Suit with a replete and Zippity-Doo-Dah. He became my manager. He took me to Gaby Lutz-Heller in Loeb, who had all the biggest names in show business.
And I sang for them. See, there were no cassette players in those days. You had to sing live.
And I sang for them at the front of their desk. And they said, we’d like to sign you up. How old are you? I said, 17.
And they said, Jimmy, how much do you want to sign with us? I’d never heard of how much you want. And I said, how much do I want? And daddy said, Jimmy, go and sit out in the foyer. I’ll do this deal for you.
I was all signed and sealed, delivered in Hollywood at that time. So PJ, was it the combination of your really good looks and a good singing voice that they all wanted you and signed you on the spot? Uh-huh. Yeah.
Well, I thought that I was so damn good looking in those days that I just put on a beautiful sports coat and a nice shirt and walked out of Hollywood Boulevard thinking I was already a movie star. And even when the movie stars passed, I’d just say, hello. Like, I’m one of you.
Hi, I’m one of you. It never even passed my mind that I hadn’t done anything yet. I love it.
The power of positive thinking. Yeah, that’s right. Well, you started working, didn’t you? And you were given the stage name of Jet Powers at the time.
Yeah. Well, before we left Gaby Litzheller and Loeb, they said, we can’t use the name Jimmy Smith or James Smith. So there’s already a John Smith who’s already an established movie star.
And you’ll have to get another name. And of course, Ray Gilbert jumped in and said, why don’t you call him Jiminy Cricket? And I said, my God, no, no, don’t tell me something from Song of the South or one of those pictures. Don’t do that to me.
I said, I’ve got a name. So I thought, Jet and Tyrone Power, Jet Powers. And they said, that’s fine, you’re Jet Powers.
But that didn’t last very long, did it? Well, it lasted up until 1961 or two, when I’d met Sharon Shealy. I’d met everybody in Hollywood by the Everlys, but Ricky Nelson, who Sharon wrote Poor Little Fool for. I used to play around the parks, chasin’ at my car.
But when I met that little girl, I knew that I was born for a little fool. Oh yeah, I was a fool. Oh, poor little fool.
I was a fool, oh yeah. Through Sharon Shealy, I’d met everybody. And she was going with a singer called Eddie Cochran.
And Eddie and I became best friends. And then she had a girl living with her called Dottie Harmony, who was going with Elvis. And Elvis got drafted.
Dottie took him to the draft board and had her picture taken with everything and spent that Christmas with him. And then he was drafted and living at Sharon Shealy’s house. And one day I was laying in bed and this friend of mine, Jimmy Blumberg, came over and said, put some clothes on, I’m gonna take you over to a friend of mine, Sharon Shealy’s house.
I said, now why in hell would I wanna go over there? And he said, there’s a girl there that you have always been wanting to meet. I said, who’s that? He said, Dottie Harmony. I said, what? And he said, put a shirt on, come on, I’ll take you over there.
And so we went over, introduced to Sharon and Mary Jo, her sister. And then about 30, 45 minutes passed and I turned to Blumberg and I said, you lying sucker. I said, they know Dottie Harmony here.
And Sharon heard me. And she said, oh yeah? Well, then who’s that at the top of the stairs? And I looked up and there was this beautiful blonde, it was Harmony. Within a week, I moved in with Dottie at a trailer.
We got engaged to be married. So Dottie had been Elvis’s girlfriend. Elvis had gone out with your sister.
And Sharon Shealy was a songwriter at the time. She was 14 when she wrote Poor Little Fool for Ricky. And she introduced me to a guy called Baker Knight, who wrote The Wonder of you.
When no one else can understand me. When everything I do is wrong. Give me love and consolation.
You give me hope to carry on. And you’re always there to lend a hand. Lane Dorsey and Baker Knight were the main songwriters for Ricky Nelson.
And so knowing Sharon, that’s how I got in with that whole gang of people. I found I was writing more Sinatra and more Tony Bennetty. And I learned from the Burnett brothers and from Baker Knight and Sharon, I noticed they were writing for teenagers and the songs were very teenagey.
So I learned how to bring it down from all this heavy, heavy stuff to lighter music that was selling. And that’s how I got my first hit record, Ain’t Gonna Kiss You for this girl’s group. And that was my beginning of writing commercial type music, not the classical type stuff that Sinatra did.
That single was your entree card. Yeah, that was it. Was it Sharon that renamed you again? Oh, yeah.
What happened is I was pretty wild in Hollywood. I was very wild in Hollywood. Dottie and I had broken up and she had married Bob Colbert of Time Tunnel.
She heard about me being so wild and came down and picked me up one day. And I thought we’re back together. I gave her a cat, a black cat.
And I got in the car and we were driving off and I thought we were going back to the trailer in Burbank. And we went past the Capitol building going the other way. And I said, aren’t we going to the valley to the trailer? Aren’t we back together? And she said, no, no, no, no.
I’m taking you out to Eddie Cochran’s brother’s. He’s building a recording studio and I’ve got you a job helping him build the studio. And I said, oh, my God.
And so we got there and I was introduced to Bob Cochran, Eddie’s brother. And she said, now, Bobby, you put him to work. Dottie got in the car and left.
And so I went to work building the recording studio with him. I lasted about a month and I got in a fight with his boss and he pulled us apart. Bob said, get him off my property.
So Bob took me into Hollywood and didn’t have any money. No, I had ten dollars. Couldn’t find any place that cheap.
So we passed on Wilcox Boulevard to sign saying, Macaukey Agency, room for rent. I said, stop there. Let me go in and check this out.
So I went in there and met the lady who ran the place. Turned out to be an agent for singers and everything. She took me back to a garage apartment.
It’s one little bed in a sink. No toilet. I said, this will do.
How much is it? She said, twenty five a month. I said, well, I’ve only got ten. I had my guitar with me.
We were walking back to the car, to Bob’s car. And she said, do you play that thing you’re carrying? I said, my guitar, you mean? She said, yeah. I said, of course I do.
I’m a singer. She said, you are? I said, well, I get people work. She said, I’ll give you the room for ten a month.
And so I said, Bobby, I got the room. See you later. Maybe a month.
And nothing was happening for me. So I decided to just go on back to Texas and join their army. So I was walking down the street and I looked over on my left and on a building there was a sign that said songs wanted a hundred dollars a song.
And I just turned. There was a line of boys there and I got in line because I had just written about three or four songs for Dottie. And I went in and I sung my three songs.
And I didn’t think I’d impressed him at all. Shut my guitar case. I was about to go out the door.
He said, don’t you want your money? I said, what? He said, your three hundred dollars. I’m taking all three songs. Got to the door.
Whoa.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. At $300, I came back to the little room I had just rented and I thought, what am I going to do? So I went out and I bought myself a suit to go to all interviews with, a brand new pair of shoes so I look proper, enough canned food to last me a year.
You’re still Jet Powers at this time, aren’t you? Yeah. You haven’t been renamed yet. No.
I went out on the driveway with a beer and lay down next to a puddle of oil, pretended it was a beach, and lay back in the sun to get a tan, laying next to the oil strip and all of a sudden I heard beep, beep, beep. I looked up and there was Sharon Sheely’s Cadillac at the bottom of the driveway with Jackie Deshanin in it. And I said, well, hi, what are you all doing here? She said, come get in the car.
I’m going to take you and get you a recording contract so you have an income. I said, put some clothes on. I said, Sharon, I just went down and sold my songs to a man down the street.
He gave me $300. He said, what was his name? And I told Sharon, I know him. Get some clothes on.
I’m going to get your money back. So I went and got dressed, jumped in the car, and she took me straight to Liberty Records to meet Dick Glasser. And I sang the same three songs and he signed me.
And he said, you know, I’d like to sign you not only to Metric Music as one of our in-house writers, but you’re a good singer. I’d like to sign you as a singer to Liberty Records too. And he said, the only problem is, you’re very well known in Hollywood, Jet.
You’re known, very well known, mainly to all the police. Every Saturday you’re in jail for drunken disorderly. I said, yeah.
He said, well, we’ll have to change your name. And Sharon Seedy bumped in, change it to PJ Proby. And PJ Proby had been her boyfriend before she met Eddie Cochran.
And so he lived somewhere in San Diego and I’ve never met him. And that was the beginning of my singing career. Come on, Jet.
You never heard a word from the real PJ Proby in San Diego. Never, never again. The real thing has never gotten in touch with me.
I wonder if he’s still around. Well, yes, I wonder too. So, PJ, you started writing songs and recording demos for people like Elvis, for Bobby V and for Johnny Burnett at the time.
How did that come about? Well, the one I wrote for Elvis with Dottie Harmony, I had it taken up to Elvis. Elvis was in the shower and he yelled from the shower, who is that? I want to do that song. Who is that? And he went in to get dressed.
And while he was getting dressed, Joe Esposito, who Elvis brought back from the army, came out and said, I know who that is singing. That’s PJ Proby singing. You tell Proby it.
I want 60 percent or I won’t let Elvis do it. Well, the next day I got a phone call from Dottie saying Ricky Nelson had done it. Yeah, it’s in my dreams.
I hope the dream that you’re dreaming is the same dream that I’m dreaming too. There may come a day when I meet you outside of my dreams. But until that day, I’ll keep you inside of my dreams.
OK, so you’re now on the straight and narrow. You’re good looking. You’re singing.
You’re writing for a whole lot of artists. Things are looking up for you, right? Oh, yeah. I went to work to do all of Elvis’s movies, seeing the soundtrack, seeing the demonstration records that were taken up to Elvis for him to learn to do for the movies.
The Johnny Burnett thing is one I wrote called Clown Shoes. They gave it to Johnny and Johnny did it. And it wasn’t such a big hit in America, but it was a big hit over here in England.
I got four or five or six artists who did my records and did them very, very well. And I still get money off of it. When I get the most money off of it, I wrote Ain’t Gonna Kiss Ya, which Liberty Records sued me for.
But they also sent it to the searchers over here in England. And the searchers put it out and had a big hit with it. Most money I get to this day is off that record.
You’re gonna wonder if I even care at all Cause I told you once that come on, come on Love me before it’s all gone, all gone You’ll never know that I’m just crazy about you Why did you decide to leave Hollywood and head for the U.K.? What happened was when Sharon got back, she was in a net cast and we were nursing her Cause she almost got killed with Eddie Cochran. She was with Eddie over here when they had the car crash and Eddie was killed. And Sharon was almost killed.
We were taking care of her. So I thought, well, Dottie’s married, so I’m gonna be married. So I went, I married Mary Ann.
My wife and I had no more money. The car was repossessed. All the lights were turned off, electricity.
And Mary and I were sitting there one night in the middle of the floor eating tacos. That’s all we could afford to candlelight. And there was a knock at the door.
And I said, honey, grabbed my pistol, said, go to the door, see who that is. So she went to the door and opened the door. And there was Sharon Sheely and Jackie Deshanin.
I said, well, ladies, I let go of the gun. What brings you to this neck of the woods? They said, got somebody to meet you. And he walked over to me, said, dear boy, be at CBS tomorrow morning at 10 o’clock.
And with that, he vanished. And I said, what the hell was all that about? Sharon said, Jack is doing a new television thing called Young America Swings the World. And you’re hired to be in it.
That’s how I met Jack Good. What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. No, not just for some, but for everyone. Lord, we don’t need another mountain.
There are mountains and hillsides enough to climb. There are oceans and rivers enough to cross, enough to blast. Till the end of time.
What the world needs now is love, sweet love. It’s the only thing that there’s just too little of. So he saw not only the potential for you as a singer, but also as an actor.
Yes. And then the Beatles came out and Jack came over and said, Jim, Jim, Jim, I have to go back to England for a while. So I’ve just got a letter from the Beatles manager.
And he wants me to come over and direct their first television special. He said, what I’m going to do, dear boy, while I’m gone, I’m going to take your records. I’m going to play them for the boys and for Brian Epstein, their manager, and see if I can’t get you on the program.
I said, sure, Jack. Because at that time, I didn’t rate the Beatles. I didn’t think they were any good because I put them upside the four freshmen and the four seasons and people with these great harmonies.
And the Beatles just weren’t that good. And I was waiting for Jack to get back. And all of a sudden, the telephone rings and said, is PJ Prairie there? I said, who’s calling? This is Vivian Moynihan from Reader Fusion in England.
Would you like to come over? I’m speaking on behalf of Brian Epstein and the Beatles and Mr. Jack Goode. Would you like to come over and do their show? I said, I would love to. She said, I thought that’s what you’d say.
Your ticket has already been booked. Good day. That was it.
The last person on the show, come all the way from America. He’s a great lad. He’s a very good friend of ours.
It’s the first time he’s ever been on telly in England. So a big hand, a big round of applause for PJ Prairie. You appear on the very first Beatles television special.
What was that like for you? I still didn’t rate it as anything real big. I met the Beatles. They were nice and everything.
But I still didn’t rate them, because they only had one song out, I Want to Hold Your Hand. The thing is, I didn’t have any clothes to wear, because my wife had just left me and given all my clothes to her lover. So we had a pair of ripped jeans, which are very much in vogue today, but not in those days.
So I called Nan Morris, who worked for Henry Wilson, who I used to work for as Rock Hudson’s bodyguard. And Nan picked up a girl I was dating, Tuesday Weld, at the time. And they came to pick me up the next morning, took me out to Warner Brothers, because I still had a contract, and I went and did clothing.
And I stole a shirt that Paul Newman wore for Left Handed Gun, out of the wardrobe. And I stole a pair of boots that Russ Tamblyn wore in Seven Brides for Seven Brothers. And as I was passing the rack, I saw a really beautiful jacket, and I took that, too.
Next day, I dressed, and I put my jeans on, and my Russ Tamblyn boots, and my Paul Newman shirt. And I got to the airport. I haven’t got any money to buy drinks on the airplane.
So when it came time for me to walk down the steps, there was Jack Good with a beautiful Rolls Royce, and all the press at the foot of the stairs. And he said, Hello, welcome to England. And with that, somebody in the press said, PJ, do something British.
And I couldn’t think of anything except Winston Churchill’s sign, the V sign. Gave the V sign. Jack screamed out, No, no, Jim, no, turn it around, and I’ll tell you what you’ve done in a moment.
I turned it around, and I said, What are you yelling at, Jack? I gave the V sign. And he said, No, no, Jim, over here, the sign you gave is called a Harvey Smith. It means up yours.
So when you said, do something for England, you said, up yours, England. I’m sorry. I am so sorry.
What more can I say? Never knew how much, darling, that you meant to me. But until I, I went away. And sweetheart, it’s my fault.
It’s all my fault. All my fault. Sweetheart.
If I told a lie, if I made you cry, when I said goodbye, I’m sorry. From the bottom of my heart. So PJ, you’re not a teen idol there yet, but your music is starting to take off.
Jack Goode had introduced your music to the UK, and you had several UK top 10 hits. Well, I did. After I’d done the Beatles special, I met this girl who was on the same show called Millie, a little coloured girl.
And I was playing the guitar, singing some songs that were standard classics that I had turned into rock and roll Beatles things. And one was the old Dick Haines song, Hold Me, which was, Hold me. Honey, won’t you hold me? And I turned to her, Hold me.
Honey, won’t you hold me? Yeah. And Millie said, that’s great. Could you teach it to me? Could you teach me the guitar? I said, sure, honey.
I can teach you anything you want. And Jack walked up and said, dear boy, that’s marvellous. Let’s go in and cut it.
So the next day we were at the studio, and I met Big Jim Sullivan. Jimmy Page was only 14. He played rhythm guitar.
And so we did Hold Me. Hold me. Honey, won’t you hold me? Hold me.
Never let me go. Take me. Honey, won’t you take me? Yeah, why’d you forsake me? Can’t I love you so? Feel me.
Let your kisses fill me, yeah. Just like you and I can do. Oh.
Tenderly and boldly. Never try and hold me. Away from you.
Ah! Jack had brought a lady in who worked the evening standards, and she said, that was great, PJ. She said, it’s going to be a hit. And I said, no, it’ll never be a hit.
She said, I’ll bet it is. And so I had a bet with the Beatles it wouldn’t be a hit, and I had a bet with Maureen Cleave it wouldn’t be a hit. And I left the next day and went back to California.
The phone rang. It was another guy who wanted to be my manager. And he said, your record is at number three in the charts.
It’s Hold Me with a red bullet, meaning it’s climbing. The only people in front of me were the Beatles and the Rolling Stones.
This is a breath of fresh air with Sandy Kaye. It’s a beautiful day. You were the toast of the town.
You were this instant smash hit and a teen idol. I’ve seen the footage of you performing Hold Me and various other songs. The girls are just going absolutely crazy, screaming their heads off.
What was that like for you? Oh, it was fantastic. You see, all the other boys in this country, I noticed they never moved. The boys stood in one place and shook their hair.
I was raised where the colored people all moved all over the stage and boogied everywhere. So that’s one thing I was doing. The next thing was, I wasn’t a five-piece group, man.
Like James Brown and the Flames and all the colored boys, they had six and eighteen-piece orchestras. So I went to Bogner Regis, and I brought back an eight-, nine-, ten-piece orchestra. And I trained them to sound just like James Brown and the Flames.
You’ve got your high-heels sneakers on, slipping you High-heels sneakers on And you’re slipping you You’re more than alright You know you’re out of sight You’ve got a shapely figure, mama That keeps me uptight You’ve got a shapely figure, mama Keeps me uptight You’re too much You know you’re out of sight England had never seen anything like that. And this guy that had called me and told me that my record was number three in the charts, I had signed with him. And he had got me a show opening at the Albert Hall.
My first performance in England was at the Albert Hall. And it was the Adam Faith Show. I rehearsed and rehearsed my boys to sound big, big orchestra James Brown and the Flames.
I had a couple of James Brown songs I was doing. So I’d gone out and I’d bought all this gear that I was going to use. I hadn’t done the velvets, but I got the flared pants and the shirt like the Paul Newman shirt I’d worn over here, all done in satin.
And buckled shoes like they wore in the early England. So what I was doing, I was dressing as a peasant but in silks as a peasant. And got to the dressing room that night at the Albert Hall.
Everything arrived, the buckled shoes, pants, no shirt. The shirt did not arrive. And I had nothing to go on the stage with.
So I just had a white T-shirt and I had this lady with me. She said, PJ let me do something. I’m going to slit your sleeves at the seams all over.
And when you flex your muscles on stage and everything, you’re going to split. And the crowds are going to go wild. And that’s the only stunt I ever pulled.
Pants split, the thing I’m famous for was never, ever intended. Never. And I’ll go crazy I love you so much If you quit me I’ll go crazy But I love you, I love you I love you so much You gotta live for yourself and nobody else.
You gotta live for yourself and nobody else. If you quit me I’ll go crazy. If you don’t get me I’ll go crazy.
Did that shirt that day. I went on that night and I told the audience, ladies and gentlemen, I’ve got to come on to you tonight with no clothes on. I said my clothes didn’t arrive.
And the audience was already screaming before I even went on stage. They thought I was coming out naked. So I went on stage with the pants, the shoes, but only a T-shirt on.
Nobody had ever gone on stage in this country in a T-shirt. The Who finally came on in T-shirts. Everybody wore T-shirts after me.
But I went on and I started singing. I got through one number and it started splitting at the seams every place she had done that week in the T-shirt and they rushed the stage. The Albert Hall never had the stage rushed.
They rushed the stage, knocked over all the policemen, and the policemen drugged me off the stage and put me in a corrugated iron toilet. And as we were going off the stage, my hair wasn’t long enough for a ponytail, so I had a false one and it was pinned with bobby pins almost into my scalp and it was jerked off my head and the door to the corrugated iron toilet came open and a policeman’s arm came in with my ponytail in his hands with blood dripping from it. He said, I think this belongs to you, PJ.
And handed him my ponytail. And the next days it was headlines. I’d blown Adam Faith right off the top of the bill.
E.V. Taylor, his manager, never spoke to me again for two years. Adam Faith, of course, was budgie, wasn’t he? Yeah. Yeah.
And he was a very dear friend of mine. He was a great guy. That was the only time, thing that ever happened that was intended to happen.
Everything else you want to talk about split ends was a total, total accident because my tailors made my pants, the velvets that I’d done instead of the satins, so tight that when I do knee side slides, I told you I don’t stand in one place like the English boys and just shake my hair. I did knee slides and somersaults and flips all over the stage and of course my pants split at the knees. That’s when that happened.
But the show was me and Cilla Black and before it even happened, Tom Jones had come on the scene with It’s Not Unusual. It’s not unusual to go out at any time but when I see you out and about it’s such a crime. If you should ever want to be loved by anyone it’s not unusual, it happens every day no matter what you say you find it happens all the time He hadn’t got a following yet and Gordon Mills, his manager, went straight to Joe Collins, Joan Collins’ father who was financing the tour of me and Cilla, said I want to buy Tom in PJ Proby’s place and the Delphons, who run all of Showbiz over here said no you can’t do that.
PJ’s already an established singer here and Tom’s just starting out. You can’t do that. We can’t just fire PJ for no reason.
Mary Whitehouse said oh yes you can you can take that money because he’s an American and he’s going to do something to get in my bad books. They all do. He’ll do something that I can get him on and they’ll put Tom in his place.
You can accept the money because Tom will be taking PJ’s place. And I never knew this. Tom and I had the same minder and he told me this story years later and so pants split or no pants split, I would have been thrown off that tour and Tom would have been put on.
Just the pants split was something Mary put out to get the audience against me saying look how rude he is and how terrible he is on stage showing flesh. It became a huge scandal in the British press today. Yeah I told her I said what do you mean my knees is all it showed in any way.
You go out and see footballers showing their knees every weekend here. And I said what is this all about? I didn’t have a clue that I had been bought off. And she made such a big thing that I was such a terrible person.
I was moving like all colored people always moved in America. But of course in America they never made a big deal about anything a colored man did because they were banned from white TV shows anyway. I was going from what I saw live when I went to colored shows.
Say you love me say those pretty words and I’ll give my love to you My love is higher than a mission bell, deeper than a wishing well Stronger than a magic spell, my love for you is wider than the widest sea, longer than a memory sweeter than the honey tree, my love my love for you, my love If we can just fast forward a few years I’m really interested to hear about your collaboration with Van Morrison Well I’d known Van for a long long time we go back so far. I’d started to learn to play English football working out with Chelsea. They were playing a show business team against somebody else and I was on the show business team.
Van was on this, that’s how I met him. We were practicing and every time I kicked the ball it went into the grandstands. I couldn’t keep the ball in play on the ground.
So all of a sudden this guy came over to me and said hi my name is Van Morrison said PJ I’ll give you a case of beer just to sit this game out and not play because you can’t play soccer. I said you’re right and then we worked on and off together and one day my sister came up to me when I was helping her out at the ranch in Texas and she said have you heard this record by Van Morrison? She was a really big fan of Van and she said he’s singing about you. I said no I haven’t heard it so she put it on and it was Van Morrison’s Whatever Happened to PJ Proby.
Whatever happened to you PJ Proby wonder can you fix it Jim where the hell do you think it’s got Walker the memory is getting so dim don’t let no frame of reference no more not even screaming nor it’s such a phantom now there’s no waving loony party nowadays I guess there’s not much to relate to anymore unless you wanna be mediocre there’s nothing new under the sun and the moon and the stars now I went immediately back to England and I wrote a song called PJ Proby Calling Van Morrison. Van got in the mood to touch me and wanted me to come in and sing Whatever Happened to PJ Proby all over again with him and I said Van I can’t go singing about myself wait a minute Van yes I can I’m old enough I’m so old now I can do anything that wouldn’t hurt my career or anything else I can do anything you got a deal so I went in and Van recorded me singing with him and almost copying the way he sings and then he put me on at the Albert Hall with him we did a show together then he started using me as a demo singer for his records he’s still doing that to this day Hey Big Easy man my man how’d you find me here in Cajun land I come searching for the days of old Mr. Guitar Watson and his sound of soul Pitch my wagon to a travelling band on the paddle wheel steamer on the Reecey and wet my panties down to New Orleans to the bridge street for the cold and crawfish queen. What an amazing career you’ve had I mean just to fill in the blanks in the 80s you recorded covers of various songs including Tainted Love by Gloria Jones Love Will Tear Us Apart by Joy Division Anarchy in the UK by the Sex Pistols you did get to play Casio in Othello in the early 90s you did the musical Good Rockin’ Tonight and you played Roy Orbison in Only the Lonely you’ve had an astounding career you did a new production of Elvis the Musical as I mentioned before with Mark Armand PJ what was it like in 1997 when you toured with The Who and you were the godfather in the road production of Quadrophenia? Oh that was incredible I couldn’t believe it I’d known The Who since 64 when they were my supporting act Way down Louisiana out in Cajun land what’s got something going on something like yeah music music music music music music music music music music music music music