Dick’s Picks: King Size Taylor & The Dominos – Vintage ’60s Rock n’ Roller/Beat 7″ vinyl single

Dick’s Picks: Hard-to-find rock ‘n’ roll/beat nugget from King Size Taylor & The Dominos

King Size who?

It weren’t just them bloomin’ Beatles who got the rock ‘n’ roll bug in that there Liverpool at the tail end of the ’50s you know. Kingsize Taylor (did he like a roll up we wonder?) and the Dominos formed in the late ’50s and were one of the first bands in the Liverpool area to be tagged with the ‘beat group’ tag. Contemporaries of the Beatles, they were hugely influential and counted a young Cilla Black (or White as she was then) as one of their vocalists. They didn’t get a whiff of success or chart action in the UK but, after playing the same Hamburg fleapits as the Beatles (them again) they had a handful of pop hits in Germany

Lipstick Powder and Paint / Heeby Jeebies

Like many bands from the era the songs Kingsize Taylor & The Dominos performed were often interchangeable as they tended to draw on the same musical sources for inspiration -for this release however, Kingsize and Co’s take on Joe Turner’s ’56 classic, Lipstick Powder & Paint was a bit of a curverball. The song would have been known to the band (most probably) through its inclusion on the ‘youthquake’ movie ‘Shake, Rattle & Roll’. Turner’s original is wonderful, incorporating elements of swing, big band, blues and that new fangled rock n’ roll, here’s a taste…

…..Kingsize Tatlor and Co. prove their no slouches either with their version upping the rock n’ roll ante and giving it a decidedly ‘Bill Hayley esque/Shake Rattle & Roll’ vibe (funny that), all in all it packs a punch and the performances have a suitably ‘loose’ feel, not the slightly awkward and uptight feel of other bands from the era trying out that rock ‘n’ roll thang…..

The above ‘live’ take is a slightly different version to the one on the 7″ as sadly that’s not been uploaded to Youtube but you can get an idea of just how good it sounds, infact the b-side ‘Heeby Jeebies’ is also missing from Youtube which is a damn shame as it’s 2.30 of rip-snortin’ rock ‘n’ roll replete with honking sax solo too and is arguably better than the A-side…..you’re just going to have take my word for it or buy the 7″ single yourself, you won’t be disappointed!

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