If Jack Good had by no means existed, it’s unlikely that anybody would have had the temerity to make him up. The completely British, Oxford-educated TV and music producer and actor was by no means a part of the rock‘n’roll way of life, however the style would by no means have fairly been the identical with out him.
Good’s dying on September 24, 2017 on the age of 86, after issues from a fall, robbed us of a real unique. By no means knowingly unopinionated and endlessly ingenious, he was instrumental in no fewer than three touchstone reside efficiency collection that had been landmarks in each music and tv: Britain’s Six 5 Particular and Oh Boy! and America’s Shindig!
A pair jive on the set of ‘Six Five Special.’ Photograph: Richi Howell/Redferns
His fast emergence after his time as a BBC trainee led him in 1957 to Six 5 Particular, with which the Company dipped its toe into the by-now plain world of rock’n’roll. His was the revolutionary thought (years earlier than High Of The Pops and Prepared Regular Go!) of filling the TV studio with youngsters dancing to the performers, who included such British favourites as Lonnie Donegan, Jim Dale, and Petula Clark.
Refusing to fulfill the BBC’s calls for for non-music content material within the present, Good walked away from its reported audiences of 12 million and joined the business TV firm ABC to create 1958’s continuous music present Oh Boy! Cliff Richard was a fixture on the collection, as had been Marty Wilde and different early British rockers.
Advisor, musician, producer
Good adopted with such collection as Boy Meets Woman and Wham!, and was behind the concept to vary Gene Vincent’s picture to the enduring black leather-based look he grew to become recognized for. As a musician, he performed with Lord Rockingham’s XI, of “Hoots Mon!” fame, and as a file producer, he was on the desk for Billy Fury’s hugely-respected 1960 LP The Sound of Fury.
Within the Sixties, Good wrote file critiques for music publications and adopted his performing bent to seem in such collection as Hogan’s Heroes and, later, The Monkees, and the Elvis Presley film Clambake. However by then he had repeated his British achievements by establishing the American pop TV collection Shindig!, which ran for 2 collection in 1964-65 and showcased such artists as Sam Cooke, the Seashore Boys, Bo Diddley, Sonny and Cher, and Jackie Wilson.
Producing Jerry Lee and P.J.
Good’s astoundingly diversified resumé additionally included notable achievements in musical theater, akin to Catch My Soul, the rock model of Shakespeare’s Othello. The unique US staging dramatically forged Jerry Lee Lewis within the function of Iago, whereas the British model featured P.J. Proby and P.P. Arnold amongst others. A movie was manufactured from it in 1974.
Good additionally conceived and directed the profitable 1977 jukebox musical about Presley’s life, Elvis — The Musical. It introduced Welsh rocker Shakin’ Stevens to a London viewers and led to the file deal that helped him grow to be the UK’s most profitable singles artist of the Nineteen Eighties. The favored 1992 musical Good Rockin’ Tonight was loosely based mostly on the impresario’s life. In later years, Good grew to become a Roman Catholic and devoted his time to portray icons, dwelling in New Mexico earlier than returning to Oxfordshire, the place he handed away.
At all times positive of his opinions and unafraid to go towards the grain, he gave Disc & Music Echo the advantage of his views on the tv scene of 1968, a decade after he had helped revolutionize it. “There is talent in Britain that just isn’t being projected in the right way,” he stated.
“Unless an adventurous producer takes a programme into his own hands and really lets rip I can’t see anything than for things to just keep getting worse and worse,” Good went on. “TV pop shows are geared totally to the record industry, and the record industry is geared to itself, which means breeding weaklings.”
