Beverly Jones

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This fine city of ours can boast a long line of great female vocalists, including The Orchids, Lynne Curtis, Beverly Martyn, Pauline Black, Hazel O’Connor, Julianne Regan, Tracey Cattell from the Primitives, Fi from Dragster and Julie Ann Burrows from The Satin Dolls. All superb in their own right of course, but today we are looking at Coventry’s Bev Jones a 60’s beat singer who always hits the mark with her tremendous no holds bared gusto vocals.

She was born in Kersley Hospital and lived in Aldermans Green andbegan singing in Coventry at the age of 14. Her life would change when she entered and won a talent contest at the Ritz cinema singing a Brenda Lee song “Let’s Jump The Broomstick. She would face a career of being Coventry’s Answer to Brenda Lee, The win became the catalyst for her singing career. After a bout of singing with Johnny and the Rebels, Beverley formed her own hand-picked band and went under the name Jackie Laine and the Three Jays. One night whilst singing in the Craftsman pub, Radford, a man approached her and told Bev he liked her sound and promised she would contacted shortly. Not much of a second thought was given to the event until a man to Beverley’s surprise did indeed contact her and London began calling!

The man’s name was Denny Boyce, Kathy Kirby’s manager. Denny arranged for our Bev to take part in the early rounds of another singing competition with an EMI recording contract as a prize! As look would have it, she was spotted by A&R man Peter Sullivan who was in the audience and he liked what he heard and Bev bagged an EMI contract that night, she continued with the competition however and as usual she won it! After changed her name back to Beverley Jones her first recording was released in January 1963 entitled The Boy I Saw In You. It was to pick up numerous airplays and caused a considerable stir, the inevitable comparisons to Brenda Lee would also come, so much so that she was instructed to take singing lessons to take the edge off her voice. After some six months of vocal coaching, she returned triumphantly sounding even more like Miss Lee than ever before! I asked Beverley how she felt about the comparison? “It was Flattering to be known as Coventry’s answer to Brenda Lee, as she was the female voice of that time. I did find it hard to choose recording material not to sound so like her. The Brenda Lee title never really went away I started singing songs by male singers of the time like the Animals and the Stones”.

Life was hectic in those days, and a typical Saturday night was a 45-minute set in a Coventry pub then on to a club like Finbarr’s finishing off in a night-club in Birmingham. “The Flying Club was another big venue in Coventry”, reveals Beverley, “On one occasion we did an around the clock thing. There were six bands playing. It was continuous music, non-stop through the night. At the end of the night the bands cooked breakfast for all the punters that remained”. More singles followed like ‘Wait Till My Bobby Gets Home’ and ‘Why Do lovers Break Each Others Heart’. Although none of them charted, it’s testament to her success, when a certain Dusty Springfield was once in Beverley’s dressing room and was told to leave because It belonged to Miss Jones. Beverley tells the story,”I had turned up at the television studio to appear on Disc A Go Go pop show and Dusty Springfield was in my dressing room. I was told she would be asked to leave but I said tell her to take her time, When I got into my dressing room there was a message across the mirror in red lipstick saying Best wishes Beverly, Love Dusty S x”. 

Things were going well for the teenage Beverly Jones,she even had her life story depicted in the famous Judy comic! The records she was making however were using big bands as backing. She desperately wanted to return to using a beat band, so in ‘63’ she teamed up with Coventry unit The Millionaires for a while, (Ricky Dawson, their lead singer, was known as “The Duke” so consiquently Bev became “The Duchess”). Later joining up with the band The Prestons and switched labels to Polydor and recorded the powerful single ‘Heatwave’ in 1964 (a perfect pop record, complete with a dynamic organ solo). If the A-side was great, then the B-side was incredible. Hear You Talking is a prime demonstration of a singer perfectly in control of her own voice, this cleverly written song comes over as almost an answer to John Lennon’s You Can’t Do That. It’s gritty vocals and spot-on phrasing make it one of the 60’s lost gems. The single had every chance of making it, but Bev had in meantime joined new band Mad Classix and was touring Germany and consequently it remained unpromoted! 

With Mad Classix, she would marry the lead singer Johnny Wells. They spent a lot of time touring Germany in not always the best of conditions, often supporting the German band The Rattlers (remember their only UK hit The Witch)? She spent the rest of the decade being a mum but continued singing whenever she could, including a stint in the band Hells Angels. In 1976 she had joined four guys in the group Formula 5 were born, even getting themselves on the talent show of the time New Faces. Beverly’s career has been varied, despite the lack of any real chart success, she has worked with many groups and musicians mixing with the likes of the Beatles and Freddie and The Dreamers. She remains a credit to Coventry music. I’ll leave the last words to Bev. “I enjoyed the whole thing, I working with the Prestons who I recorded Heat wave with. The Mad Classix experience gave me the chance to tour Germany and work with some great artists. I never really stopped and I still perform today, usually to raise funds for charity. If there’s some money needs to be raised, before I know it I’m up there on stage doing it again.“

Beverly Jones Trivia

  • In her first competition Beverly won it by singing along to just a drum beat because the band didn’t know Let’s Jump The Broomstick! 
  • The Harry Robinson Orchestra and The Mike Samme singers provided backing on her first records. 
  • Wait Till My Bobby Gets Home is available on the compilation CD “Dream Babes Volume 1, Am I Dreaming” (RPM137). 

For more Backbeat information go to www.covmusic.net 

You can hear Pete Chambers on Bob Brolly’s Friday Show every 

fortnight from 3.00 p.m. on BBC WM: Coventry & Warwickshire

Posted in Beverly Jones, Pete Chambers.
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