Here’s one of those early-’60s pop oddities – Sandra Barry & The Boyfriend’s – featuring a singer and band who became better known much later.
Sandra Alfred started out as a child actor (in The Belles Of St Trinian’s) then a solo singer in the late ’50s, before changing her name to Mandy Mason.
Next – and indeed right here – she re-emerged as Sandra Barry, backed by The Boys – who would themselves reappear shortly after this as Mod/freakbeat band The Action.
And finally, in a peripatetic career that never quite made her a star, Sandra became Alice Spring in the blues-rock group Slack Alice, a popular support act on the mid-’70s pub rock scene.
Her first single came long before that in 1957 with Rocket And Roll / Six Day Rock, followed six years later by a name change to Mandy Mason, a new deal with Parlophone, and a 1963 single called A Tear In The Eye, followed by A Sweet Love, shamelessly copying Buddy Holly’s vocal hiccup.
Moving to Decca Records, she recorded this song, Really Gonna Shake, with The Boys, released under the name Sandra Barry & The Boyfriends, in 1964.
When that also flopped, she moved again to Pye Records and made a number of singles backed by Jet Harris’s backing band The Jet Blacks, including future Led Zeppelin bassist John Paul Jones.
Moving into the ’70s, Sandra re-emerged as Alice Spring, fronting Slack Alice – here’s their song Motorcycle Dream – and later in the decade, perhaps inspired by an early gig where the then unknown Sex Pistols supported them, she fronted a post-punk band called Darling, who released an album and several singles in 1979, including this one, Voice On The Radio.
As for her backing band here, after changing their name from The Boys to The Action in early 1965, Reg King (who wrote Really Gonna Shake), Alan ‘Bam’ King, Mike ‘Ace’ Evans and Roger Powell, school friends from Kentish Town, became pioneers on the Mod scene, with a sound fusing rock’n’roll with R&B and soul.
Their last single as The Boys was It Ain’t Fair / I Want You on Pye, and after a failed audition for Decca they signed to Parlophone with producer George Martin, supporting The Who at the Marquee Club in late 1965.
Their first single, Land Of A Thousand Dances / In My Lonely Room, was not a success and nor were future efforts, often covers of Motown songs like I’ll Keep On Holding On and Baby You’ve Got It, given a new arrangement and more rocking makeover.
Despite being fired from their support slot with The Who because Kit Lambert felt they provided too much competition for his fledgling band, they got their own Marquee residency and acquired a Mod following of their own (including a teenage Phil Collins).
Led by Reg King’s soulful vocals, and noted for their three-part harmonies (with King and Watson), they could and should have been far bigger than they were.
They were hampered partly by their mentor George Martin – his company AIR financed all their recordings – being preoccupied with some other group making an album called Sgt Pepper.
A diversion into a softer flower-power sound with Shadows And Reflections failed to change the course of their fortunes, and by the end of 1967, after several personnel changes, they moved towards a radically different psychedelic style influenced by The Byrds, typified by an experimental number called Brain.
The results confused their Mod fans and Reg King exited the band, who changed their name briefly to Azoth before reverting to The Action, and recording new material in a West Coast-influenced, psychedelic style verging on folk-rock.
By 1969 The Action – now practising Muslims – were finally and permanently re-christened Mighty Baby, recording two albums under that name, and playing on a solo album by Reg King before disbanding altogether in 1971.
Various members would reappear, most notably Martin Stone as a founding member of Chilli Willi & The Red Hot Peppers – a ubiquitous pub band in my teens – and Alan King as a founding member of Ace, who made the great tune How Long.
And that was that until 1980 when a compilation album of the Action’s Parlophone tracks was released, with sleeve notes written by fan Paul Weller (“The Action had it in their soul”), who declared Reggie King to be “one of the best of the white soul singers,” comparing him favourably to Steve Marriott.
In 1998, the original line-up of the Action reformed for a concert in the Isle Of Wight, playing at a Mod rally. They continue to be one of Phil Collins’ favourite bands and he performed with the reunited group at the 100 Club in 2000, later reflecting: “For me it was like playing with The Beatles.”