28 September 2025
▶︎ Bigger in Oz (21): Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (1964) and 7 others
Bigger in Oz: tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin.
See also: Only in Melbourne.
21. Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (Trevor Stanford [known as Russ Conway])
Composition also known as Spartacus or Spartacus (The Spartans)
Columbia single (UK) #DB7239 April 1964
Columbia single (Australia) #DO4447 June 1964
April 1964 The Spartans #30
July 1964 Spanish Harlem #35
July 1964 The Spartans #5
Aug 1964 Spanish Harlem #22
Aug 1964 Rinky Dink #22
Sept 1964 William Tell Overture #2
Sept 1964 Maria #2
Jan 1965 Light Cavalry #71
March 1965 Cast Your Fate To The Wind #20
March 1965 Hall Of The Mountain King #58
I have written before about Australians' fondness for an instrumental track. It helps to explain why Sounds Incorporated records did so well in Australia. It is also fair to assume that the impression they made on the trendsetters at the Australian Beatles shows would have played a role.
The Spartans was written by Russ Conway (b. Trevor Stanford 1925-2000), a star British pianist and composer who had nineteen Top 40 hits 1957-1963 including Side Saddle (1957 #1 UK) and Roulette (1959 #1).
Sounds Incorporated rearranged The Spartans to feature the alto flute as lead instrument after listening to a demo recording. Saxophonist-keyboardist Barrie Cameron told Disc magazine in 1964 that they were emulating a sound developed on stage while backing Brenda Lee on tour in the UK.
Composer Russ Conway performed The Spartans himself on stage in April 1964 in a benefit concert for the son of recently deceased singing star Michael Holliday, a longtime friend since their days together in the Navy. It was released in July 1964 on an album, Tribute To Michael Holliday . The YouTube post of the track includes the full liner notes.
Conway's performance offers a contrast to the Sounds Incorporated version. It has a majestic feel, not unlike a theme for an epic historical film (it reminds me a little of piano duo Ferrante & Teicher). It is still stirring, but in a different way.
The composition's US copyright registration adds an alternative title, Spartacus. The titleSpartacus (The Spartans)is seen on a more guitar-based German single by Liverpool band Ian & The Zodiacs (1965) and on German issues of their album Star-Club Show 7 (1965). A re-orchestrated track by Les Reed And His Orchestra on their album Love Is All (1969) is also Spartacus (The Spartans).
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An Australian footnote: Essex-born Trevor White was a member of Sounds Incorporated when the band broke up in Australia in 1971. He stayed on to become a permanent Australian resident, first becoming known here for his starring role in the original Australian production of Jesus Christ Superstar (1972).
White was not in Sounds Incorporated for their Beatles tours, or for their charting singles 1964-65, as he did not join the band until 1968 upon Barrie Cameron's departure.
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Chart positions
• Britain: from The Guinness book of British hit singles (1983)
• Melbourne and Brisbane: as calculated retrospectively by Gavin Ryan
• Australia: from Grant Dawe's Top 100 Singles site.
Selected sources:
• "No vocals for us, say Sounds Inc.", Disc, 9 May 1964 (Barrie Cameron on recording The Spartans)
• "Sounds Incorporated", Record Mirror, 9 March 1968 (Sounds Incorporated's new organist Trevor White will be joining the group when Barry Cameron leaves in mid-March ...)
(Links are to digitised copies at WorldRadioHistory.com)
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Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans (released April 1964, recorded in January)
[フレーム]Sounds Incorporated - The Spartans live on Beatles tour, Australia (July 1964)
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Russ Conway - The Spartans, live in concert (June 1964)
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Ian & The Zodiacs - Spartacus (The Spartans) (1965)
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Les Reed And His Orchestra With The Eddie Lester Singers - Spartacus (The Spartans) (1969)
22 February 2008
▶︎ Bigger in Oz (8) Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia (1962, 1967)
Bigger in Oz: tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin.
See also: Only in Melbourne.
8. Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia
(Roger Roger)
Festival single (Australia) #FK-296 (1962); re-released on FK-1680 (1967)
US charts: Did not chart Top 100
Australian charts (1962): #8 Sydney #8 Melbourne #16 Brisbane (#26 Australia)
This spaced-out electronic instrumental was familiar in Australia during the 60s as radio filler and as background music on radio and TV. [Listen] I mentioned it in an earlier post as a likely Time-out Instrumental.
Roger Roger (1911-1995) was a prolific French composer for radio, TV and film whose music is often filed these days under Space Age and Library.
Dalilia seems to have started out as a "library" track, a ready-made theme or soundtrack piece, one of numerous tracks Roger Roger composed and recorded for the Chappell Music company's Mood Music series from the mid-50s.
At the time such albums of "stock music" or "background music" were sold to radio and TV stations and film producers, but they are now collected by aficionados of Library Music. Chappell's albums were issued under the label Chappell's Recorded Music Library, established in 1941, so the term "library" has a long history in this context.
Library Music later became available to the general public through reissues on CD. See, for example, this catalogue from MovieGrooves [archived], which included a Roger Roger collection (Roger Roger is to Library Music what James Bond is to spy movies...).
[Update, 2020: A lot of library music is now easily accessed on music streaming services. Try, for example, this Spotify playlist of over 1700 tracks from KPM Music.]
Some of Roger Roger's music (SpaceAgePop.com tells us) also fits into a further sub-genre, Test Card, since his work was often heard with test patterns on BBC-TV.
It's possible that the 1962 release of Dalilia as a single was an Australian initiative. The B-side is Cha Cha Charlie, an instrumental by Mel Young, another Chappell library artist.
A US release of the same composition has an altered title, Delilah (1963 on Time). It is either a fresh recording or a remix, with an introduction and some slightly different instrumentation in places [YouTube].
Festival released the single twice, first in December 1962 on #FK-296, when it charted, and again in March 1967 on #FK-1680, again coupled with Mel Young. As I've pointed out previously, one thing Australians loved back then was an instrumental.
The Dalilia tune was used in 1963 for the British TV show The Desperate People, when it was known as The Desperadoes (Theme from Desperate People). Each title is registered to Roger Roger as a separate work at ASCAP, but they do appear to be the same composition. In Australia, The Playboys released a version as Desperado (1965; YouTube).
And the title, Dalilia? The only title resembling Dalilia amongst the hundreds of Roger Roger compositions registered at SACEM (France) is Dalila, the French form of Delilah (the US title). The title Daliliais, however, registered to Roger Roger at ASCAP, but so is Delila (another form of Delilah/Dalila). I'm wondering whether Dalilia might be an Anglo misprint for Dalila (Delilah).
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Roger Roger & his Champs Elysées Orchestra - Dalilia
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.
References: 1. Roger Roger page at SpaceAgePop.com 2. Roger Roger biography at Robert Farnon Society 3. Roger Roger article at French Wikipedia. 4. ASCAP Title Search 5. The Australian Festival Record Company... 1961-1969, label discographyby George Crotty 6. Library Music catalogue and Roger Roger blurb from MovieGrooves.com [now defunct]. 7. Composer search at SACEM, the French performing rights organisation.
08 September 2007
▶︎ Bigger in Oz* (2) Acker Bilk - The Harem (1963)
Bigger in Oz: tracks that were more popular in Australia than in their countries of origin.
See also: Only in Melbourne.
2. Acker Bilk and his Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem(Dorothy Hodas-Mack Wolfson-Eddie Cooper)
UK 1963
Columbia single (UK) #DB7129.
Columbia single (Australia) #DO4447
* In this case, it's Bigger in Oz & NZ.
I wrote about The Harem earlier, in connection with Time-out Instrumentals. Then, I said it was a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax.
This track is a bit of a mystery, not least because it is an outstanding instrumental by a popular artist that unaccountably failed to make the same splash on the British charts as it did in Australia.
Acker Bilk had ten Top 40 hits in the UK between 1960 and 1963, but this wasn't one of them. His Stranger On The Shore was a big hit everywhere (#2 UK, #1 USA) and he was popular in the MOR instrumental market. The odd thing is, Acker Bilk's countless albums and reissues have never been hard to find in the bargain bins, but I've never found The Harem on any of them.
A 1963 single of The Harem by Don Costa and his Orchestra on US Columbia #42705 is the same work, and appears to be the original version.
The authoritative 45cat.com has Don Costa's US release at April 1963 , Acker Bilk's UK release at October 1963 . Itis an American composition, copyrighted in the US in March 1963. [Updated 20 Dec 2016]
We do know something about the writers' other works, thanks in part to ASCAP's database:
Mack Wolfson (aka Maxwell A. Wolfson) built up a fair repertoire in the 50s and 60s. He often wrote with the prolific Tin Pan Alley composer Eddie White (Edward R. White)*, for example on Happiness Street (Corner Sunshine Square) , recorded by Georgia Gibbs and Tony Bennett (both versions charted in 1956); C'est La Vie, a much-recorded song that was a #11 hit for Sarah Vaughan in 1955; Crazy Otto Rag by Johnnie 'Crazy Otto' Maddox, a co-write with the famous Hugo & Luigi that was heard in the film Reds; and Smarty Pants, on disco group First Choice's 1973 debut album.The Harem could be a faux-Eastern genre piece, but it sounds as if it could be based on a folk tune. I believe I hear something reminiscent of Hava Nagila.
Eddie Cooper, not so prolific, also wrote with Eddie White: of his 13 compositions at ASCAP, 6 were co-writes with White. (There are 4 additional Eddie Cooper songs listed at BMI.)
Dorothy Hodas (full name Dorothy Gertrude Hodas)has only one other song in her ASCAP repertoire, Love Of My Life, and that was written with Mack Wolfson and, yes, Eddie White.
ASCAP shows an alternative title, The Harem: Schoene Geschic, which may or may not be a clue. Could Geschic be a database or dialectic truncation of Geschichte? Schoene Geschichte meansBeautiful Story.
There are at least two 1960s guitar versions of The Harem, by Rotterdam instrumental group The Explosions (1964), and by New Zealand guitarist Graeme Bartlett, better known as Gray Bartlett (1963 or 64).
Acker Bilk & His Paramount Jazz Band - The Harem.mp3
Chart positions from Gavin Ryan's Australian chart books.
*Could this be the same Edward R. (Eddie) White (1919-1996), a New Yorker listed at IMDb in some bit parts?
10 April 2006
▶︎ Timeouts: The Tornadoes and a Marching Band
Lapland is one of those obscure instrumentals that was surprisingly popular in Australia. In early 1968, it reached #5 in Sydney, #20 Melbourne, #9 Brisbane, #20 Adelaide. It didn't register nationally in the US, but charted regionally.
As for The Tornados: I can't believe I overlooked them, as they would've been a rich source of Timeout Instrumentals. They had that one stunning worldwide hit with Telstar (1962), produced by Joe Meek who also wrote a lot of their tracks, and they continued with a series of organ-led instros. These were pleasant enough but not in the same class as Telstar, and tended to sneak into the lukewarm end of the hottest hits.
Globetrotter (1962), Robot (1963), Dragonfly (1963), Monte Carlo (1964), Hot Pot (1964) and Exodus (1964) all charted somewhere in Australia - though not spectacularly - and I remember The Ice Cream Man getting some airplay as well.One thing Aussies dug in those days was an instrumental.
The Tornados. Bassist Heinz Burt (far right) had some vocal hits as 'Heinz', notably Just Like Eddie (1963)
08 April 2006
▶︎ Timeout Instrumental hits
In the previous post, I noted that Timeout Instrumentals weren't usually hits, and often came from from LPs, EPs and B-sides.
In a comment below, John G. suggested one exception, Love Is Blue (L'amour est bleu) by French orchestra leader Paul Mauriat (#1 USA, #12 UK, #1 Australia, #4 NZ). It was written by Andre Popp, initially as a 1967 Eurovision Song Contest entry sung by Vicky Leandros with lyrics by Pierre Cour.
No Matter What Shape (Your Stomach's In) by The T-bones (1966), and Classical Gas by Mason Williams (1968) were both hits (Classical Gas even has its own website), but I'd be surprised if they weren't also used as Timeout Instrumentals.
Another example, and a mystery, is The Harem by British clarinettist and bandleader Mr Acker Bilk (right) and his Paramount Jazz Band. It was a hit in Australia in 1964 (#2 Melbourne, #4 Sydney, #3 Adelaide) but failed to chart in the UK, and for some reason it's just about impossible to find on the dozens of easy-to-find Acker Bilk compilations. All Music Guide lists four pages of Acker Bilk songs, but doesn't mention it. It is, however, listed as a 1963 British single at 45-rpm.co.uk.
The Harem is a standout amongst Acker Bilk's recordings, a stirring, whirling, percussive instro that builds to a climax. It has a little "pip" on the clarinet a second or so before the end that always sounds to me like the first of the time pips that would've followed a Timeout Instrumental.
I'm wondering whether The Harem started out in Australia being played as a Timeout Instrumental and caught the attention of listeners, who turned it into a hit. Just a hunch, there, but I do remember it being played as a Timeout. (For more on The Harem, see Only in Oz (1).
The Spartans, by Beatles associates Sounds Incorporated (1964), was another British instro that did better in Australia than in Britain. This is a moody, brass-dominated piece that charted #5 Sydney, #3 Melbourne, #10 Brisbane, and peaked at #30 in the UK. It was written by the chart-topping British pianist Russ Conway, using his real name, Trevor Stanford. Again, The Spartans was probably used as a Timeout Instrumental, but its success was no doubt helped along by Sounds Incorporated playing on The Beatles 1964 Australian tour.
04 April 2006
▶︎ The Timeout Instrumental
I asked radio historian Wayne Mac and former 2GB panel operator Gregg Sinclair if there was a name for it and they said, yes, it was called timing out, and the tracks were fillers or timeouts.
In my mind, these works have always formed an unofficial, unnamed sub-genre of the pop instrumental. Radio people in the 60s could identify it immediately, just by choosing something that sounded okay in between a bunch of hit records and the news.
I'm calling this musical sub-genre the Timeout Instrumental, just so it has a name.*
The Timeout Instrumental might have been something by Herb Alpert (right): maybe Bittersweet Samba or Up Cherry Street or Mexican Shuffle. It probably wouldn't be the latest Shadows hit, but it could be one of their B-sides or an EP track, something like The Miracle. You might have heard some album tracks, often by middle-of-the-road orchestras. I'm sure Dalilia, that space-age classic by Roger Roger & his Champs-Elysées Orchestra, would have been used: it was a favourite as background music on Australian radio and TV.**
As examples of likely Timeout Instrumental artists, Gregg Sinclair gives The Baja Marimba Band (associates of Herb Alpert), Bill Justis and Floyd Cramer. Raymond Lefèvre's Soul Coaxing is one track he recalls.
There was some skill in timing out: if the timeout track was 3 minutes long, it had to start playing, faded down, three minutes before the pips, while the last record was still playing. Gregg Sinclair writes:
The art of ‘timing out’ was made all the more interesting by the fact that most of the tracks supplied weren’t timed! Believe it or not, any panel operator worth his salt could look at a track and determine how long it ran. After a few years of experience, I could look at an album track and say: “that’s about a 2’45” job”! However, I always preferred to time them if I had the chance. Usually, I’d get in early and go through the ‘music log’ - radio talk for the playlist – and time the appropriate tracks prior to going on air.There was a feeling in radio that using instrumental filler in this way sounded sloppy or out of date, so from the late 60s it was replaced by playing regular vocal hits up to the news.
[For more on Timeout Instrumentals, see follow-up posts here and here .]
**Timeout Instrumental intersects with what is now known as Space Age Pop (another retrospective genre).For more on Dalilia, see Only in Oz (9).
18 June 2005
▶︎ Bizarro Shadows World Down Under
Standing in the shadow of The Shadows:
Melbourne band The Phantoms, from Canetoad's W&G Instrumental Story.
How many Australian and New Zealand bands of the 60s started out playing instrumentals in the style of the Shadows but transformed themselves in the wake of Beatlemania? See, for a start, The Strangers, The Questions, The Cherokees and The La De Das.
When a bunch of teenagers formed a band in the early 60s their main passion was often to emulate The Shadows or The Ventures (not only in Australia: see my post ¡Viva Los Shads! ). Apache and Walk, Don’t Run were standards of the repertoire.
In Australia, this amounted to something like a movement, a phenomenon I like to call Bizarro Shadows World Down Under.
Aussies were always fond of a guitar-based instrumental. The Shadows were as big here as they were in the UK, and they were still charting alongside the Beatles into the mid-60s: their last hit in Oz was Bombay Duck in 1967 (#3 Adelaide, #10 Brisbane). The Americans preferred The Ventures, but we liked them as well: best of both worlds, down here. When surf music came along we took to it in a big way, and it melded in nicely with the guitar instrumental genre.
We also had our local heroes. Sydney steel guitarist Rob E. G. was often on the radio and the charts in the early 60s, often (but not always) with his own compositions: Railroadin', Si Senor (I Theenk?) and 5, 4, 3, 2, 1, Zero. In 1963 Sydney band The Atlantics produced Bombora and The Crusher, two stunning examples of the surf instrumental that give Pipeline and Wipeout a run for their money. The Joy Boys - without Col Joye - had a national Top 5 hit in 1962 with Southern ‘Rora, inspired by, of all things, a new Melbourne-Sydney train service.
Melbourne band The Strangers first charted in their home town with a guitar version of Frankie Laine’s hit Cry of the Wild Goose (1963), a far cry from the soul-tinged vocal pop of 1968’s Happy Without You . Progressive New Zealand band the La De Das were, in their embryonic form, a high school band called The Mergers who played Shadows-styled instrumentals. At the website of guitarist Rod Stone, later with The Playboys and The Groove, you can hear a snatch of his 1962 version of Skye Boat Song, recorded in New Zealand as a 17-year-old in immaculate Shadows style.
It’s not that the instrumental bands didn’t sing at all, but looking back it’s hard to avoid the idea that it was cooler, even more manly, to pick out those precise guitar instrumentals than to sing soppy love songs.
There are a number of Bizarro Shadows World Down Under tracks on W&G Instrumental Story , released by the Australian reissue label Canetoad. W&G was a Melbourne record label.
Some of these tracks sound a bit cheesy, even clunky, at this distance, but that’s a feature of instro-guitar in general. Even so, there’s a good mix of remakes and originals that often stand up well beside their British and American models.
About half the tracks are by Melbourne showband The Thunderbirds, who were really too big, too brassy and too versatile to be put strictly in the mould of the Shads. Their version of The Rebels' Wild Weekend is an Aussie instrumental classic.
Otherwise, tracks by The Cherokees (Thundercloud), The Chessmen (The Rebel [Johnny Yuma]), The Breakaways (The Wheel), The Strangers (Undertow) and The Phantoms (Stampede) wouldn’t have sounded out of place on a Shadows or Ventures album.
When Beatlemania hit, many Aussie instrumental bands did just what the boys in my Australian town did: they shampooed their hair, brushed it down over their foreheads, and never again darkened the doors of traditional barbers’ shops.
Pictures of the Beatles before Ringo illustrate the contrast. Pete Best looked fine and he still had a loyal following. He had that detached, moody, brushed-back look that went back to James Dean and the late-50s teen idols, but (unless my perception is skewed by hindsight) he already looked oddly out of place.
More than just changing the idea of what looked cool, Merseybeat made singing an imperative. The Strangers developed a hip pop sensibility that gave them vocal hits in the late 60s with Melanie Makes Me Smile , Western Union and Happy Without You. The Cherokees dabbled in a number of styles, but they had their greatest success with the comic revivals Oh, Monah and Minnie The Moocher that for some reason never seemed out of place on the charts of the late 60s.
The Atlantics ventured into Brit Invasion recycled R&B with the likes of I Put A Spell On You , featuring Johnny Rebb, an experienced rock’n’roller who had joined the band, and Rob E.G. re-emerged as Robie Porter, this time singing on his records (When You’re Not Near). Sydney band, The Questions also hired a vocalist, and his name was Doug Parkinson.
You thought I was going to say, "And the rest is history...", didn't you?
13 June 2005
▶︎ ¡Viva los Shads!
- Nik Cohn on British instrumental band the Shadows, in his 1969 book Awopbopaloobopalopbamboom .
Thirty-five years or so later, it seems kind of early to have been publishing a history of pop in 1969, but Nik Cohn's little book remains one of the most exhilarating accounts by an enthusiast that you'll ever read. Otherwise, his main claim to fame may be for writing Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night , the New York magazine article that became the basis for Saturday Night Fever (1977).
This is how he nicely sums up the popularity of the Shadows outside Britain:
Even now, if you're traipsing around the backwaters of Morocco and you stumble across a local group, they'll sound exactly like the Shadows, flat guitars and jigalong melodies and little leg kicks and all. In Spain or Italy or Yugoslavia, they're regarded as the pop giants of all time. Elvis Schmelvis. Beatles Schmeatles. Viva los Shads!