Simon Dupree and the Big Sound was a British pop band of the sixties
who had the hit Kites.
We favoured Rock and Roll and Motown numbers, which was bit a ironic as our one and only major UK hit was Kites, a ballad which also acquired the label psychedelic. Kites is thought by some people to be the only thing that Simon Dupree and The Big Sound did,
but we recorded around fifty tracks.
Sixteen of these were to be on our second LP which was never released in the sixties because of our failure to get another hit after Kites.
Because of the new craze for retro music these sixteen tracks are on a new double CD released by EMI in March 2004 called :-
"Part Of My Past" - "The Simon Dupree and The Big Sound Anthology".
© : P.O'Flaherty.
- - - - - Anthology - CD, realeased March 2004 - - - -
BAND MEMBERS - Derek Shulman, Ray Shulman, Tony Ransley,
Phil Shulman and Peter O'Flaherty.
After rehearsing for a few weeks in early 1966 we started doing gigs in Portsmouth and around the South Coast of England. We had very little gear and a dodgy van for transport. Simon Dupree soon gained a good following and had queues of people waiting to get into such places as the Indigo Vat and the Birdcage in Portsmouth.
The Shulmans brother-in-law John King, who was a television producer for BBC Bristol came to see us one evening and agreed to be our manager. John didn't know too much about the pop music scene, but he did have some good contacts and knew some of the right people. John took a demo disk that we had made of
I See The Light ( a 'Five Americans' cover ) to EMI, who gave us an audition.
This resulted in a five year recording contract, which was pretty amazing at the time. In October 1966 we went to studio two at Abbey Road and re-recorded
I See The Light.
Things were getting a bit hectic having a day job. On many occasions I was dropped off at my place of work after playing a gig, having had no sleep. So shortly after signing with EMI the band turned professional. We agreed to take a livable weekly wage out of our earnings with the rest invested and shared when the band eventually folded. I was going to be rich one day !!
Well maybe not .........
Next we acquired a couple of roadie's ( Brian and Fred West ),
and the mandatory Ford Transit van for transport.
On the strength of our record contract we signed with the
The Arthur Howes Agency.
One of the first gigs we did for Arthur Howes was with the
The Walker Brothers at the ABC Theatre - Blackpool.
This was new territory for us.
We were used to playing in clubs, not in front of two thousand seated people.
Next came The Beach Boys and Gene Pitney tours of the UK. Simon Dupree toured Sweden, Germany, Belgium, Holland and the UK.
We played over 300 gigs a year traveling thousands of miles.
Early on we purchased a Mellotron, which was used on stage and for recording. The Mellotron was never going to be a mass market instrument, but they were important instrument for some bands throughout the sixties and seventies
Many days were spent recording for EMI, mainly at Abbey Road. It was the fourth record Kites that gave the band a top ten hit. Kites was a psychedelic ballad, with Mellotron, xylophone, gong, wind machine and some erotic Chinese spoken words by the actress Jacqui Chan, ( NB not Jackie Chan ).
They sound erotic, but nobody seems to know what Jacqui Chan is saying. ( Jacqui Chan didn't know either ) ....
The band appeared frequently on British and German television, and we were also a favourite of the BBC's for live radio shows.
Simon Dupree and The Big Sound eventually broke up in late 1969.
In 1970 Derek, Phil and Ray Shulman together with Kerry Minnear, Gary Green, and Martin Smith started the UK progressive rock band Gentle Giant.
Updated 30th May 2008 .....