1 9 6 4 – 1 9 6 5 (UK)
BBC2’s The Beat Room – billed as “thirty minutes of non-stop beat and shake” – delved more deeply into the R&B music that Ready Steady Go! helped to popularise.
It featured a range of blues artists from both sides of the Atlantic, including Sonny Boy Williamson, Little Walter and Long John Baldry.
Introduced and compered each week by unseen Irish DJ Pat Campbell, the show also invented dancing troupe, The Beat Girls – Ruth (Pearson), Ann, Jenny, Lynn, Babs (Lord) and Zooks – who three years later morphed into Pans People on Top Of The Pops.
Guests on the first edition of The Beat Room were The Animals, Lulu & The Luvvers, and Millie, backed by the resident group, Wayne Gibson with The Dynamic Sounds.
Later shows featured stars including Herman’s Hermits, The Beach Boys, Manfred Mann, Long John Baldry, The Nashville Teens, The Pretty Things, Chris Farlowe, Jackie de Shannon, The Dixie Cups, Marvin Gaye, The Who, Gerry and the Pacemakers, The Kinks, Georgie Fame and The Isley Brothers.
The high spot, backstage at least, was an over-excited John Lee Hooker asking producer Michael Hurll to take him to Shepherds Bush market so he could buy a gun to shoot a member of his touring band who was getting on his nerves.
The show proved short-lived and was taken off air at the end of January 1965, after only six months.
Pat Campbell
The Beat Girls
Wayne Gibson with The Dynamic Sounds
