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  Remembering Frank Ifield June 25, 2006 Reporter : Max Cullen  He was our earliest rock star, the smooth crooner with a golden yodel who topped the pop charts in England during the swinging sixties. Even the Beatles played support act to Ifield as he set new records for his records, becoming the first ever to score three consecutive number one hits in Britain. This week, Ifield recalls his years at the top, the illness that took away his singing voice and his all time hit, 'I Remember You'. Max Cullen reports … FRANK IFIELD: We released this record, 'I Remember You', and we didn't know it was going to go as well as it did. It was just one of those unbelievable things. Within the first week it was not only higher in the charts than I had ever been, but within two weeks it was at the number one slot and it stayed there for week after week and the sales were phenomenal. GLENN A. BAKER, MUSIC HISTORIAN: There are certain things that should not be forgotten: a man who shared an album with the Beatles, a man who had four number one British hits before The Beatles can get their own number one British hit, that's somebody who deserves a place in the pantheon of heroes. COL JOYE: He was hotter than a buccaneer's pistol. He did all the big places, Frank was it, he were the man! VOICEOVER: Anyone in Australia who was around in the 1950s will remember Frank Ifield. He was big. He was a nice guy and very talented. The trouble was, he went overseas and became really famous. BRIAN HENDERSON: I don't think he was ever as big in Australia as he should have been. I think most Australians don't realise the ground he covered, the fences he knocked over, the records he set. GLENN WHEATLEY, ARTIST MANAGER: He broke the mould. He was the first. He paved the way for all of us to try and follow and it's an extraordinary achievement that is almost forgotten about. VOICEOVER: Born In England in 1937, Frank landed in these shores at the age of 10 and with his Australian parents and six brothers, he was brought up on Sydney's northern outskirts, where he honed his yodel while milking the cows. FRANK IFIELD: When I was milking the cow I used to listen to all these radio programs and everybody yodelled in those days and when I was milking the cows I gave the cow a yodel and it actually made the cow very calm and collected. VOICEOVER: At age 13, with the likes of Smoky Dawson, Buddy Williams and Tex Morton ringing in his ears, Frank threw his hat into the ring and went on Australia's Amateur Hour — the biggest talent show on radio. This soon led to bigger things. GLENN A. BAKER, MUSIC HISTORIAN: He wasn't just focussed entirely on doing one sort of music, he had that versatility even then, and he was a fine-looking man, he was very personable. He had that great adaptable voice, so he was doing television in the early days of Australian television, you know Campfire Favourites. MAX CULLEN AND FRANK IFIELD TALKING IN FRONT OF TELEVISION: "Just a lad there Frank, you haven't changed a scrap ... 18 years old ... You were right on the crest of something here. Country music was extremely popular in those days, I did all the radio stations and when TV came in we did that too." JUDY STONE, SINGER: He was a real hunk and he had a suaveness about him that a lot of the Aussie singers — they were a bit rough and ready, but Frank walked out and he had this commanding presence and this beautiful voice and yodel. It was all of those things combined — his looks and his personality and his great voice that hooked me. BRIAN HENDERSON: Frank Ifield started before Bandstand. Bandstand started in the late '50s and by then Frank had been on Campfire Favourites/Hendo. He was also compere of one of the shows. I only missed four that I can recall. You don't miss shows. You never know, the person who replaces you might be much better. FRANK IFIELD: I remember doing that show and a couple of things really stick in my mind and one was I was working with a young singer at that time called, a young fellow called John Laws, who was supposedly a singer at that time. VOICEOVER: But just as Bandstand was hitting its straps, Frank Ifield was setting out for greener pastures ... with no less than the London Palladium in his sights. COL JOYE, SINGER: Frank was ready to go. He had played all the country shows, he had played the tents, the Royal Easter Shows, the Town Halls, he was ready. He could walk on stage and do it. GLENN A. BAKER, MUSIC HISTORIAN: So when a man by the name of Peter Gormley who would go on to be one of the great managers of the '60s and '70s, managing Cliff Richard and Olivia Newton-John, when Peter Gormley laid eyes on him, a few cogs turned and he thought 'this country is not the place for this man. I mean he should actually be back in England making his way there'. FRANK IFIELD: But I was very lucky because I met up with Norrie Paramour, who was my great mentor at EMI, and Norrie took me under his wing but he didn't know how to package me. And I did a thing called "lucky Devil" which is the first thing I brought out in 1960 and it went into the bottom half of the charts and that got me working and did help a lot. FRANK IFIELD: I'd been given a contract for two years and unless I came up with something extraordinary in that two years the contract would be that, that's it, and I had been trying everything… and we had come to the last record on the contract and I thought, 'to heck with this'. My manager had been telling me not to yodel and I'm going to get out there and do a bit. And I was fiddling with the song which was a thing called 'I Remember You', which was a standard jazz song at the time, and I was fiddling around with this and I stuck a yodel in it and Norrie looked at me and said, 'where did that come from?' He said, 'that's what we are looking for, something that is different, and you've got it there it all the time.' GLENN A BAKER: This was an age before The Beatles with 'She loves you yeah, yeah, yeah' and those wonderful simple melodies. This was a time when a song like 'I Remember You' just shone, just absolutely shone. FRANK IFIELD: And I was the first to sell one million copies in Britain alone which I couldn't believe. All these facts and figures didn't equate to me and I didn't think of myself as being a pop star either. All I wanted to do was get up and perform, but then what do you do for a follow up? And I had to delve right into my mind about what had influenced me and one was Hank Williams and Norrie said 'let's put a twist beat to it', and he did this twist beat to this old country song and it worked! And it also sold a million and it was 'Lovesick Blues' and that had a bit more yodelling in it and I started to feel my oats then.  VOICEOVER: Just two years after arriving in England, Frank Ifield realised his dream; he was invited to sing at the Royal Command Performance at the London Palladium, where the Queen Mother requested the now famous Ifield yodel.FRANK IFIELD: And the yodel song I did was 'She Taught Me to Yodel' and it just paralysed the audience, it went berserk. It came out as a B side to 'Lovesick Blues' and both sides of it went into the charts. It was just wild, but that made me the second number one, the second million seller and what have you. But now the pressure is really on. And the pressure was on to the point where they were saying to me, if you get three number ones, you are the first artist to ever make three number ones and I thought 'it can't be done'. We're talking four number one British singles, three of them consecutively, we're talking about the first ever British single to sell a million copies in Britain alone, a single that then went into the American top five at a time when no British — well certainly no Australian artist — had ever imagined that you could crack the American charts. GLENN WHEATLEY: That stuck in my mind ... Total inspiration to pick up a guitar and learn my craft of music and get into the music business. GLENN A. BAKER: We are talking about a man who really was a musical titan in Britain in the first part of the '60s. FRANK IFIELD: All of a sudden I found I couldn't even go out in the street. There were thousands everywhere and because of that I became a bit of a recluse and I'm not a recluse type, but I found myself staying in my hotel room and not coming out until I had to, but secretly I loved it too. I didn't like the loss of my freedoms but I liked the adulation. GLENN A. BAKER: And he went out on tour when a man from Liverpool by the name of Brian Epstein sort of pleaded with him to take out with him on tour these four young lads from Liverpool called The Beatles, and he did take them out on tour and they were okay but they weren't quite what his audience wanted, they didn't actually go down that well! VOICEOVER: It was in December 1962 that The Beatles had been howled off the stage they had shared with Frank Ifield, but their anonymity would be shortlived. The next day, 'Love Me Do' entered the top 20 and they headed off to the Star Club in Hamburg where they did their version of 'I Remember You'! Paul McCartney attempted Frank's falsetto ... FRANK IFIELD: Having given them the first break of getting them onto my show so they could come out of Liverpool and the rest of England could have a look at them. Max CULLEN: It’s all your fault!. FRANK IFIELD: It's all my fault. All of a sudden, when I released 'Waywind Wind', which was going up the charts, all of a sudden these upstarts were coming up underneath me and I thought they were going to knock me out and they didn't as it happened. It's amazing how those things happen. VOICEOVER: Then in 1963 this album was released in America. Titled Jolly What: England's Greatest Recording Stars On Stage. The album featured The Beatles and Frank Ifield in an unlikely collaboration. GLENN A. BAKER: So you go from 'Please Please Me' by The Beatles into 'Lovesick Blues' by Frank Ifield and you go from 'I Remember You' into 'Thank You Girl' and on the back of it, and it's a gorgeous line, it says, 'it is with a good deal of pride and pleasure that this copulation has been presented.' FRANK IFIELD: Well I am here to tell you that I have never copulated them! They said it was The Beatles and myself live and it had nothing to do with live and it has nothing to do with us being together because it was just tracks I had done and tracks they had done and they put it on the same album. GLENN A. BAKER: As history will tell us, eventually the Beatles wiped clean the face of popular music, everybody's career was ended by them, everyone who wasn't looking and sounding like The Beatles suddenly found their career against a brick wall. Up shot the Beatles. There must have been often a time for Frank to reflect that this was the band that he took out on the road that didn't go down that well, he must have had occasion to think 'well they certainly did well for themselves, didn't they'! VOICEOVER: So while the Beatles were wiping everybody off the map, Frank Ifield tackled a brief career change ... he accepted the lead in what was then a contradiction in terms, a British musical. FRANK IFIELD: It was good fun, but I would rather have done a cameo spot in a big movie. And that's where I would like to have been. With my name having to carry the movie at that time and not being an actor like you have to have something like talent. You could play anything — you look like Burt Lancaster and you've got the charm of Roy Rodgers, you could have slayed them. You have to have something called talent my friend! VOICEOVER: With his movie career on hold, Frank headed south … of the USA that is. Nashville, Tennesse. Word had spread around that a handsome young cowpoke with a mighty fine voice had landed in town. The prestigious Hickory Records quickly coralled frank into their stable of stars. FRANK IFIELD: You couldn't get any better than Roy Orbison and the Everly Brothers and Don Gibson and these were my heroes, these people. MAX CULLEN: Following the likes of Johnny Cash and Elvis Presley, Frank realised a lifelong dream by appearing on stage at the Grand Old Opry at the Ryman Theatre, the citadel of country music. Slated to sing just one song, he finally left the stage four riotous encores later. But back home, reports of his success were sadly overlooked by local news hounds. REPORTER, 1967: You haven't been turning out these number one hits we've become accustomed to over the years. Is this because you have been concentrating on your film career? FRANK IFIELD: No I wouldn't know why I am not turning out number one hits. Have you got the answer? You can tell me. VOICEOVER: The next two decades saw Frank returning to his roots, garnering a list of awards as long as a country mile. But then the unspeakable happened. Battling pneumonia, he returned to Australia for some R and R. FRANK IFIELD: The flight over here didn't do me any favours and my lungs collapsed. All of sudden I was in an ambulance and I thought 'what the heck's happening here'. Tropical bug, wouldn't reflate, nasty stuff. And to cut a long story short, the doctor said, to the press would you believe, the doctor said he won't ever sing again and I thought, 'He never told me that. He must be joking, that will never happen to me'. As far as I was concerned this was just a mere hiccup, that's all it was. But it didn't work out that way. VOICEOVER: When he tried to sing, the voice was no longer there. Better to be remembered for the good notes, not the bad frank reasoned. FRANK IFIELD: But now, at my age, I think if I couldn't do it as well as I did it, then I don't think it is fair on the public to continue doing it just for the sake of doing it and I can't do it, so I'd rather not disappoint them and that's the way I look at life. GLENN A. BAKER: A performer who can't sing. I think it would have broken a lesser man. I think it really, really would have shattered them, losing their reason for existing professionally. FRANK IFIELD: And you've got to move on and find other things that give you just as much pleasure, and I have found a lot of things that give me pleasure ... like packaging up shows. I do a whole heap of things I have been doing all my life. I just don't sing anymore. Frank Ifield at Canterbury-Hurlstone RSL: I have been in this business now for 55 years (big applause) and I wouldn't trade one of those years for anything. BOB HOWE, MUSIC PRODUCER: He channelled his energies into giving other people a start. He created the Frank Ifield International Spur Award which, as the name suggests, spurs people along. In particular he gives an award each year to an Australian singer who he feels will make it big overseas the way he did and he gives them a boost along by releasing their music in Europe and using his name to open doors for them. BRIAN HENDERSON: It's no surprise to me that he is now helping support younger artists. I think it is quite inspiring. There he is still putting his shoulder to the wheel for these kids who are not being acknowledged as much as they should be on the way up or whatever. It's a credit to him, a great credit. GLENN A BAKER: I mean you can be an ex-star and do quite well, basking in your own reflective glory and say 'weren't my hits great', you know? But to actually go out and try and spread a bit of the good fortune around, to try and encourage younger artists and to arrange by means they can perform, and develop that's really impressive. VOICEOVER: Frank Ifield is now preparing for another incarnation — returning to the age-old tradition of storytelling. FRANK IFIELD: Friends, here is something I want you all to remember. Even when you are big and strong and may be successful in life, I want you to think back and remember the words that I tell you. MAX CULLEN: And what would you like to be remembered for?  FRANK IFIELD: I think I would like to be remembered for giving people happiness I guess. And people remembered me more for the shows that they had seen more than the songs I did. I hear a lot of people say 'I came to see you in 1900 and something and how it made them feel and how they kept coming back to see shows. That's nice to have forged a part of being almost part of their family and their lives.FRANK IFIELD: And there's some born pound foolish and some penny wise but six feet of earth makes us all the same size. You may feel important down here when you exist, but after you've gone, you'll never be missed. |
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