Ad here´s the story of a short-live group called King Earl Boogie Band, formed by Paul King:
Paul King (born January 9, 1948, Dagenham, UK), was a member of Mungo Jerry between 1970 and 1972. He contributed occasional lead vocals, and played acoustic guitar (6 and 12 string), banjo, harmonica, kazoo and jug. His songs on the first Mungo Jerry album and on the early maxi-singles were generally more folksy and lighter in style than those of group leader Ray Dorset, and he was frustrated when his own songs were constantly rejected for subsequent albums.
On the second album, Electronically Tested, his composition “Black Bubonic Plague” appeared on European copies only, but not on the British release. King recorded a solo album, Been in the Pen Too Long in 1972, and left Mungo Jerry shortly afterwards.
He and the group’s keyboard player Colin Earl (born 6 May 1942, Hampton) formed the King Earl Boogie Band with guitarist Dave Lambert, bassist Russell John Brown and washboard player Joe Rush, who had been a part-time Mungo member. Their album Trouble at Mill was well reviewed, but a single “Plastic Jesus” was banned by the BBC on grounds of blasphemy. The group disbanded a few months later, and Lambert later joined Strawbs.
King then pursued a solo career, releasing occasional records under the names P. Rufus King and D’Jurann D’Jurann (no connection with the British group Duran Duran), as well as under his usual name.
King and Earl later formed Skeleton Krew, though in the 1990s they reverted to the name of King Earl Boogie Band. King retired to Cornwall in 1996, though since then he has occasionally joined his colleagues and former members for one-off gigs, sometimes under the name Skeleton Krew or Skeleton Crew. (wikipedia)
Less than a year after delivering his superlative Been in the Pen Too Long debut album, Paul King was back at the head of the King Earl Boogie Band and armed with a second clutch of songs that is as much a direct follow-up to the earlier set as it is the birth of what should have been a far more successful band than it actually became. That the King Earl Boogie Band were ultimately scuppered by the failure of the surefire Christmas hit “Plastic Jesus” is a matter of record; it is indeed an indictment of the prevailing super-morality of the era that so lighthearted a poke at junk-store piety could “offend” anyone at all, least of all the program controllers of the BBC. Today, it wouldn’t merit a second glance. But, while “Plastic Jesus” inevitably dominates Trouble at Mill, the remainder of the album has a warm, folky bluegrass feel that is just as captivating.
The neo-Cockney “Bovver Blues” boogie, one of four songs composed by guitarist Dave Lambert (soon to become such a force within the Strawbs), has a charm that completely predicts such mid-’90s excursions as Blur’s “Parklife,” while “Keep Your Hands off My Woman” is the sound of Slade if they were forced to dress up as Steeleye Span. But the other must-hear highlight is the beautiful, near-a cappella version of Ewan MacColl’s “Go Down Your Murderers” that wraps up the album — and, sadly, the band’s career — with haunted finality. (by Dave Thompson)
Personnel:
Russell John Brown (bass, flute, background vocals)
Colin Earl (piano, background vocals)
Paul King (vocals, acoustic guitar, 12-string acoustic guitar, harmonica, recorder, kazoo), Dave Lambert (vocals, slide guitar, guitar, harmonica, tambura), Colin Earl (piano, background vocals), , Joe Rush (percussion)
Tracklist:
01. Bad Storm Coming (Evans/O’Donnell/Collier) 5-13
02. Take Me Back (Lambert) 4.44
03. Live Your Own Life P. Mc (Lambert) 2.27
04. Bovver Blues (Lambert) 2.03
05. Plastic Jesus (King) 4.14
06. If The Lord Don’t Get You (Lambert) 3.46
07. Goin’ To German (Traditional) 2.35
08. Keep Your Hands Off My Woman (Levy/Minter/Glover) 4-59
09. Go Down You Murderers (McColl) 5.35
Well I listened to it the other day (1989) for the first time in 15 years and to be quite honest, it just doesn’t make it. I don’t know what we were trying to achieve, but somewhere along the line we got terribly lost. Apart from ‘Plastic Jesus’, that is – that really makes it, and in my opinion was the best song the Boogie Band ever recorded and should really have done something, but unfortunately it was blacklisted. (Paul King)
Pye gave us £3,000 to produce an album. We chose Richard Branson’s ‘The Manor’ at Oxford, to make it. Good atmosphere, but the single, ‘Plastic Jesus’ was immediately banned by the BBC, which effectively killed the commercial possibilities of the album. ‘Plastic Jesus’, a song despising the morality of; ‘I’ve got a plastic charm, I can do what I like to anyone’. To the Beeb, it meant ‘Plastic Jesus’. You tell me that a jock listens to the discs he plays – I’ll tell you b******s. (Colin Earl)
We spent, I dunno how long rehearsing and we made the record, and then I’m sitting at home waiting to go on the first gig, I think it was supposed to be Barnstable and they said the car would arrive, pick you up. So there I am, waiting all day long and all of a sudden, I get a phone call late in the afternoon, “Oh Joe, we’re not going, Dave Lambert’s left the band, he’s joined The Strawbs! I thought f**k me, here we go! So that was the end of that, sort of, brief experience”. (Joe Rush)
The official Paul King website:
ManyFantasticColors 