May 29 1964

In my opinion, Carl Perkins is the best in the show. No one had really heard of him before he arrived for this tour - which is his first in Britain, but he's winning them over - it's been like that since the show started.

The most touching memory I have of this tour took place in Bournemouth. A number of art students who must have spent all their time designing placards threw them on stage for Carl to sign. There were 20 or 30 of them with different placards for his various numbers. The sketches of Carl's face were fantastically lifelike and he was really moved by the tribute. In fact, he was able to keep one of them and is taking it back to America with him, together with a banner which reads 'Welcome Carl (Beatle-basher) Perkins.' He's really proud of that one.

Carl showed me one of his inventions - a tremelo arm on the head of his guitar, instead of at the bottom. This enables the player to operate the tremelo with his thumb instead of using the whole hand. Fender are very interested in the idea.

When we were at Hammersmith the safety curtain was dropped on Chuck Berry - the audience were crowding onstage, bowing down to him and throwing garlands of flowers.

At one of the parties on the tour we met Jimmy Tarbuck. He's got a fantastic sense of humour. A man was commenting on the green and yellow dress a girl wore. "That's a nice shade," he said. "Let's see your teeth again, love" Jimmy quipped.

The Animals have always gone down very well. At some places they've had to work very hard to get an audience - but when they have to, the lead singer Eric, will rip off his shirt, bounce about the stage - and do anything to win them over.

Although the lads back Chuck Berry on stage they've never had a rehearsal with him. He came in one day, played half an hour of twelve-bar blues - and that was that.

We will all be remaining in Britain, and following this tour we have six weeks of ballroom dates.

Two days prior to arriving in England we recorded ten tracks with Franklyn Boyd of Aberbach Music - and a new single is due for release from Decca early next month.

Editor's Note: The single Kingsize refers to must be 'Somebody's Always Trying' c/w 'Looking For My Baby', which was released on Decca F 11935 in July 1964. I always tried to encourage the artists themselves to write about their experiences and found that a review by a working musician had far more insight than that of a critic who never participated in a performance.

Many people regard Kingsize Taylor & the Dominoes as the greatest British rock 'n' roll band of the 1960s. They missed out on the Liverpool boom because they spent most of their time in Hamburg. After many years, Ted Taylor has begun performing again.

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