The Be Bops

The Talented Be Bops
One night in 1956, Colin King ran a talent quest at Waitara's Theatre Royale. Taylor was part of a new band which didn't even have a catchy name.

The compere christened them The Be Bops, after the song they'd planned to sing - Gene Vincent's Be-Bop-A-Lula.

The Be Bops won, playing music no one had ever heard before, and for the next ten years would play to appreciative audiences throughout the province.

Taylor tells the story: 'In the mid-fifties, recordings would be made in the States or England, come out to Australia by ship, and if they sold fairly well there, then a master record would be shipped over to New Zealand, or pressed in Australia and sent here, so there was usually a six to eight week gap.

'We used to sit around the table at Stratford on a Saturday night and listen to 2UE in Sydney which played the top twenty. We'd hear a particular tune and think 'that sounds all right!'

'So the next night, we'd sit around the table again and we'd all scribble down the words. I'd do the chords. Then we'd go into the lounge and play the tune over and over

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