Someone on a forum I’m in asked that question earlier today. In fact, there were SIX ‘first Peel sessions’… and they were all actually John Peel/Pete Drummond sessions. I’ve compiled a snapshot of that first 1/10/67 ‘Top Gear’ and the following few shows in a montage.
The six ‘first Peel sessions’ were by The Move, Big Maybelle & the Senate, Tomorrow (featuring Keith West), Tim Rose, Traffic and Pink Floyd. All were broadcast on ‘Top Gear’ on 1/10/67. The first three of those acts recorded their sessions on 21/9/67, the other three on 25/9/67.
Strictly speaking, ‘Top Gear’ didn’t become ‘John Peel’s Top Gear’ until 4/2/68. Between 12/11/67 – 28/1/68 John co-presented the show, and thereby its exclusive session recordings, with Tommy Vance. There were six shows between 1/10/67 (the first episode) and 5/11/67, and these were co-presented by a pool of presenters. John Peel and Pete Drummond did the first one. John co-presented two of the other five with Drummond, while Drummond co-presented the other three with Tommy Vance, Mike Ahern and Rick Vane. Yes, a case could be made that several legendary early ‘Peel sessions’ were actually ‘Drummond sessions’.
In this montage, I’ve assembled tracks from three of the first five session guests plus four LP tracks with brief presenter intros/outros – from John, Pete Drummond and Tommy Vance – to give a flavour of the show in it’s first few weeks. All come from a couple of uncirculated off-air reels.
1. Traffic – Coloured Rain (session)
2. Tomorrow – My White Bicycle (session)
3. Tomorrow – Three Little Dwarfs (session)
4. Pink Floyd – Flaming (session)
5. Pink Floyd – The Gnome (session)
6. John Fahey – Sail Away Ladies (LP track, with John Peel outro)
7. James & Bobby Purify – I’m Your Puppet (single, with Pete Drummond intro)
8. Donovan – Sand & Foam (LP track, with John Peel outro)
9. Tim Rose – Hey Joe (LP track, with Tommy Vance outro)
My admiration, my thanks, my children – all are yours
Steady on…
Great stuff Colin.
If JP did not become sole presenter until Feb 68, by reference to this site
https://rateyourmusic.com/list/koeeoaddi_there/john-peel-bbc-sessions-in-the-1960s/1/
suggest the first proper, solo Peel Session may have been Captain Beefheart
In the early 90s, Strange Fruit released 3 CD compilations of Peel Sessions (celebrating 25 years of the Sessions?) – the earliest track they used on the 67 – 77 disc was Jimi Hendrix – Spanish Castle Magic (from December 1967)
I suppose you could argue that, Rij… it would certainly suit those who like to pigeonhole Peel into being entirely about angular, scratchy indie music – for which the Captain is as much a forebear as anyone. I find it rather pleasing that one of the very first three recorded was an old-school female black R&B shouter (Big Maybelle) – and that it was, seemingly, her one and only BBC session. That’s *real* outsider music, in a way.
I have lots more from the first couple of years of Top Gear and Night Ride, and I’ve been sending WAV files of them to many of the artists in question. They might as well have them. I’ll stick a few more online as time allows.
Here’s most of the first Liverpool Scene session from January 1969:
God thanks so much for The Liverpool Scene posts. Saw them numerous times in Manchester in the late sixties, once at the famous Magic Village. They were so unique, the music business could use some of that kind of magic today…really appreciate this posting…Thanks Colin
Happy to be of service, Bing 🙂
Anyone who likes “to pigeonhole Peel into being entirely about angular, scratchy indie music” can’t have listened to very many of his shows. His selections were mostly non mainstream, but the variety of genres and styles he covered was huge.
I do think that’s a default setting with a lot of people – partly through ignorance or other factors. Partly it was down to Peel himself – he had a series of personas on the radio: the cosmic whisperer of the late 60s bears little relation, presentationally, to the comic curmudgeon of the 80s and 90s. Musically, in the mid 70s, he effectively drew a line under a lot of the music he had played up to that point and moved on to punk and what happened after, with very few artists making the transition. 20 years after that he started playing loads of unlistenable ‘dance’ music as his main thing – presumably bored with the scratchy indie music.
David Cavanagh’s book ‘Good Night and Good Riddance’ is excellent on these shifting personas and shifting musical centres. There were several ‘John Peels’ through the ages, but somehow the one that most will be familiar with is the late 70s/80s one associated with the Fall and that kind of music. It’s a bit like Elvis – ALL the impersonators focus on the 70s Vegas Elvis. As a consequence, people don’t think about the 50s or 60s Elvis.
In the Word In Your Ear Peelcast (still available to listen to) the point was made that firstly David ‘Kid’ Jensen and later Janice Long came along and started encroaching on his territory, which Peel reacted to by going even further into the realms of extreme music.
It seems a reasonable theory to me, as in the latter years of the show I would find it almost unlistenable and him playing something by The Fall would come along as light relief.
Wot, no The Fall??
Very enjoyable thread, Colin. I am glad there is somebody here who is prepared to ask the big, important questions.
I am sure Big Maybelle would agree with me.
First time I’ve heard her but she is quintessentially Peelesque in my book.
So back in the day Colin were you listening to the Perfumed Garden on your Dansette with a finger poised above the play button of an enormous reel-to-reel deck you had stolen from your Uncle who used to work at BBC White City??
The Perfumed Garden ceased before I was born, Lodey. I inherited various reels from a late friend, and I’m in touch with a few others who unearth reels. Eventually such archaeologists find each other. The end results are various – research towards books, self-generated commercial release of stuff (with appropriate licenses), supplying material to third-party commercial release X-at-the-BBC projects, tracks for non-official fan-crowd-curated X-at-the-BBC free download compilations, etc. In my case, I digitise in order to pass stuff back to artists and on to bona fide archives (British Library, etc.), and occasionally to create YouTube montages for the public good – like the Liverpool Scene one, a Nucleus one, etc.
To what address do I send the children?
I’ve been reading a bit about the British Library’s”Save Our Sounds” archive project lately.
They have a regular monthly feature on different collections within it in “Electronic Sound” magazine.
There’s a huge range of stuff in the archive and it’s constantly expanding. Over 6.5 million recordings of speech, music, wildlife and the environment, dating from 1880 to the present.
The latest little article in ES (issue 50) is about counterculture figure Barry Miles’ archive, which was acquired in 2013.
http://www.bl.uk/save-our-sounds
Ken Garner’s “In Session Tonight” is a great source for those early Peel shows. I read it in one sitting in the library one day when I should have been doing something else.
Can’t help feeling BBC6 Music could be a little bit more proactive with this kind of stuff in those post-midnight documentaries/concerts they put out.
Thanks very much for this, Colin H: some of the other good’uns you mention
(Including Traffic, ‘Paper Sun’ and Big Maybelle, “I have the blues” ) are on this link I came across.