TERRY DENE: Dan Wooding’s latest book features the extraordinary story of the British Elvis and his many struggles and highlights

ASSIST News Service (ANS) - PO Box 609, Lake Forest, CA 92609-0609 USA
Visit our web site at: www.assistnews.net -- E-mail: assistnews@aol.com

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

’Terry Dene: Britain’s First Rock And Roll Rebel’
Dan Wooding’s latest book features the extraordinary story of the British Elvis and his many struggles and highlights

For Immediate Release
Contact: Dan Wooding at danjuma1@aol.com  LONDON, UK (ANS) -- It back in 1956 when Terry Dene, who in the 1950s at the age of 17, became Britain’s first rock and roll rebel. It was a period when the country was looking for the British Elvis and Terry, like so many others, got his big break at the 2 I's Coffee Bar in Old Compton Street in London’s Soho district, a gaudy area with a long reputation for sex shops as well as night life and the base of the British film industry.

Book cover

Every would-be stars, like Harry Webb, who later changed his name to Cliff Richard and Tommy Steele, would strut their stuff on the tiny stage but, when Terry Dene [then Terry Williams before he got his stage name] got up in front of the audience packed in like sardines, his excellent voice, stage presence and sultry Elvis-like good looks, blew most of his contemporaries away.
He was soon signed up by Dick Rowe from Decca Records, who later became known for the embarrassing fact that he once turned down The Beatles, and Rowe put out Terry Dene’s his first hit record called White Sport Coat.
Thousands of fans joined his fan-club and British coffee-bars and theatres were swamped with teenagers wearing “I'm a Dene-ager” badges.

Terry Dene appearing on 'Six Five Special'

Terry “Out-Steeles Tommy,” proclaimed one tabloid newspaper, referring to Tommy Steele.
The boy from the cramped flat in Hunters Buildings in the Elephant and Castle area of London, just south of the Thames, was heading right to the top of British rock and roll.
His appearances on the BBC’s first television pop show “Six Five Special” brought in 500 letters asking for more.

Dan pictured recently in London by the site of the 2 I's Coffee Bar where Terry Dene was discovered

Then Dene then starred the film “The Golden Disc,” which came out hot on the heels of Bill Haley's “Rock Around the Clock,” was a symbol of the fifties and led to jiving in the aisles and hand-jiving in the stalls. But instead of ripping up the seats the Teddy Boys and Girls stood and applauded after each number.
The British Army tried to use him in a recruiting drive just as the American forces had used Elvis. But Terry's active career as 18-year-old Rifleman 23604106 Williams - his real name -lasted only 48 hours. He cracked under the pressure and after spells in army and civilian mental hospitals was discharged.
Whipped up by the tabloids, the country was in uproar as the media debated his case and MP’s in the House of Commons argued about his short release. Some said he had “worked a fiddle” to get out of the army, while others saw what was really going on, that Terry had been mocked and badly treated by the other soldiers.

The ill-fated wedding of Terry Dene and Edna Savage, taken at the reception at Edna's flat in London (Photo: Record Mirror)

To make matters worse, his marriage to pretty Edna Savage, one of Britain's top girl vocalists, broke up and he broke down again.
He was always hitting the headlines with his drunken sprees and endless comebacks, but gradually he began to fade into oblivion.
Then, while at his lowest point, he happened to be in London's Trafalgar Square and came across the Mobile Evangelistic Crusade Mini Van and after discussions with the team there, Dene decided to follow Christ and later joined the Salvation Army. He also released a Gospel album of his favorite hymns and songs.
It was shortly after this, in 1973, while he was then living in Sweden, that Dan Wooding flew over there to meet with him and began work on his life-story called “I Thought Terry Dene was Dead,” which chronicled his rise and fall, and then his new-found faith and was published in 1974.

A recent picture of Terry with two of his records

“Decca Records also brought out an album of the same name for which I wrote the liner notes,” said ANS founder, Dan Wooding. “He even lived with my family in the UK for a time after he had returned to Britain.”
His extraordinary story is now being re-told in Wooding’s book with the new title of “Terry Dene: Britain’s First Rock and Roll Rebel” (Gonzo Media, London, UK), with a foreword by Marty Wilde, another of Dene’s contemporaries and the father of singer, Kim Wilde.

Marty Wilde

Marty wrote: “Whatever happened to Terry becomes a great deal more comprehensible as you read of the callous way in which he was treated by people who should have known better - many of whom, frankly, will never know better - of the sad little shadows of the past who eased themselves into Terry's life, took everything they could get and, when it seemed that all was lost, quietly left him .... Dan Wooding's book tells it all.”
Now in his seventies, Terry Dene is back signing again and his rich voice, which has been likened to a cross between Elvis and Roy Orbison, is appearing at various nostalgia concerts mainly in the UK.
The book is now available at various Internet sites, including: http://www.amazon.com/TERRY-DENE-Britains-first-rebel/dp/1908728329 or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/terry-dene-dan-wooding/1113803302.