Last Summer, some remarkable Merseybeat family trees were exhibited at The Bluecoat Gallery in Liverpool. Their creator, rock historian Pete Frame, had spoken to hundreds of Liverpool musicians and he had developed a framework to demonstrate the interrelationships between the numerous groups, together with his own witty comments. Take The Beatles: Ringo Starr came from Rory Storm & The Hurricanes and Pete Best went to Lee Curtis & The All-Stars, so it is possible to include details about those groups and their off- shoots on the same chart. Taking Pete Frame's seven Cavern Kids trees together, you can follow scores of musicians through the '60s. (The exhibition is now finished but as the trees have been purchased by Liverpool Museum, I hope that they are put on permanent display.)

Everyone who attended the exhibition, including the musicians themselves, was staggered by the vast number of changes of the different groups. Who could have imagined that there were 13 line-ups of The Beatles before you reached the famous john, Paul, George and Ringo combination? john, Paul and George were together in The Quarrymen but how amazing to discover that George left them to work with The Les Stewart Quartet. If that group had been successful, he might never have returned to The Quarrymen. So much of rock history , it seems, depends on chances and whims. Ringo, for example, was planning to leave Rory Storm for Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes when the call came from The Beatles.

Many of the musicians featured on the family trees were surprised to discover how short-lived some of the line-ups were. They had seemed longer and this, in retrospect, is logical. At the time, they were seeing so much of each other that three months could seem like six.

Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes were the best, straight dyed-in-the-wool rock n roll group on Merseyside and their family tree was the most remarkable. First of all, it was twice the size of anyone else's. Secondly, although the group had never had hit records, it contained many key Liverpool musicians. Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes were the group's group, so why didn't they make it? Why did they peter out so limply in the mid- '60s? Why have they never reformed? This

article assesses their work, answers the questions, and celebrates the release of a brand new box-set of their work, compiled by one of their most ardent fans, Warner Brennecke.

Kingsize Taylor & The Dominoes was a seminal rock n roll band on Merseyside. They were based in north Liverpool and Teddy Taylor's first group, The James Boys, played skiffle in 1956. Bobby Thomson recalls: "I was a bugler in the Boys' Brigade and I took a fancy to playing drums, all the military stuff , and from there it went into skiffle, very early rock n roll. I was trying to play rock n roll on a military sidedrum. Then I heard about this butcher in Seaforth called Teddy Taylor. I gave him the name Kingsize because Kingsize cigarettes had just come out. He was 15 or 16, an apprentice butcher, and he towered over everybody. We used to sit in his backroom, me bashing hell out of this sidedrum, and this developed into a cheap set of drums. Then I got a double bass from somewhere, and then we got a drummer, Cliff Roberts, and we became a band."

As we are talking about minor incidents 35 years ago, memories may be blurred. King- size holds a different view about his nickname. "There was a kingsize 'meece' in 'Huckleberry Hound', that was a kangaroo, you see. Nobody thought of the word 'Kingsize' until that show. The James Boys was a skiffle group at first and so we were playing rock n roll with washboards for a while. We played for pensioners as well as youth clubs. anywhere we could get up."

Another local band, The Bobby Bell Rockers, took their name from Freddie Bell & The Bell Boys, who had been featured in the film 'Rock Around The Clock'. The Bobby Bell Rockers were the first local band to play rock n roll, but by September 1957 their guitarist/vocalist Charlie Flynn had joined vocalist Arthur Baker. pianist Sam Hardie and drummer Cliff Roberts in The Dominoes, which was named in tribute to Fats Domino. Sam Hardie recalls, "Dave Anthony had a resident band at Litherland Town Hall and we were hired to play in the interval. Rock n roll was only just coming in and the big band scene was still very strong. People went to Litherland Town Hall for ball- room dancing. When we came on, the floor would empty .But we did our spot and we were each given a meat pie and a glass of orange."

Promoter Jim McIver remembers, .'It was

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hard to get a dance hall off the ground because people were frightened of the Teddy Boys. We said 'No Edwardian dress' to give people confidence. Dave Anthony & His Music were very bouncy, being guitars and xylophone, and very up-to-date in their repertoire. During the interval we had skiffle groups like The James Boys.

In early 1958, Kingsize Taylor joined The dominoes and then, when Charlie was conscripted, Bobby Thomson joined, having acquired an electric bass. Success came fast! Sam Hardie: "At one stage we were the highest paid group in Crosby. We were on £3.50 for the five of us. A lot of groups would play for nothing. We used to go to jobs on the bus. We played The Gasworks Club and we'd get the 61 bus and we'd take the drums, the amplifiers and everything else!"

A mark of The Dominoes' originality was in having a pianist, Sam Hardie. The only other Mersey group of stature to have a regular pianist would be Gerry & The Pacemakers. It makes sense really a lot of the clubs didn't lave pianos and you can hardly lug a piano on a bus! Sam Hardie remembers, "I learned to play classical music and Little Richard was the first person I'd heard playing rock n roll triplets. That Little Richard style is not hard. It's only banging out triplets, but 'Long Tall 5ally' was unlike anything I'd heard before. It's hard to convey those feelings today. Rock n roll was so new - a lot of Americans knew About its rhythm and blues roots, but that music had never been played here. skiffle didn't interest me but as soon as 1 heard Little Richard, I wanted to be in a group. My father was dead against it. We used to practice in our front room and he'd swear he could hear us a mile away!"

In both 1957 and 1958, i.e. pre and post Kingsize, The Dominoes made private recordings which testify that they were a rock n roll group. They were recorded in Sam Hardie's lounge  when his dad wasn't around! Despite primitive conditions and the drummer playing from the top of the stairs to get a better balance, the results are very enjoyable. The 1957 tracks feature 'Great Balls Of Fire', 'Roll Over Beethoven' and Fats Domino's 'I Want You To Know' alongside the instrumental 'Autumn Leaves' and Charlie's own 'Baby'. Arthur Baker was a competent vocalist, but the 1958 recordings demonstrate that Kingsize was...

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