Notes and Quotes: "Rock with the Caveman"
Listening to this recording now, one wonders how this British coffee-bar musician with a taste for Hank Williams actually felt about rock. "Rock with the Caveman" is more a send-up than a real example of rock and roll.
Employing the instrumentation, phrasing, voice quality, and style of rock and roll, this song still has elements of earlier British popular song. Notably, the recurring combination of verse and chorus echoes nineteenth-century parlor song and its Music Hall successors. Its overall structure reflects song form: verse/chorus [A]; verse/chorus [A]; sax solo [B]; verse/chorus [A]. The musicians on the session include Ronnie Scott, one of the premier jazz musicians in the UK at that time and who would soon open the best-known jazz club in London: Ronnie Scotts'.
Tommy Steele: Lionel [Bart] was writing a lot of songs for the Billy Cotton Band Show and he wanted to get into the records. We were called the Cavemen and we played country songs and comedy. Our theme song was "Rock with the Cameman" and it was a joke, a spoof, the sort of thing Monty Python might have done, or the two Ronnies. (Leigh 1996: n.p.)
Lionel Bart: Tommy Steele was my way in. All Tommy was doing was copying Bill Haley. When we made "Rock with the Caveman," we were at Decca no. 3 studio. I didn't really write music, so I didn't have any parts. There was Ronnie Scott, Cave Lee and Benny Green in this little control room, along with Tommy, his mum, dad, and the dog..., and no band parts. We had a tea break and the boys, being jazz musicians, improvised an instrumental, which was pretty good — it was all done like that. Three days later the thing was a package and it was a hit. It wasn't easy; I was very lucky to be in the right place at the right time. (Oldham 2000: 24)
Ronnie Scott: I can't remember much about that record, but I know that Lionel Bart had something to do with it. We were asked to do a session in West Hampstead and there was no arrangement, no music. We had to run through it and work out something on the spot. The record has sold millions and we got £12 for the session. (Leigh 1996: n.p.)
Ronnie Scott Lionel Bart
Schedule
25 January, 2012