They were among the finest acts to grace clubland and a new album helps you rediscover them. Adam Wakelin investigates

Here, we present the stories of our fabulous three acts rediscovered thanks to a CD called Working Man's Soul 2. Brass Foundry, Graham Walsh and the magnificent Melodians.

Graham Walsh

Variety's not dead – it's happily retired and living with wife Christine in Donington Le Heath. If you can hum it, organ maestro and all-round entertainer Graham Walsh can probably play it.

Once upon a time, he could tap dance to it while playing a saxophone – in tandem with his sister, Angela.

Graham started treading the boards as a 10-year-old. By 15, he was billed as "The Boy with Happy Feet" and doing seaside summer seasons.

"The clubs were hard work," says the genuinely lovely 72-year-old great-grandad.

"You did five turns a night. There was no such thing as bingo and groups then. You came off, another act went on, and then you were back on."

Graham played all Leicester's working men's clubs in the 1950s and '60s, sharing bills with some of the biggest names in showbiz.

"Norman Collier… the other one, the 'over the garden wall man', what was his name? I can't think…Neville King, the ventriloquist, Amarillo… I was on with him… Tony Christie, Ivy Tilsley out of Coronation Street, Engelbert… when he was still Gerry Dorsey.''

The concert halls in those days were packed, Woodbine-fugged coliseums of light-entertainment, every night of the week.

"In Sheffield, you would be on stage and there would be a bloke going round the audience shouting 'Meat pies! Does anyone want a meat pie?'. You had to be good to survive."

Graham was good – so good he and Angela got picked as the best musical and dance act in 1959, granted the honour of giving a Clubland Command Performance at the Winter Gardens in Blackpool.

They also won a heat of terrifically popular talent show Opportunity Knocks – at that time still on the radio.

Graham and Angela played their saxophones and then did a bit of tap-dancing.

Hughie Green – the gimlet-eyed Op Knocks host who made Simon Cowell look like a toy shop window teddy – wanted both at the same time.

So they did, and the Clapometer – the gauge of studio audience approval – went wild.

"I think we were the first act to tap dance on the radio," laughs Graham.

When Angela left the act to get married, Graham struck out as a pianist.

"My mother played the piano by ear," he says. "She always wanted to tread the boards, but she never quite made it. She lived her dreams through me.

"I never got to play out with the other kids as a child. I used to have piano lessons, singing lessons and saxophone lessons. After them, it was time to go to bed."

After playing the circuit in Manchester, he came back to his home town as a favour to Colin Thornley, at New Parks Social Club. Colin wanted Graham to accompany his acts.

"One day, I turned up to find this great big theatre organ with lights that changed colour while you played," he says.

Graham said: "That's nice, who's it for?" Colin said: "It's for you." Graham said: "I can't play the organ." Colin said: "Well, you'd better learn, hadn't you?"

So learn he did. By 1968 he had his own touring troupe, The Graham Walsh Sound.

"We had as many as six or seven in the group," he says. "We played dance music more than anything. We had some fun."

By the early '70s, with a wife and family to support, Graham decided to open a shop – the legendary Lowrey Organ Showroom in Coalville precinct.

As much as he loved being on stage, he had to play every night to earn a living. It was time, he decided, to put Christine and the three kids first.

"Christine always waited up for me," says Graham. "Whenever I came home she was there with something to eat and drink."

Aside from selling instruments, Graham used the shop to teach kids to play them – up to 100 a week in the '70s.

It was at this time he recorded the album Keyboard Kaleidoscope – an organ demonstration LP which includes Sunshine Of My Life, featured on Working Man's Soul 2.

The splendid Kaleidoscope sold more than 1,000 copies, despite never being stocked by a record shop.

"I set my organ up in the Haymarket shopping centre and played stuff off the album one Saturday," says Graham. "I sold 76 copies in two hours."

Graham's showroom fell on hard times during the miners' strike of 1984. He opened another shop in Coalville's Belvoir Road and struggled on until 1989.

"Keyboards had come in," he says. "That's what kids wanted."

After that, Graham "went back to grassroots", teaching and becoming the resident pianist at Coalville Miners' Welfare.

"Whatever people wanted to sing, that's what I'd play," he says.

In 1995, after two years as secretary of North Street Working Men's Club, Graham retired.

He rarely plays the organ nowadays.

"I don't get the urge," he says. "I'm happy with what I've got, a lovely little bungalow and a nice retirement. I've been performing since the age of 10. I think I've done my bit now. "

How Op Knocks was fixed: Read more about Graham in a photo-spread in next month's Leicestershire Chronicle.

Steve Fearn, of Brass Foundry

Steve Fearn knows "the look" – and he knows what usually comes next, when someone gives it to him...

"Didn't you used to be Steve Fearn?"

The drystone wall-builder smiles, and holds his hands up. Yes he did. Guilty as charged: '50s rock'n'roller; Irish showband trouper; guitarist in the Pete York Percussion Group, featuring Ian Paice, from squillion-selling '70s rock behemoths Deep Purple; and now treading the boards in comedy music duo Fingers and Thumbs, with Des Dyke from '70s hit-makers Jigsaw.

Yet it's rarely one of these that has people asking; what everyone remembers is Brass Foundry.

Brass Foundry are one of Leicester's great nearly-groups, a good-time soul band who never quite cracked the charts, but could keep a crowd dancing until the milkman started his round.

"We played all over Leicestershire," says 65-year-old from Countesthorpe. "There used to be an all-nighter in the basement of a factory on Oxford Street called The Nite Owl.

"Sometimes the crowd would be leaving as the blokes were clocking on.

"God knows what people were on," he laughs. "They must have been on something. I never got involved in any of that."

Steve, who never gave up the day job, would finish a gig, snatch a couple of hours sleep, and then work on a building site.

Early '70s residencies at the County Arms in Blaby and Shearsby's Bath Hotel burn brightest in the memory, for band and fans alike. Deep Purple ivory-tinkler Jon Lord and Bill "magic our Maurice" Maynard were regular faces.

"Wild times, fantastic nights," says Steve. "You'd get a place that holds 80, and 400 people would be packed in there.

"Health and safety would never have it now. People were literally hanging off the rafters. We'd have to climb in through the windows to get to the stage sometimes."

Steve left Brass Foundry when the group began a residency at Bailey's night spot in Leicester in the '80s. "The idea was that we would become employees," he says. "It was becoming too professional That didn't suit."

An incarnation of Brass Foundry is still going, and Steve joins them occasionally.

He said: "I loved my time in Brass Foundry – even though I can't remember half of it.

"Music's all done by computers now, and little kids that probably know nothing... but I'm not bitter," he laughs.

"I wouldn't swap those nights."

Terry Noel, of the Melodians

Look at this picture long enough and you can almost hear the sirens of approaching ambulances.

The number of accidents this lot nearly caused is not recorded but the screech of rubber on Six Hills Tarmac must have been deafening as motorists braked in general bedazzlement at the Melodians.

Seven black guys beamed as if by magic from Huggy Bear's wardrobe onto a wall outside the Durham Ox. It must have been like driving the Austin Maxi through a tear in the time-space continuum.

Chicken in a basket went totally tropical in 1972 as the Caribbean steel band started a six-month Thursday residency at one of Leicestershire's premier nightspots.

"It was one long series of happy accidents really," recalls bass drummer Terry Noel, now a magistrate, still nattily dressed in combat pants, trainers, and neck chains from which a gold map of Trinidad and steel drum dangle.

Terry came to Leicester from the West Indies in 1967 to work as a nurse at the old Towers Hospital.

"Nobody told me it was a psychiatric hospital until I got here," says the 69-year-old, clutching his face in mock horror. "I was scared like hell."

Enlisting in the Army seemed like a safer bet.

"What regiment do you want to be in?" asked the recruiting sergeant on London Road. Terry told him. The sergeant laughed in his face.

"I don't think the Household Cavalry are ready to make history just yet, son," he guffawed, shaking with mirth at the idea of a black man Trooping the Colour. After hearing he was too old for the Paras, Terry opted to stay at the Towers. "I really enjoyed it," he says. "There were a lot of good people."

He hooked up with the would-be Melodians after seeing a poster asking for steel band players flapping from the side of a van.

He rang them and said: 'You run a steel band?' The voice said: 'Ya! You ever played before?' I said: 'Ya!'

"The next thing I know I'm in Carlton's Byron's attic in Highfields surrounded by a lot of oil drums. Home-made pans they were. How we managed to get those big things up all those twisty-turny stairs, I'll never know," he chuckles.

The Melodians were a steel band with a difference. They had a singer, guitar, bass, and they played everything from Quando, Quando to Tennessee Waltz.

And, not entirely predictably, we went crazy for the sound of the dancing drums. Creases were jiggled from jeans, and hips swung like they were on castors as mainly 30 and 40-somethings went mad for it at the Durham Ox.

The music was a ray of sunshine in the bleak, donkey-jacketed Britain of the early 70s.

They played everywhere: RAF bases, youth clubs, even for a gang of greasy bikers – and only once, in London, did they run into anything resembling racism.

The photo above – used to illustrate Working Man's Soul 2 – was taken for the back of an LP, In the Mood for Dancing, which the Melodians sold at gigs.

"We did very well at the Durham Ox," says Terry. "We had a nice following there."

Terry, who had left nursing and was doing a youth work course for much of his Melodians career, left Leicester to do good deeds in Trinidad in 1973.

He now lives in London and has another Melodians – Abba and Beatles hits a speciality – which plays all over the world. The Leicester band, sadly, fizzled out.

Carlton now lives in Canada, another member has died. Some still live in Leicester, which Terry still likes. "If I ever left London it's the only place I'd feel comfortable living in."

Working Man's Soul 2 is out now.

www.licoricesoul.co.uk

Listen to Fur Elise by The Melodians.

Listen to Superstition from the album by Brass Foundry

A second track from Brass Foundry

Listen to You are the Sunshine from Graham Walsh