The Bowles Brothers Band -

The Bowles Brothers Band was an English Western-swing/folk group that released the 1978 Decca album Roger Buys a Fridge. Two live cuts appeared on the 1977 Polydor comedy comp The Mermaid Frolics. In July 1976, they appeared with fellow newcomers Gentleman and the Sex Pistols on Show 9 of the ITV music program So It Goes.

Members: Brian Bowles (guitar, vocals), Sue Jones-Davies (vocals), Richard Lee (bass), Julian Smedley (guitar, violin, vocals)

Background

The Bowles Brothers Band formed in London by 1976 when guitarist-singer Brian Bowles and violinist-guitarist Julian Smedley expanded an acoustic duo with singer Sue Jones-Davies and double-bassist Richard Lee. Bowles and Smedley had met at the University of East Anglia, where Smedley earned a 1973 BA in Fine Arts.

Smedley grew up in Northampton in a musical family and learned violin through lessons arranged by his violinist father. At Radley College in Oxfordshire, he played violin and sang with Oberon, the folk-psych group behind the privately pressed 1971 album A Midsummer’s Night Dream. Smedley entered BBC studio work after university and played a double-neck guitar in a trio for a Kenneth Williams radio program.

Lee played double bass at Cockermouth Grammar School in an acoustic group with future sound engineer Ted Hayton, first on Bach arrangements and then on material by Pentangle and Procol Harum. Lee and Hayton subsequently studied at UEA, where Lee entered the circle around Bowles and Smedley. Jones-Davies graduated from Bristol University in 1971 and joined the 1972 original London production of Jesus Christ Superstar at Palace Theatre.

Bowles and Smedley busked as a violin-guitar duo on London Underground and secured a weekly engagement at a crepe restaurant. They added Jones-Davies and Lee for weekend performances on Portobello Road, where the quartet worked with acoustic guitars, violin, double bass, and four-part harmony. The group moved into the London pub circuit and recruited Hayton as sound engineer after early amplified shows produced persistent feedback.

The Bowles Brothers Band recorded a four-song John Peel session for BBC Radio 1 on Aug. 5, 1976, and performed “Charlie’s Nuts” on the Aug. 28 edition of Granada Television’s So It Goes with Gentlemen and the Sex Pistols. The quartet sang backing parts on Racing Cars debut album Downtown Tonight, where Smedley arranged strings. The group returned to BBC studios for a second session on Jan. 10, 1977, for John Peel.

The quartet appeared at Amnesty International’s May 8, 1977 gala at Mermaid Theatre in London and contributed “Charlie’s Nuts” and “Nagasaki” to the resulting concert album The Mermaid Frolics. Neil Innes used Bowles, Jones-Davies, and Smedley as singers and Lee as double-bassist on the 1977 album Taking Off. Two managers approached the quartet and shopped the act to several labels. Decca signed the Bowles Brothers Band.

Decca scheduled Roger Buys a Fridge alongside the group’s first major tour, a May 1978 Don McLean support run that opened at Royal Albert Hall.

Discography: