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^6 audio cd's en 1 Video Cd 

"When you've played with the best, the rest is just, well, the rest." Jimmy Nicol ?87.

  


   In 1968 Andy Warhol said,"In the future, everyone will be world-famous for 15 minutes." 

   So far as the majority of Beatles fans are concerned, he could just as well have been talking about the past......and in particular Jimmy  Nicol.    

   It was Jimmy , who temporarily replaced Ringo as the Beatles drummer for ten whirlwind days for their tour of the Netherlands and the first date in Australia.

   On the 14th of June 1964 Jimmy flew back to England and so far as the world was concerned, disappeared back into the obscurity from which he had briefly emerged.

   As is usually the case, the truth is a whole  lot different.

  Jimmys recording career began in the late 1950s when between 1957 and 1959 he was the drummer with Colin Hicks and the Cabin Boys. Colin actually being the brother of a more famous artist, Tommy Steele.

  Before that, he had been a drum repairer/technician with Boosey and Hawkes and had also occupied the drummers seat in a few very well known big bands,1960: The Oscar Rabin Band. 1961: and  The Cyril Stapleton Big Band. 

   Following his departure from the Cabin Boys,he joined another fledgling Rock and Roll outfit Vince Eager and the Quite Three until 1960.

  The trail then grows cold so far as recordings are concerned as Jimmy seems to have been involved almost exclisively in session work , including jobs with musicians from the orchestras of Ted Heath and Johnny Dankworth.

  Rumours persist that he was a member of Georgie Fame and The Blue Flames in 1964, and whilst it is true that he played at the Flamingo Club, where the Blue Flames were the House Band..there is no trace of him on the recordings that they made at the time. 

  However in 1964 he formed his own band , The Shubdubs whilst continuing his session work.

He had worked  for George Martin on both a Tommy Quickly recording session and possibly others on the NEMS roster.A set of recordings entitled Beatlemania featuring a number of Beatles songs also had Jimmie on drums.. When Ringo was hospitalised, it was George who recommended him to Brian Epstein as a replacement.

   He rehearsed with John Paul and George at Abbey Road but sadly no recordings seem to exist.

  Once back in England , Jimmy reformed the Shubdubs and during 1964 and 1965 they toured extensively. During this time Jimmy also released a solo single as The Sound of Jimmy Nicol. 

   Between 1965 and 1967 he was a member of the well-known Swedish guitar group The Spotnicks who  rush-released a single, The Spotnicks Introducing Jimmy Nicol, titled Husky and Drum Diddley.

   In 1967, Nicol lived in Mexico working with samba & bossa nova groups, amongst whom were an outfit called Blue Rain.

 He married and had a son, Howard, who in the 1990s was to win an award as sound engineer for his work on a BBC collection of Beatles recordings.

   In 1969, he recorded "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (sung in Spanish) with his own band, "Jimmie Nicol Show". 

   It is here that our story ends.


   Sadly we have been unable to trace all of Jimmys recordings, those which have eluded us are

 

"The Shubdubs" (1964):

       Baby Please Don't Go

        Shubdubery  

 

Solo single as "The Sound of Jimmy Nicol" (1965):

      Clementine

      Bim Bam

 

and Jumpin' Jack Flash (sung in Spanish by "Jimmie Nicol Show").

 

It is not known if ?Blue Rain? ever enterd the recording studio.


What remains is we hope definitive .