Mersey Beat - Derry & The Seniors

Derry Wilkie with Howie Casey on sax

Derry Wilkie was born was born Derek Davis in Liverpool on the 10th of January 1941 and lived in Upper Parliament Street, Berkley Street, then Kent Gardens, Liverpool.
In late 1959 Howie Casey was in a band called 'The Hy-Tones', its name taken from Huyton the area where they all lived. The next step for Howie was to form his own band. He said, "I got together with a drummer who lived in the road where I lived and a guy called Jeff Wallington. We teamed up and he knew a guitar player called Brian Griffiths. Billy Hughes and Stan Foster also joined us and I met up with Paul Whitehead, a bass player, again. I'd known him from a youth club ages ago, but he was doing an Elvis then."
It was while they were appearing at Holyoake Hall, near Penny Lane, that compere Bob Wooler asked if a black youth could get on stage to sing some songs with them. His name was Derry Wilkie.
Howie said, "Derry came up and he was doing Little Richard, which was right up my street because prior to that we didn't have a singer who could get down to that sort of stuff. That was great, so we asked Derry to join the band." Derry soon became their lead vocalist even though they already had two singers and in due course they changed their name change to 'Derry Wilkie & The Seniors' in early 1960, appearing regularly at all the major Liverpool venues including the Jacaranda. Owner, Allan Williams, booked them for the Liverpool Stadium Show with American rock 'n' roller Gene Vincent on Tuesday the 3rd of May 1960. Their performance was witnessed by London impresario Larry Parnes who was so impressed he asked Williams to arrange an audition, as he was seeking bands to back his stables of artists, such as Billy Fury and Johnny Gentle, both from Liverpool.

Derry & The Seniors

The audition took place at the Wyvern Social Club on the 10th of May, along with 'Cliff Roberts & The Rockers', 'Cass & the Cassanovas', 'Gerry & the Pacemakers' and 'The Silver Beetles'. As a result 'The Seniors' were booked by Parnes to back Duffy Power for a season in Blackpool. But Power fell ill and the season was cancelled, so Casey confronted Williams who promised to take the group to London and find work for them. Williams took them to the 2 I's coffee bar where he met up with Bruno Koschmider who was seeking bands for his Kaiserkeller Club in Hamburg as the previous English band he had booked, 'The Jets', had switched to a rival club 'The Top Ten'.  'The Seniors' travelled to Germany, becoming the first British band to do so, and played regularly in Hamburg over the summer of 1960, later being joined there by a rival Liverpool group, 'The Beatles'. However, as the group members did not have work permits or visas, they were repatriated to the UK in October 1960. They continued to play local clubs and venues around Liverpool for the rest of 1960 but lost all their equipment when the building they were storing it in burned down.

They suffered so many financial difficulties that when Wallington and Hughes decided to leave they disbanded in December 1960 before they re-grouped in January 1961 as 'Howie Casey and the Seniors' with Frank Wibberley replacing Wallington on drums and the addition of a second vocalist, Freddie Fowell, later known as Freddie Starr, they secured a recording contract with Fontana.
'Howie Casey and The Seniors' was the first Mersey Beat group to make records.
By 1962, their bass player Frank Bowen left to be briefly replaced by Lou Walters from 'Rory Storm & the Hurricanes'. Despite releasing three singles and an album, they rarely ventured outside the north-west of England.
'The Seniors' finally disbanded for good in June 1962. Derry joined Wallasey band, 'The Pressmen' in 1963 and as 'Derry Wilkie and the Pressmen' recorded one track on the Oriole album, 'This Is Merseybeat', in 1963 but the band split in early 1964 and Derry and saxophonist Phil Kenzie formed the basis of 'Derry Wilkie & the Others'. The group toured the U.K. and Germany but disbanded after two years.

Howie Casey became a member of 'The Dominoes' and spent several years on the Continent before settling in London doing session work. A producer called Tony Visconti gave him a call to do this album for Paul McCartney and it was 'Band On The Run.' Howie says, "I re-met Paul after quite a few years. I hadn't seen him 'cause he'd become rich and famous and I was working. It was great.
I played on the tracks 'Jet', 'Band On The Run', I did the solo on 'Bluebird' and the solo on 'Mrs. Vanderbilt.' He liked what I'd done, so a year later I got a call. I'd been on tour with Marc Bolan and all sorts of stuff and I got a call from McCartney's office to see if I'd be interested in doing a tour with them. Of course, I jumped at it and went off and did that world tour - and I did another few albums, 'Wings At The Speed Of Sound' and, of course then there's the triple album 'Wings Over America' which was recorded live; 'Back To the Egg'; 'Rockestra,' the Kampuchea concert, we did the Venice thing, then I did a second tour with him later on which was the one which ended up in Japan where we was arrested and then he more or less gave up touring after that so that was when we sort of went our separate ways."

Derry Wilkie died on the 22nd of December 2001 and was buried in Toxteth Cemetery on Smithdown Road, Liverpool.

See also - http://www.thefootballvoice.com/2016/01/mersey-beat-hideaways.html