Duffy Power

Early British rock & roll produced a small number of performers whose careers demonstrated remarkable longevity across subsequent decades, among them Cliff Richard, Billy Fury, Adam Faith, and Mike Berry. Whereas those figures generally prolonged their success by pursuing a comparatively sincere continuation of the pop and rock styles that had launched them, Duffy Power followed an entirely different trajectory, evolving from a mainstream pop vocalist into an authentic British blues artist whose credibility in that realm received endorsement from Alexis Korner, the acknowledged founder of British blues, and who retained strong esteem within blues circles long after the twentieth century had ended.

Raymond Howard entered the world in 1941 and developed an early passion for music shaped by composers extending from George Gershwin to Edward Elgar together with vocalists ranging from Paul Robeson to Al Jolson. As a young teenager he gravitated toward blues and jazz, discoveries that soon directed his attention to the work of Elvis Presley and Ray Charles. At fifteen he abandoned formal schooling to front his own band under the name Duffy Howard, handling lead vocals and guitar; his sets already leaned toward the blues-inflected wing of rock & roll, and he was equally willing to perform a Leadbelly composition or an Elvis Presley number, the latter drawn exclusively from RCA Victor releases then available in Britain. At seventeen promoter and manager Larry Parnes spotted him during a local theater appearance, signed him, and rechristened him Duffy Power, following the period practice of assigning striking stage names, with “Power” taken from actor Tyrone Power. After witnessing live sets by Cliff Richard and Marty Wilde he relinquished the guitar to concentrate solely on singing and later secured a contract with Fontana Records.

In line with prevailing commercial expectations and the outlook of most British managers of the time, his recorded output was steered toward the poppiest manifestations of rock & roll; although one of his six Fontana singles was a version of Jerry Lee Lewis’s “Whole Lotta Shakin’ Goin’ On,” the remaining five drew from the catalogs of Bobby Darin and Bobby Rydell. His deeper allegiance nevertheless remained with the rawer currents of American music, where Ray Charles’s “What’d I Say” and Muddy Waters’s “Hoochie Coochie Man” served as pivotal reference points during the grueling package tours organized by Parnes. Like fellow Parnes artist Billy Fury, he cultivated vocal technique that furnished far greater range and suppleness than the typical British teen-idol mold required. In 1963, precisely when that style of teen star was vanishing from the charts, Power took deliberate steps to reveal his fuller capabilities; one single that year, issued on the Beatles’ own Parlophone label, was a treatment of the Lennon/McCartney composition “I Saw Her Standing There” cut early enough to predate the common practice of mining Beatles albums for cover material. The Graham Bond Organisation, already emerging as a significant force in London’s blues community and featuring Jack Bruce and Ginger Baker, supplied the backing, yet the recording’s most striking feature at such an early date was the thorough reworking of the song by Power and the band, signaling the depth of talent and ambition concealed beneath the waning teen-idol image.

Over the ensuing years Power also began writing original material while fully transforming himself into a serious blues vocalist, frequently appearing alongside successive lineups of Blues Incorporated, the ensemble Alexis Korner had founded. Their principal joint document was the album Sky High, now regarded as one of Korner’s stronger mid- to late-1960s recordings. During the same span Power encountered Danny Thompson and Terry Cox, both later members of Pentangle. Within a short time it became evident that he possessed an unusual ability to draw outstanding emerging musicians into his circle, many of whom subsequently achieved stardom independently. Despite these associations he never located a suitable outlet capable of presenting his own gifts to a broader audience. He possessed the potential to match the visibility attained by Chris Farlowe or Long John Baldry yet never secured the kind of mainstream hit either of them enjoyed. His late-1960s ensemble Duffy’s Nucleus remained largely overlooked, and a self-titled solo album released in 1972, although co-produced by Andrew Loog Oldham, who had previously guided Farlowe onto the charts, failed to find buyers. By the latter half of the decade Power had accepted a civil-service position and withdrawn from the music industry. He reappeared gradually during the 1980s, beginning with BBC broadcasts, and in 2000 contributed to the Bert Jansch tribute album People on the Highway. Activity increased noticeably in the twenty-first century, with more frequent performances and recordings than at any point since the early 1970s. Duffy Power died in 2014 at the age of seventy-two.