Kenny

Midway through the 1970s, as British glam rock neared its close, Kenny surfaced among the many acts swept onto that scene and was routinely grouped with the Bay City Rollers and Slik as yet another fabrication of songwriters Bill Martin and Phil Coulter. Rick Driscoll and Yan Stile nevertheless established themselves as capable writers through the band’s later releases. The five-piece had already spent roughly three years performing before Martin and Coulter came across them. Operating then as Chufff, the quartet circulated regularly on the free-festival progressive circuit and appeared alongside Hawkwind and the Edgar Broughton Band. Legend holds that Martin and Coulter located the musicians late in 1974 while they rehearsed inside a banana warehouse in the north London suburb of Enfield; the band initially dismissed the songwriters’ advances. Refusing to accept rejection, the pair pressed forward with a newly recorded dance track titled “The Bump,” a number they had previously cut with the Bay City Rollers; the song was already issued and seemed poised for chart entry, so they sought a ready-made group to promote it on television. Enticed by the prospect of success, Chufff consented to become Kenny. The resulting fame proved brief. Although Kellogg’s cereal company generated publicity by objecting to the band’s “K” logo and “The Bump” climbed to number three in early 1975, only three further British hits followed, all written by Martin and Coulter: the number-four “Fancy Pants,” “Baby I Love You OK” at number twelve, and “Julie Ann” at number ten. Driscoll and Stile’s own material fared no better; Kenny placed just one of their songs, “Happiness Melissa,” on the B-side of the late-1975 failure “Nice to Have You Home.” Poor sales of the debut album intensified the desire to break free, and in late 1976 the group took Martin and Coulter to court to end the arrangement. Signing afterward with Polydor, Kenny issued the all-original album Ricochet together with the single “Hot Lips,” yet neither attracted notice. When a serious road accident incapacitated Stile, the band dissolved and has never reunited.