Shakin' Stevens

Shakin' Stevens stands out as a central figure in the British rock & roll revival that spanned the 1970s and 1980s, having displayed extraordinary staying power before finally achieving superstar status. Across his career he accumulated no fewer than 30 U.K. Top 40 entries, the bulk of them concentrated within a remarkable five-year period of sustained chart dominance. Even so, more than ten years of recording activity preceded that initial breakthrough, a stretch arduous enough to have deterred anyone lacking comparable dedication.

Born Michael Barratt on March 4, 1948 in Ely, Wales, the youngest of eleven siblings, Stevens already balanced marriage and a milkman’s job when he launched Shakin' Stevens & the Sunsets in 1968. The musicians who formed the group had performed together in various configurations since the late 1950s under the name the Backbeats; they recognized Stevens as one of their most loyal supporters and regularly invited him onstage for guest vocals. Building a fervent live audience throughout South Wales, the band secured a contract with Parlophone in 1970 and cut their debut album, the forward-looking A Legend, under producer Dave Edmunds. While accounts of their opening for the Rolling Stones in December 1969 remain unsubstantiated, the group toured steadily across Germany and Holland and notched several European singles successes.

The ensemble nevertheless appeared fated to remain on the rock & roll revival circuit, a situation compounded when Stevens accepted a role in impresario Jack Good’s 1977 musical Elvis, portraying the King during his Army years; the band accordingly suspended operations for the show’s initial six-month engagement. The production’s unexpected triumph as one of the year’s major theatrical events extended Stevens’ run to two years, and the resulting publicity made clear that he would not soon return to South Wales. He parted ways with the Sunsets in late 1979 and, performing solo, briefly joined Track Records, only for three singles and the Play Loud LP to vanish when the label collapsed; undeterred, he moved to CBS in 1980, though the label initially rejected his first completed album.

A part in Jack Good’s revived Oh Boy television series maintained his visibility, prompting the CBS subsidiary Epic to sign him. After three unsuccessful singles, Stevens achieved his first U.K. chart entry in February 1980 with a cover of Buck Owens’ “Hot Dog,” which peaked at number 24. “Marie Marie” followed that summer and reached the Top 20, and in February of the next year he secured his maiden U.K. number one with “This Ole House.” The subsequent release “You Drive Me Crazy” climbed to number two, after which “Green Door” restored him to the summit. From that point onward, additional hits arrived in rapid succession; the chart-toppers “Oh Julie” in 1982 and “Merry Christmas Everyone” in 1985 flanked further successes including “Shirley,” “Give Me Your Heart Tonight,” “I’ll Be Satisfied,” “Blue Christmas,” “Cry Just a Little Bit,” and numerous others.

A 1985 reunion with Dave Edmunds, the Sunsets’ original producer, yielded the Lipstick Powder & Paint album, which Edmunds also oversaw for the Christmas number-one single, while Stevens’ other LPs encompassed the Top Three releases This Ole House and Shaky, both from 1981, and Give Me Your Heart Tonight in 1982. Even his early-1970s recordings with the Sunsets enjoyed renewed chart attention when compiled on the 1981 collection titled Shakin' Stevens. Legal disputes over royalties from that material continued through the late 1980s and into the 1990s as former bandmates sought compensation. As the decade advanced, his singles charted progressively lower; his last U.K. Top Five appearance came in 1987 with a revival of “What Do You Want to Make Those Eyes at Me For,” while later efforts struggled to replicate earlier peaks. Stevens ceased recording and performing in 1993, his final chart single of the period, the previous year’s “Radio,” a collaboration with Queen’s Roger Taylor that reached number 37.

After six years away from the spotlight, Stevens resumed live work in 1999. He reentered the U.K. charts in 2005 with the compilation The Collection, and that same year he participated in and won the oldies-themed reality program Hit Me Baby One More Time; his winning rendition of P!nk’s “Trouble” delivered another Top 20 hit that summer and opened the door to his first new album in fifteen years, 2007’s Now Listen. In 2008 he marked his 60th birthday with an extensive run of major concerts across the U.K. and Europe, including a Glastonbury Festival appearance. A further celebratory tour in 2011 coincided with his 30th anniversary milestone and the release of Rockin' the Blues. Stevens returned in 2016 with his 20th studio album, Echoes of Our Times, drawing on his ancestral heritage to create a darker, Americana-inflected work. The exhaustive 19-disc anthology Fire in the Blood appeared in 2020, accompanied by the more concise overview Singled Out, surveying his career to that point. Re-Set, issued in 2023 as a thematic companion to Echoes of Our Times, revisited similar territory and likewise entered the U.K. album chart’s Top 30.