Biography
Formed late in 1967 in Leeds, England, the West Indian sextet brought together Trevor Wisdom on organ, Owen Wisdom on bass guitar (both born in Jamaica), Leroy Mills on trumpet and Reg Challenger on drums (both born in St. Kitts), William Hixon on lead guitar (born in Monseratt), and Paul Douglas on tenor saxophone (born in Jamaica). Their breakthrough arrived the following year when EMI Records offered them studio time under producer Norman Smith, who would later record as Hurricane Smith. To reach the session they scraped together £25 to rent a van, cut the track in a single day, and saw their topical cover of the Beatles’ ‘Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da’ released just two days afterward; within a fortnight the record had reached the UK Top 20. Marmalade’s rival version nevertheless outsold it on its way to the top of the chart. The Bedrocks next attempted a reading of the rugby song ‘The Lovedene Girls’, yet the single gained almost no airplay and missed the charts entirely, marking the end of their prospects for commercial success.