Biography
In truth, the Wheel-A-Ways functioned as an alias adopted by the Wheels, an accomplished yet lesser-known Irish outfit responsible for several Them-inspired recordings during the middle 1960s. When the group’s own composition “Bad Little Woman” reached American shores via the Aurora imprint in 1966, the label issued the track under the Wheel-A-Ways name to sidestep any mix-up with Mitch Ryder & the Detroit Wheels. That choice, ironically, has generated persistent bewilderment among British Invasion archivists ever since, leaving uncertainty over whether the two acts were identical. Distinguishing the matter would have been straightforward had the Wheel-A-Ways single contained the same performance the Wheels placed on their 1966 Columbia single in the UK. Instead, Aurora’s pressing featured a markedly stronger and looser alternate take. Confirmation that both names referred to the same Belfast musicians appears in the sleeve notes of the anthology Belfast Beat Maritime Blues.
More crucially, the Wheel-A-Ways recording of “Bad Little Woman” stands as an exceptional track—one of the finest overlooked British R&B sides of its era. Built on a reversed, foreboding variation of the “Gloria” riff and groove, the performance surges into a frantic, pounding rave-up driven by raw shouts before subsiding into isolated, eerie guitar glissandos that receive replies from a solitary harmonica. The Shadows of Knight evidently encountered either this or the Wheels’ version and cut their own cover, which became a modest American hit.
The Wheel-A-Ways cut later surfaced on assorted anthologies devoted to rare British Invasion material, yet achieves its clearest sonic presentation on Big Beat’s Belfast Beat Maritime Blues, a collection spotlighting mid-1960s R&B-inflected rock from multiple Belfast acts. That same disc also contains the milder take originally credited to the Wheels on their UK single, alongside ten further Wheels recordings drawn from British 45s and previously unreleased studio outtakes.
More crucially, the Wheel-A-Ways recording of “Bad Little Woman” stands as an exceptional track—one of the finest overlooked British R&B sides of its era. Built on a reversed, foreboding variation of the “Gloria” riff and groove, the performance surges into a frantic, pounding rave-up driven by raw shouts before subsiding into isolated, eerie guitar glissandos that receive replies from a solitary harmonica. The Shadows of Knight evidently encountered either this or the Wheels’ version and cut their own cover, which became a modest American hit.
The Wheel-A-Ways cut later surfaced on assorted anthologies devoted to rare British Invasion material, yet achieves its clearest sonic presentation on Big Beat’s Belfast Beat Maritime Blues, a collection spotlighting mid-1960s R&B-inflected rock from multiple Belfast acts. That same disc also contains the milder take originally credited to the Wheels on their UK single, alongside ten further Wheels recordings drawn from British 45s and previously unreleased studio outtakes.