BETTY BASS AND HER BACHELORS

LVox: Susan Hampshire

LVox: Roger Gage

Bs: Betty Bass [Holgate]

Keys: Peter Fenn

Gtr: ??

Drums: ??

This group were Anglia Television’s first house band and were put together in October 1959, just before the station goes on-air. Betty Base & Her Bachelors as they were christened, featured the talents of 16-year-old bass player Betty Holgate from Cambridge.

Holgate had given up the career prospect of becoming a teacher after passing the audition. It is known that music ran in her family with her father being an accomplished pianist and her brother Dave teaching her how to play bass. Dave Holgate later came to Norwich as part of The Samson & Hercules resident band The Tempos.

The group also saw the return of pianist Fenn who had moved away from Norwich but had previously been an integral part of the city’s modern jazz scene with The Modernists and his own Peter Fenn Trio. The Bachelors would be supplying music for The Midday Show and its singing hosts. Hampshire’s presence was brief, as an actress, she had already appeared alongside Cliff Richard in Expresso Bongo (1959) and would later make the movie Wonderful Life (1964) with him as well. Gage a young unknown, was married to actress Joan Plowright between 1953-60.

Mediography:

East Anglians in Anglia TV band SJ EEN 10/10/59

(Fenn - ??) <> (Fenn - ??)