Early life Powell was born at 1 Cotton Street,
Leigh,
Lancashire, England. Over the following year Fame toured the UK playing beside Wilde,
Joe Brown,
Dickie Pride,
Gene Vincent,
Eddie Cochran and others. Fame played piano for Billy Fury in his backing band, the Blue Flames. When the backing band got the sack at the end of 1961, it was re-billed as "Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames" and went on to enjoy great success with a repertoire largely of rhythm and blues numbers.
The Blue Flames performing at The
Grand Gala du Disque,
Amsterdam, on Saturday 2 October 1966 Fame was influenced by
jazz,
blues and the musicians
Mose Allison and
Willie Mabon. He was one of the first white musicians to be influenced by
ska after hearing it in cafés in Jamaica and
Ladbroke Grove in England. In the early 1960s Fame and his band appeared regularly at
The Flamingo Club, a London "
cool jazz" club, which Fame recalled as "full of American GIs who came in from their bases for the weekend" who played for him the song "
Green Onions" by
Booker T. & the M.G.'s. "I had been playing piano up to that point but I bought a Hammond organ the next day."
Bill Wyman of
the Rolling Stones described Fame at this point in his career as "an incredibly good pianist and singer" and "the idol of the large contingent of blacks" who frequented the Flamingo. In 1963, the band recorded its debut album,
Rhythm and Blues at the Flamingo. the album was released in place of a planned single by EMI
Columbia. It failed to reach the chart, but the October 1964 follow-up,
Fame at Last, reached No. 15 on the
UK Albums Chart.
Ronan O'Rahilly failed to get Fame's first record played by the BBC. After it was rejected by
Radio Luxembourg, O'Rahilly announced he would start his own radio station to promote the record. The station became the offshore
pirate radio station
Radio Caroline. Fame enjoyed continual chart success, with three number one hits in the
UK singles chart. Fame made his US television debut that same year on
Hullabaloo. His single "
Get Away", released on 21 July 1966, spent one week at No. 1 on the UK chart and 11 weeks on the chart, and one week at No. 1 in Canada. The song was written as a jingle for a petrol commercial. His version of the
Bobby Hebb song "
Sunny" made No. 13 in the UK charts in September 1966. His greatest chart success was in 1967 when "
The Ballad of Bonnie and Clyde" became a number one hit in the UK and Canada, and number seven in the US.
Popular culture Two of the band's recordings, "Pink Champagne" and "
Yeh, Yeh", were featured in the 2020 Netflix series ''
The Queen's Gambit''., Stockholm, 1968
Solo Fame continued playing into the 1970s, having a hit with "Rosetta" with his friend
Alan Price in 1971, and they worked together extensively. The artist released two singles produced by
Stock Aitken Waterman in 1986, a cover of
Richie Cole's "
New York Afternoon", (credited as Mondo Kané featuring Dee Lewis, Coral Gordon and Georgie Fame) and a cover of a
Gilberto Gil track, "Samba", under his own name, for which he wrote the English-language lyrics. He became a member of
Van Morrison's band, as well as his musical producer. Fame has played residences at
Ronnie Scott's Jazz Club. On 18 April 2010, Fame and his sons Tristan Powell (guitar) and James Powell (drums) performed at the Live Room at
Twickenham Stadium for the tenth birthday celebrations of
The Eel Pie Club. Part of the proceeds from the concert benefitted the
Otakar Kraus Music Trust, which provides music and voice therapy for children and young people with physical and mental difficulties. The trio performed later that year at the
Towersey Festival. In July 2014, Fame played at the village hall in
Goring-on-Thames and then at the
Cornbury Festival in Oxfordshire. ==Personal life==