The Joybeats

The Joybeats ‘The Kingdom Hall Twist’ c/w ‘The World Is Run By Satan’
Released 12th December 1962.
Fontana TF0924

Seth Gaster (vcls, tambourine), Arthur Andrew Wyngarde (tambourine, bells), Christopher Dards (vcls, mouth organ), Ken Orr (bottle-top stick, claves)

The only Leicestershire group composed entirely of practicing Jehovah’s Witnesses, The Joybeats enjoyed a brief if unremarkable career before falling foul of the very faith that inspired them to form in the first place.

They started their music career by performing ‘tours’ of neighbourhoods, moving from door to door in true Jehovah fashion. Vocalist and mouth organist Christopher Dards remembers: "We would knock on a door – we denied electrical doorbells – and when someone answered, we’d burst into ‘Repent Sinner, The End of the World Is Coming Soon’ or one of our other beat songs. Sometimes, we’d get through a whole song and then hand out copies of Watchtower, but usually we’d get the door shut in our faces".

The Joybeats were signed to Fontana after playing outside the front door of A&R man Calum McNaughton-Gaylord, who said at the time: "I signed them to get them to go away. That may appear to be a contradiction, which it probably is".

‘The Kingdom Hall Twist’ was the group’s first single and one of several religious Twist cash-in records out at the time. Produced by Eric Cramps (brother of Steve Cramps, lead autoharpist with The Five Fellows), this jaunty slice of folk-romp was unique in it's use of no instruments apart from percussion.

Dards again: "There were no overdubs in those days so we had to perform ‘live’. My mouth organ was the only real instrument – all the rest played percussion – but I had to sing as well, so the mouth organ was left off the waxing. When I listen to it now, it sounds sparse, jangly and very 'indie', particularly Seth Gaster’s sombre bass vocals". And this is what those sombre vocals sang:

‘Twist, but in a nice way
Don’t move your legs at all
Then come and have a cup of tea
Down at The Kingdom Hall

Twist as Jesus would have twisted
Silently and with care
Twist on your own in a darkened room
And hear the voice of God!’

Eric Cramps recalled that all sessions with The Joybeats were remarkably fast. "Most groups spent half the day sitting on the floor, smoking and joking around, but The Joybeats were always in a hurry to finish recording before the world ended...they were a bunch of idiots, frankly".

The group fell apart after Gaster reported Christopher Dards to the elders for humming a tune on his mother’s birthday.

Gaster attempted to keep The Joybeats name alive, but eventually had a nervous breakdown. His article ‘I deny chlorophyll and condemn it as the green paint of Satan’ was published in Watchtower in July 1987.