Bobby Carter Five

Bobby Carter Five – ‘Cry On My Hands’ c/w ‘Your Major Surgery, Eileen’.

Released 19^th June 1968. Regal Zonophone  RG1278

 

 

Bobby Carter (descant recorder, penny whistle, vcls), Neil Handy (bass, baked beans), Michael Withnall (lead guitar), Henry Oliphant (Electric Organ), Mike Wyatt (rhythm guitar), Rupert Edison (drums).

 

‘Cry on my hands, fill them up like a cup

Wash my face in your misery

Splash your tears on my clothes

Soak my jeans with your woes

You’re not the girl for me’

When The Brillo Pads broke up in November 1966, Bobby Carter recruited five local Northamptonshire musicians to form Bobby Carter Five. Unusually for the time, the word ‘The’ was conspicuous by its absence as a prefix to the band name.

Remembers Bobby: “Whenever I rang up some venue trying to get us some gigs, they’d always say ‘So, it’s The Bobby Carter Five’ and I’d have to say ‘No – it’s just Bobby Carter Five!’  I bitterly regret not having had a ‘The’ on the front of our name. It was a terrible mistake and I’m sure it was the reason we didn’t have any hits”.

‘Cry On My Hands’ was the group’s ninth single and features some haunting descant recorder work from Carter, as well as an unidentifiable, low-frequency noise that frequently obliterates the other instruments and Carter’s ineptly multi-tracked, phased vocals. “That noise was Neil Handy fitting throughout the entire length of the song”, says producer Lauwrence (sic) Hemmings. “The boy had fits all day long”, he says. “And I thought it would give the song a bit of a psychedelic gimmick if he could have a fit in time with the song. He couldn’t manage the timing, but was still able to get something of a freak groove going. It was my zenith as a producer, frankly”.

Carter was not so impressed. “I’d written this really sensitive song and it’s got someone having a fit all over it! I couldn’t believe it! I’ve nothing against Neil – he still has fits like that to this day – but Hemmings was out of his mind. I played it to a girlfriend and she was appalled. She split up with me there and then and I’ve never had a girlfriend since. I’m reduced to living with a sixty year old ladyboy. It’s that bad! And while I’m here, I don’t know why it was called Bobby Carter Five in the first place, considering there were six of us in the group”.

Mike Wyatt, the group’s rhythm guitarist, was later implicated in The Shadow Murders, which took place in Leicester between January 1971 and April 1979, although he was never charged.