Donald Peers In A Shady Nook (CD)

(Empress) 23 tracks, original recordings

In the early days of his career, in the late 'forties and early 'fifties, Donald Peers was a real heartthrob causing the sort of swooning, screaming hysteria in his many female fans that later came to be associated with the young rock idols of the 'sixties. Having enjoyed his decade or so of success he slipped from the public eye only to make an amazing comeback with a major hit record in the late 'sixties when, as a rather chubby, grey-haired, middle-aged man in a sober suit, he looked strangely out of place during his appearances on television shows like 'Top Of The Pops' alongside the younger performers with their long hair and brightly coloured clothes. It was a great tribute to the quality of his singing (not to mention persistence and belief in his own ability) that he was able to hit the heights again at an age when most artists would have been thinking of retirement. Appropriately for a singer, Donald Peers was a Welshman born in Ammanford in 1909 to a strict religious family. His father worked in the local colliery but was such a devout member of the sect 'The Plymouth Brethren' that,
to his dying day, he refused to enter a theatre to hear his own son perform. Initially bowing to family pressure, Donald was all set to become a schoolteacher, but he rebelled and ran away, determined to make his own way in life. To begin with he worked as a painter and decorator, then went to sea as a steward on a British tanker. Returning to the mainland he finally broke into show business when, during, a spell as a singer with a seaside concert part in 1927, he was invited to make his debut broadcast in a radio show with the comedians Clapham and Dwyer; it was to be an important milestone for Donald as he quickly built up great popularity 'on the air'. In 1940 Donald Peers' burgeoning career came to a sudden halt when he enlisted to serve in the Armed Forces; he was eventually invalided out on D-Day in 1944. That very same year he recorded an old song In A Shady Nook (By A Babbling Brook) which had been written as early as 1927 by E G Nelson and Harry Pease. An immediate hit, the song became Donald's life-long theme song and indelibly associated with him ever after. It was just the first of a long line of best-selling records that continued into the early 'fifties and was to gain fresh impetus many years later. It was not just through the medium of the gramophone that Donald Peers became popular.