John Rowles "That Lovin' Feeling" 1969

...By March, he and fellow band member Eddie Low were on their way to Melbourne as “the New Zealand Beatles”, wearing Beatle wigs and singing Lennon/McCartney tunes for two shows a night at the Riverside Inn. When their six month contract ended they shifted to Sydney, looking for opportunity in Kings Cross. They found it when they walked into the Civic Hotel and found former Chevronaires drummer Trixie Willoughby wielding the sticks behind The Ding Dongers. Band leader Tricky Visser Delano offered them a job and the band, renamed The Sundowners, started making an impact on the Miller hotel circuit. That band, not to be confused with Sonny Day’s New Zealand outfit of the same name, made one single with Rowles fronting, the Digger Revell-produced ‘The End (Of A Rainbow)’, a cover of an Earl Grant song. By this time Rowles had been picked by managers Lonnie Gordon, and Graham Dent, another New Zealand expatriate, who rebranded him as JA-AR...

...Dent, who was an acknowledged master of the media stunt, released the single under this name, after first getting him placed on television shows such as Bandstand and Six O’Clock Rock as The Secret. There was plenty of television and concert work but only one more record to show for the effort, a cover of the country standard ‘Please Help Me I’m Falling’, released – like the first JA-AR single – on the indie Sunshine label. After a year of this Rowles got a better offer from Peter Gormley, an Australian who had a good record of taking Aussie stars like Frank Ifield and the Seekers to England, as well as managing Cliff Richard and The Shadows.Gormley had just lost Ifield and was looking for a replacement. He invited Rowles to London to join the ranks of big ballad singers like Engelbert Humperdinck and Tom Jones, who were holding their own in the charts against the psychedelic pop unleashed by the Summer of Love and Sgt Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band. Gormley signed Rowles with MCA, an American label that was about to launch in the UK. He had a French ballad, ‘Je n’Aurai Pas le Temps’, translated into English as ‘If I Only Had Time’, and got the experienced Mike Leander in to arrange the song. Released on February 17, 1968, it entered the UK charts at No.40 four weeks later, moved higher after Rowles appeared on the television show Top of the Pops, and peaked at No.3 behind Cliff Richard’s ‘Congratulations’ and Louis Armstrong’s ‘Wonderful World’. The follow-up, ‘Hush... Not A Word To Mary’, was released in June and made it to No.12, but the third single ‘The Pain Goes On Forever’ failed to chart in the UK, and the fourth single ‘Say Goodbye’/‘M’lady’ b/w 'All My Love's Laughter' got lost in the Christmas rush, although both sides charted in several other countries. ‘M’lady’ reached No.1 in New Zealand in early 1969 while John returned home on a triumphal tour, which included a civic reception in Kawerau. The next single, ‘One Day’, failed to chart in either the UK or New Zealand, but hit in South America, Italy, Spain, Germany and Hong Kong. In late 1969 Gormley suggested Rowles write a song to represent New Zealand in an International Song Festival in Rio de Janeiro. ‘Cheryl Moana Marie’ turned out to be the song that opened the door to the United States, reaching No.64 there, even though it failed to chart in the UK. That gave Gormley the confidence to book Rowles into a four week contract opening for Connie Stevens at the Flamingo hotel in Las Vegas, for $120,000. Rowles then won another $100,000, went back to London and bought a Jaguar...to be continued - audioculture

trax:
01 Oh Happy Day 02 Do You Know Who I Am 03 Aquarius-Let The Sunshine In 04 Send Out Love 05 Wheel Of Fortune 06 In the World of the Young 07 Save The Last Dance For Me 08 You've Lost That Loving Feeling 09 Good Morning Starshine 10 Massachusetts 11 More Than Just A Woman 12 Till I Can't Take It Anymore 13 Hush Not A Word To Mary (bonus)
…served by Gaius…