The coolest of cats

Georgie Fame’s career has been an affair of ups and downs, from the huge and unexpected success of “Yeh Yeh”, which knocked the Beatles off the No 1 spot in January 1965, to the medical problems — a fall from a ladder in 2019, breaking his hip and severing tendons in his right hand, followed in 2025 by a diagnosis of hydrocephalus, impairing his mobility — that have restricted his musical activities in recent years. He’s 83 now, and there probably won’t be any more gigs or records, so it seems all the more worthwhile to investigate a new biography, Cool Cat Blues, written by his friend and fellow singer-keyboardist Ben Sidran. It’s a slender book, only 140-odd pages, but the story is well told, particularly that of his early childhood in the 1940s amid the mills and pits of Lancashire, and the warmth of a family in which music played a significant role. Then the Butlin’s and Larry Parnes years, during which Clive Powell became Georgie Fame and evolved from the pianist with Billy Fury…