Graham Holland, with his band "Danny & The Rebels."
Photograph [235105] taken at the Guildhall, Worcester [18th December 1959]
By, Brendan Kerney, The studio, 147 London Road, Worcester.
[Many thanks to Josephine Stenersen; our sister, who had this photo in her family photos]

Graham Holland, my brother is standing behind the drummer.
Born: Sunday, 15th March, 1942.
Died: Thursday, 11th September, 1997.
I retrieved this photo on the 6th August, 2024, almost 27 years after his death.

I know that they also played at the Odeon in Worcester, Martley Village Hall and many other venues.

Graham was the singer in the band, and I guess as he loved Elvis Presley so much and that he sang like him, that they would have done songs by Elvis, Cliff Richards and others when they performed.

They were following the Teddy Boy trend, and that can be seen more than anything in their hairstyles.
The hairstyle taken up by the Teddy boy culture where the hair was greased up and carefully styled into what was known as a DA, or duck's arse.

The origin of the name "Teddy Boy" though disputed, seems to derive from the habit of wearing Edwardian-style clothes, and the classic look – subverting Savile Row's own simultaneous attempts to market those styles to the wealthy – combined velvet-collared long draped jackets with narrow drainpipe trousers, gaudy waistcoats, thin ties and crepe-soled shoes known as brothel creepers.

At the time there was also another group of teenagers that called themselves Mods.

Mods and Rockers clashed violently with each other on Brighton Beach in the 1960s, the Teddy Boys set the fires to the very first first teenage riot.

When the Bill Haley film Rock Around the Clock arrived in the UK in 1956, eager Teds (as they were also known) erupted: cinema seats were slashed; fireworks and bottles thrown; shop windows smashed; and police battled with throngs of jiving, singing teenagers. Nothing of the sort had been seen before. It caused Britain to wake up in shock to the existence of the teenager, kicking off a moral panic that swept through the media and the middle-aged over 'feral youth' and 'the teen menace'.

Teddyboy is a predominantly British subculture that began in the early 1950s among teenagers in London and spread rapidly across the UK and was strongly associated with American rock and roll music. After WWII, Edwardian fashion and its wearers were sometimes called Cosh Boys. The name Teddy Boy was coined when a Daily Express newspaper headline of September 23, 1953 shortened Edwardian to Teddy.

Teddy Girls [also called Judies] was the name given to the girls who associated themselves with the Teddy Boys.

The Beatles, were starting up around this time too and had their first hit, "Love Me Do", in late 1962.
This changed everything for the music scene, and I wondered if Graham's band didn't make the change over to this new style of music and eventually finished playing together.

I well remember in later years going to the Green Dragon, in Bishops Frome and Graham would often join a local band that played there and sing Elvis Presley songs.

View story about the painting of the Lady in the photo above. [Thanks to Garston Phillips, for pointing this out to me]

Mrs Henry Wood

If you look at the painting in the photo taken in the Guildhall, Worcester, above, you will see Mrs Henry Wood. [Painted by - Joseph Sydney Willis Hodges, 1828–1900] Ellen Price (17 January 1814 – 10 February 1887) was an English novelist better known as Mrs. Henry Wood. She is best remembered for her 1861 novel East Lynne. Many of her books sold well internationally and were widely read in the United States. In her time, she surpassed Charles Dickens in fame in Australia. Ellen Price was born in Worcester, on 17 January 1814 Ellen was born in Worcester, the eldest daughter of a local glove manufacturer Thomas Price. Ellen wrote novels set in the gloving industry and the fictional town of Hestonleigh, her pseudonym for Worcester. In 1836 she married Henry Wood, who worked in the banking and shipping trade in Dauphiné in the South of France, where they lived for 20 years. On the failure of Wood's business, the family (including four children) returned to England and settled in Upper Norwood near London, where Ellen Wood turned to writing. This supported the family. Henry Wood died in 1866. She wrote over 30 novels, many of which (especially East Lynne) enjoyed remarkable popularity. Among the best known are Danesbury House, Oswald Cray, Mrs. Halliburton's Troubles, The Channings, Lord Oakburn's Daughters and The Shadow of Ashlydyat. Her writing tone would be described as "conservative and Christian," occasionally expressing religious rhetoric. In 1867, Wood purchased the English magazine Argosy, which had been founded by Alexander Strahan in 1865. She wrote much of the magazine herself, but other contributors included Hesba Stretton, Julia Kavanagh, Christina Rossetti, Sarah Doudney and Rosa Nouchette Carey. Wood continued as its editor until her death in 1887, when her son Charles Wood took over. Wood's works were translated into many languages, including French and Russian.  Leo Tolstoy, in a 9 March 1872 letter to his older brother Sergei, noted that he was "reading Mrs. Wood's wonderful novel In the Maze". Wood wrote several works of supernatural fiction, including "The Ghost" (1867) and the oft-anthologized "Reality or Delusion?" (1868). She died of bronchitis