Harkness – MacGillivray Stories

This story happened at a latter part of my youth and should belong to “Recollections II”. However, the topic involves the name “Kariline” which instantly reminds me of one of my first loves, Caroline. I told our story in the post, Love Stories in Isis School. “Kariline”, however, is about my elder brother; Stuart Campbell Harkness, a.k.a, Stuart Beckett, a pop star of some sort during his time.

Stuart was the singer of “Kariline” and “Breakthrough”¹. He had an ambition to be a pop star so I wanted to talk about his tales and experiences of having worked to succeed in the music industry.

In retrospect, Stuart had the voice and the looks to succeed. Perhaps what was lacking were his efforts and collaboration. After all, the Beatles hardly became a ‘hit’ overnight; for example, they had a long apprenticeship in Hamburg, and had replaced various members of the band. In other words, it’s about hard work. I think my brother thought he could just sing a song and have instant success.

I have listened to blues songs for many decades. There are thousands of artists who are absolutely brilliant – but this doesn’t mean they will achieve ‘success’.  In order to reach that point, Stuart, under his pen-name Stuart Beckett, recorded a single with “Breakthrough”² on the A side and “Kariline” on the B side. You can listen to the two songs at the bottom part.

Breakthrough

Kariline

At the time, in the mid-1960s the song was played on the pirate radio station, Radio Caroline³. The footnote above includes a comment by Stuart’s son Torquil who mentions that the date of production was late-1965 rather than 1966. To be argumentative, I would say that 1966 is a better date, because the newspaper article here says the single costs 6 shillings and 8 pence which was the price for singles in 1966. Unfortunately, the local newspaper article (Billericay, Essex), from my mother’s scrapbook, concerning its production, does not have a date.

The newspaper article “He’s out to make records”

The article was mainly about John Norwell and his record company Sherwood Records. As mentioned, this could be around 1965 or 1966. So strictly speaking this ‘story’ belongs to “Recollections II”, since “Boyhood Recollections” ends around 1963. But because Stuart’s ‘pop career’ perhaps began in the 1950s when he received “Razzle Dazzle” for his birthday, I will relate further details here. 

Donna

The next ‘stage’ in Stuart’s pop ‘career’ was his first record. I remember when I was about eleven years old when, we were still living at 26 Hob Hey Lane in Culcheth. I came home one day and my mother was quite excited. She said, “Listen to this record,” placing a 45 rpm single on the turntable of our Ferguson radiogramme, and then pressing the start switch. The voice emanating out of the loudspeaker was some kind of concoction of Gene Vincent, Elvis, and Richie Valens. Although to tell you the truth, I didn’t even know who Richie Valens was at the time.

The song was “Donna”⁴. My memory is a bit vague here because I also seem to remember it was the Elvis song “Teddy Bear”.⁵ Paul Anka’s “Diana”⁶ is also stuck in my memory.

“Kariline” also bears some resemblance to “Donna” in both the words and the delivery. 

Our Mother’s Pride

My mother asked me, “Who do you think was singing that song?”

To my ’11-year-old ears’ it sounded quite professional. I answered, “I don’t know – maybe it’s Elvis or Cliff?”

My mother liked my answer and exclaimed enthused, “No it’s Stuart!”

“How did he do that?”
“He did it in a record booth?”
“What’s that?”
“You just go into a booth at the railway station, pay a few shillings, and you make a recording.”

This seemed like a great idea to me. I wanted to do this too, but for one reason or another I never found one of these booths. Perhaps I did, but I was about to catch a train so didn’t have the time. 

In conclusion, perhaps the record had an A side and a B side, that is Donna and Teddy Bear, although this seems unlikely. Despite my dim memory, I think perhaps it was “Teddy Bear”. I still have a copy of Stuart’s “Breakthrough” which is perhaps worth $50 (see the various websites for rare singles). But I think the ‘record booth’ single is lost forever. 

I have lost track of the ‘topic’ – that is the newspaper article. It states that Stuart has been singing since he was 16. Once again, my memory is vague here. After all, I was only 11 years old and not all that concerned with what my 5 years older brother was doing. But I seem to vaguely remember that he was singing in the local dance hall in Culcheth. 

Levi Jeans

The reason I remember this is because my mother was up-in-arms about the fact that Stuart was wearing tight blue jeans. Of course, this was ‘double-Dutch’ to me – I couldn’t understand why denim jeans were so ‘dangerous’!⁷ Ironically, 2 or 3 years later, she bought me some cheap jeans at Woolworths  for a school holiday trip (canoeing holiday in Wales arranged by Barstable School, Basildon, Essex).

American denim jeans were symbolic of what many British people disliked in the 1950s — the rise of American popular youth culture, the rise of the working classes, and the sexual revolution. With the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, and the dissolution of the Soviet Empire, Levi jeans became symbolic of ‘freedom’. Theywere sold and worn behind the Iron Curtain, which had disappeared by 1991.

Of course, if the people voice verbal opposition to fascist dictatorships, they can experience that the wolves (‘protectors’ of the herd) will isolate them from the flock; and as a warning to the other ‘sheep’, they will incarcerate them in extreme tortuous conditions⁸. In other words, opposition has to find ‘quieter’ ways in order to avoid the bite of the wolves. When the German Nazi fascists unlawfully occupied Norway during the Second World War, Norwegian teachers would wear paperclips in their lapels as a protest⁹. The point of this long digression is to underline that Levi jeans still have symbolic value in 2022 – for instance, in North Korea.¹⁰ 

The other thing it mentions in the newspaper article is that Stuart “was singing in London clubs; he was no amateur”. Well, I will agree with the statement that “he was no amateur”. His voice and persona had possibilities! But that he was “singing in London clubs” seems to be a piece of fiction, or good PR. Of course, I may be wrong, as I didn’t know everything that my brother was doing at the time. 

Stuart and His Good Looks

I have perhaps mentioned it elsewhere here – that Stuart ‘had the looks’ to be a star. I had many jobs in the 1960s in the numerous factories located in Billericay ‘business park’; although, at that time I think it was called the ‘factory estate’.

I also worked in one factory (whose name I forgot) that produced various cosmetics – hair spray, shampoo, perfumes, and so on. More or less, I was the only male employee among 30 or 40 female employees. Of course, I fell in love with many of the girls and women mostly older than me. Despite my good looks, these girls and women were more interested in men. I was just a boy!

But my brother Stuart had worked in the factory before me. In fact, he was a ‘legend’ – it seems every single woman in the factory had been ‘in love’ with him. A remarkable one was an attractive blonde woman who, although in her late thirties / early forties, was still attractive. My brother was undoubtedly a ‘flirt’. The point I’m trying to make here is that my brother had an ‘untapped’ attractiveness that could have been an asset in the world of pop music.  

Similarities and Differences

Getting back to the point here – Stuart and I had a lot in common: we both had ‘looks’, and we both had artistic and musical pretensions which were not fully realised.

However, Stuart and I also differ in many ways too. First of all, he was mainly a ‘faithful husband’ most of his life. He was impractical and unrealistic. Despite my own living above my means, I have more or less managed to ‘keep the ship afloat’ – something which Stuart didn’t manage very well.

¹ Torquil Harkness, 26th May 2017: “Stuart’s wife Catherine says that from memory it was 1966, although her memory not being perfect, it was possibly very late 1965 http://www.45cat.com/record/nc071543uk
²  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vhbVETe7Kw Date of reading: 15 June 2022.
³ Radio Caroline was a British radio station founded in 1964 by Ronan O’Rahilly and Alan Crawford initially to circumvent the record companies’ control of popular music broadcasting in the United Kingdom and the BBC’s radio broadcasting monopoly. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radio_Caroline Read: 19 May 2022.
⁴ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HMcHbh6HBDk
⁵ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NkDbk-egHH4
⁶ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wPw5WiABUOA
⁷ https://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/denim-political-symbol-1960s-180976241/
⁸ https://www.npr.org/2022/01/26/1075710006/russia-named-jailed-opposition-leader-alexei-navalny-terrorist Date of reading: 16 June 2022
⁹ https://medium.com/memory-action/why-did-norwegian-teachers-wear-paper-clips-during-world-war-ii-5a9aa379e293 Read: 16 June 2022.
¹⁰ https://hrf.org/how-north-koreans-dissent-through-fashion/ Read: 16 June 2022.