The Solitaires (Bury)
Line-up included
- Chris Holt - lead
- Barry Greenhalgh - drums
- Billy Bedford - bass
- John Gray - vocals
- Dave - rhythm
- Rob Wayne - bass
The lineup in the picture is the one that Bury kids seemed enthusiastic about in 1964/5 .... Chris Holt (lead); Barry Greenhalgh (drums); Billy Bedford (bass); John Gray (vocalist); Dave(? rhythm)
I've occasionally thought about putting the Solitaires up but didn't have a great deal to say -- even though for about 18 months during 1964/5 the band was all we thought about - and we were working several nights every week - Jimmy Reed Chuck Berry Sonny Boy Williamson Muddy Waters etc AND a few ballads written for us by Peter Skellern who was a schoolmate of our lead guiter. When I recently saw The Solitaires had been mentioned a couple of times my interest picked up - but the odd thing is that the new page seems to have been created by someone I don't know, and the only name mentioned in the LineUp, Rob Wayne, is again not someone I knew.
Any chance of putting the picture I sent (and attached again here) up on the page in case any former followers remember us? It's not a great picture, but it could easily be the only one in existence! Our manager spent most time and effort on his more experienced older band (we were 17/8 at the time), Ian Dean & The Brystals ....
... and he had us working regularly one night each week at Bury Palais,
For a period we did a couple of nights each week at a place mentioned on your list of requests for information ---- the Fusiliers Arms: the Fusiliers used to stand on the roundabout that was then at the top of Cross Lane in Salford. The Fusiliers was a rough gig --- sailors from Manchester Docks used to drink their way up Cross Lane and arrive (often with the ladies they'd met on the way up) at the Fusiliers either very happy, or the opposite. In 1965 there was a (then rare) video jukebox there that played a film loop along with the selected record --- all I can remember the sailors playing on it was Screaming Lord Sutch. I recall other regular venues -- Bolton Palais with its revolving stage, Darwen Baths, the Boneyard (was that in Rochdale or Oldham, I forget ...) and lots of one-nighters I've just forgotten, it would be nice for someone to remind me!
- Chris went off to Bolton Art School and joined British Airways later as a top designer.
- Barry joined the army -- it was his leaving that (as I recollect it) broke the band up -- he was a great drummer.
- Billy (who worked at Antler) became, I understand, owner of a chain of luggage shops all over the UK.
- John (me) went off to Uni and ended up working in FE colleges
- Dave, a bit older than the rest of us (and a good influence :)), was a copper, I guess he carried on being.
John Gray - 4/5/16
Comments
Chris Holt, An Epitaph
A post for everyone who knew Chris Holt and who, like me, remembers him with affection. Out of the blue a week ago his niece Karen Holt messaged me to say he had died, on 21st September. Although it's almost 60 years since I saw Chris face-to-face, the news left me shocked and saddened. The opportunity to meet again in person, as we had planned, was gone.
I turned the telly off and sat there remembering when Chris, Bill Bedford, Barry Greenhalgh, Dave Nabb and I shared an intense year-and-a-half playing music together during 1964-65 as The Solitaires, so often 'playing at home' in Bury Palais. That was, until COVID, all I really 'knew' about Chris, my memories based on the exhilaration we shared at playing music together.
I last experienced the Chris Holt effect personally when late one cold evening (December 1966 as I recall), I was at home in Sankey Street, back in Bury from Uni, watching the telly with my Mum. An unexpected knock on the door and Chris came in, sat on the couch opposite the fire having already picked up my guitar, Mum found a pretty full bottle of whisky, I found my harmonica and we reprised the Solitaires rock & blues set list together, along with quite a bit of the Dylan material of which he told me years later he was ".. still a fan after you introduced Dylan to me in your house in Bury all those years ago." We carried on singing till the bottle was empty, and then without much ceremony off he went off into the night. Bye bye Chris, until COVID.
Over the years I had reached out, unsuccessfully, to Chris at British Airways, Brunel University and the ManchesterBeat web site. Then in 2020, reunited online by COVID, we were all (except for the elusive Dave Nabb) back in touch, thanks to Bury Olden Days and Zoom. Only then did I get to know, from a couple of hundred shared emails, more about Chris's other passions, always there before and after we were just music-mad lads and didn't talk about anything else, apart from the usual associated teenage things.
In our renewed conversations he told me of his (self-confessed) obsession with things ornithological and I observed his wider naturalist and related poetical and artistic talents. Most surprising it turned out that, like me and many other lads in the 1950s/60s, he had until not long before being in the group been an enthusiastic trainspotter, a keen watcher of the Bury rail scene, and a regular in Donny to see the A4s. He was just as grateful for our shared good fortune having the East Lancs Railway to enjoy as an ongoing nostalgia fix. Yet I never remember Chris and I ever talking about railways! Muddy Waters never had an anorak I suppose
There are lots of Chris's sparky comments littered all around BOD that expand on my two examples of what there is to know about Chris Holt ... and the one thing that threads through them all is the ingrained affection for the town we grew up in, and the sense of Bury as our real home town, that I'm sure is what kept us both coming back regularly.
Chris's funeral is at 10.20 on 10 October at South West Middlesex Crematorium, Hounslow Rd, Feltham TW13 5JH on the south-west side of London - and there are plenty of Bury emigrees around there, some of who may well have been there in the Palais with Chris and the rest of us and would like to pay their respects - unfortunately I'm just not up to a 5+ hour M11/M25 rush hour drive to get there and my public transport option is dire, so I'll not be there - and this is my epitaph for an old friend, and there's no better place than BOD to place it.
We'd love to hear from you - contact any one of these emails and we'll share whatever you send:-
chris_holt
billbedford99
jgray.muskham
Hoping to hear from you, John
Chris Holt
The Boneyard was in Bolton and I went to see The Pretty Things there in 1964? but I can't find the date. I went to the Derby School at the same time as Peter Skellern although I think he was in the sixth form when I was in the first year. I think I remember a Chris Holt who used to climb the outside of the gym wall using the protruding bricks for purchase, it was quite a sight.