Australian singer and yodeller, Frank Ifield, once had a support act called The Beatles

IT was the hit that launched his career, and 50 years later whoo...ooo doesn’t re…mem….burrrrrr yodelling Dural milk-boy Frank Ifield (left)?

Singer Frank Ifield, whose hit I Remember You topped the British charts for seven weeks and was Britain’s second-highest selling single in 1962.

IT was the hit that launched his career, and 50 years later whoo ... ooo doesn’t re … mem …. burrrrrr yodelling Dural milk-boy Frank Ifield? The fresh-faced, sweet-voiced teen launched his career playing and singing at school on an old ukulele bought as a birthday present from his parents.

And at 19 he was offered his own show in 1956 on the fledgling Channel 9 television station. Moving to Britain in 1959, in 1962 his arrangement of Johnny Mercer’s I Remember You topped the charts for seven weeks and was Britain’s second-highest selling single that year.

With another three chart-toppers, Lovesick Blues, Wayward Wind and I’m Confessin’ in fast succession, on his 1963 British tour, Ifield recruited newcomers The Beatles as his unpaid support act.

Ifield had been performing at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre when a stranger arrived at the stage door to speak to him. The stranger was manager Brian Epstein.

Australian singer Frank Ifield (right) and British singer Tommy Steele in England in 1961.

“He said, ‘I know you’re about to embark on a huge tour. I would very much like, you know, if my group could go on your tour with you ... they’ve had no experience outside of Liverpool’.

“I asked who he was talking about and he said, ‘It’s a new group, called The Beatles’. And he played me their record and I thought, well I like that. It was similar to what I was doing ... they had the harmonica thing and the ‘oooh’ and all that, so it was similar to what I was doing. So I thought, okay yeah, this sounds good.”

Unfortunately Ifield’s audience at two shows supported by The Beatles at Peterborough was less impressed, leaving Ifield’s promoter Arthur Howes to dismiss the Liverpool newcomers. “I think they were too loud,” Ifield recalls. “They needed a younger audience.”

Explaining his distinctive music was different to the pop style of his 1960s contemporaries, Ifield says he was “more surprised than anybody” when his releases hit number one.

“I was the first person to ha–ve three UK number ones in a row,” he says. “My work had country overtones, because I had always sung a lot of country songs.

Ifield, who later recorded with The Beatles, was born on November 30, 1937 near Coventry in England, one of engineer Richard and wife Muriel’s seven sons. His Australian parents had relocated while Richard furthered his career. Joining Lucas Industries in 1940 to work on a fuel pump for a top secret project, the jet engine, he created the Ifield pump.

As a boy Ifield enjoyed listening to “hillbilly” music, teaching himself to yodel in imitation of country stars such as Hank Snow. Helping to deliver milk in Birmingham as a nine-year-old, he yodelled “Yooo Milkoooooo Yoooo” outside customer’s doors.

Frank Ifield with his parents in Dural in the late 1970s.

When the family returned to Australia in 1948, settling at then rural Dural where his father opened a factory, Ifield had to milk the family cow.

“She was called Betsy and I had to milk her every day,” he says. “She used to play up something horrible and kick the milk bucket and everything until I started yodelling to her and she’d stop.”

Given a ukulele by his parents for his 11th birthday, he started playing and singing at school. His grandmother gave him a guitar for Christmas when he turned 13, and he left school early to pursue a musical career, signing with EMI Australia in 1953 to release two successful singles, There’s a Loveknot in My Lariat and Did You See My Daddy Over There in 1954.

Ifield also became a regular on Bonnington’s Bunkhouse on Radio 2GB, then joined the travelling Ted Quigg Show.

Invited to the improvised Channel 9 television studio at St David’s Church Hall in Surry Hills to perform a couple of songs in 1956, shortly after Ifield was surprised when studio managers told him he “had the job”.

Queen Elizabeth II talks to Frank Ifield at the London Palladium after the Royal Variety Show in 1965.

Ifield had been unaware he was auditioning for a regular spot on Campfire Favourites, which by 1959 had led to regular work on all three Sydney television stations. With dreams of performing at the London Palladium, Ifield headed to Britain, where his first release was Lucky Devil in 1960. After his string of hits and performing at the Palladium, he headed to Nashville to appear at The Grand Ole Opry in 1964. The next year he performed for Queen Elizabeth II and the Queen Mother.

A bout of pneumonia in 1986 almost ended Ifield’s singing career. Days after he flew back to Australia his lungs collapsed, requiring surgery to remove part of one lung. When surgery damaged his vocal chords, Ifield hosted a country music program on radio 2KY and organised and promoted country music festivals. After years of being told he would never sing again, Ifield found his voice as his vocal chords gradually recovered.

Frank Ifield Remembers; May 7, 4.30pm; The Seymour Centre, City Rd, Chippendale; May 8, Joan Sutherland Performing Arts Centre, 597 High St, Penrith. Tickets $65 each at frankifield.com

Originally published as Australian singer and yodeller, Frank Ifield, once had a support act called The Beatles