Adelaide jazz big-band musicians form Penny Rockets: possibly Australia's first rock band in the late 1950s
Original lead singer Brian Penglase (left) inspired the name for the Penny Rockets rock band formed by accomplished Adelaide jazz musicians.
Images courtesy Adelaide music.fandom.com
Out of Adelaide’s big-band and jazz tradition came South Australia’s – and arguably Australia’s – rock’n’roll band: the Penny Rockets, enduring, with gaps from the late 1950s for 40 years with changing players.
The original accomplished jazz musicians who formed the Penny Rockets in 1957 were encouraged by the manager of the new Festival Records who foresaw the rock phenomenon from the USA.
The six-piece band (drums, sax, piano, bass, guitar) was named after first singer Brian Penglase (“Adelaide’s Elvis”). They quickly progressed from small pubs and clubs to the Princeton Club, The Palais (Semaphore and Hackney), Burnside and Thebarton town halls.They backed The Four Tones that included singers such as Lee Sellars, Rhett Walker and Ray O’Connor.
The Rockets were chosen to open for visiting acts like Johnny O’Keefe, Little Pattie, Johnny Mac, the Delltones and with international acts like Bill Haley and the Comets, Cliff Richards and the Shadows and Eartha Kitt. They were regulars on local radio Lux and 5KA football shows, on TV with Ernie Sigley’s Adelaide Tonight and nationally on Brian Henderson’s Bandstand. The South Australian Film Corporation offered them a contract for a rock’n’roll movie but it never went ahead.
Their first record in 1958 was a 45” EP (itself a first) was Johnnny B. Goode with a B side’s “I got a woman” by guitarist Doug Toll with lyrics by his wife Joan. Their single “Walkout” reached No.25 on the national Top 40, with “The Tennessee stomp” “Gondolier” also hits.
The band resisted many lucrative offers to move to the eastern states and broke up in 1965 with music’s changing direction and the widening age group between themselves and the audience.
The Rockets had revivals in the late 1980s and early 1990s. With group members in their sixties, they found a new audience when the Festival Centre management engaged them for their Fezbah. Their popularity prompted a final album Almost live at the Fezbah (1989).