We’ll remember you: Australian singer Frank Ifield

FRANK IFIELD 1937 – 2024

The legend wasn’t that far from the truth. For a very long time we’ve been told that Frank Ifield learned to yodel when he was milking a particularly troublesome cow on the family’s farm in the once-distant Sydney suburb of Dural. Those rustic origins of the early days of the pioneering international singing star weren’t just concocted by a publicist but, as he would reveal in his biography I Remember Me, and in the frankness of his later interviews, helped to shape his career.

One of seven sons, he was born in Coventry, England, and moved to Australia at the age of 11. His father was an inventor and engineer who had created the Ifield fuel pump, which was used in jet aircraft. For his 11th birthday, Ifield received a ukulele from his parents.

“I quickly learnt to make the chords fit any song I sang. It accompanied me to school one day, where the headmaster encouraged me to adapt Australian poetry to my own tunes and then perform them to the class. This experience whetted my appetite for what I instinctively knew was to be my calling. Then at Christmas 1949, my beloved gran bought me a guitar and there was no stopping me. As a 13-year-old, I soon conned my way to appearing on radio 2GB’s Australia’s Amateur Hour. My sights were set high now, and I was determined to try my luck overseas with the London Palladium as my goal.”

As Ifield entered his teens, he began recording for Regal Zonophone Records, which also launched the career of Slim Dusty. His first recording was There’s a Love Knot in My Lariat in 1953. By the time he was 19, he had released 44 records.

Things were put on hold in 1957 when six months of national service put him in uniform. Initially believing he had to fight his way back from the bottom upon being demobbed, the handsome young singer soon found a place on the new medium of television.

The first music show on Channel 9 wasCampfire Favourites, followed soon after byMake Ours Music and Country Style and then by Bandstand, which welcomed a vocalist who provided a balance to the crop of young, boisterous rock’n’rollers. On a Sydney Harbour cruise celebrating his 80th birthday, I can remember pop and country singer Judy Stone confiding to me that she was in love with Ifield when they were paired on Bandstand.

In 1957, he created the track Whiplash, which was used as the theme song for the British/Australian TV series in 1960/61. It came to the attention of a number of important industry people in London, including Australian Peter Gormley, who was about to assume management of Cliff Richard and the Shadows, and Olivia Newton-John. He told Ifield that if he were to make it back to England he would be pleased to represent him. The Palladium was moving a few steps closer.

Ifield started off with a tour of New Zealand, where Guardian Angel had reached No.1, then arrived in England in 1959 where he began recording for EMI. He got off to a moderate start, with the single Lucky Devil just stopping outside the top 20. A list of flop singles followed, and the company made it known that his contract wouldn’t be renewed unless his final session, with Norrie Paramor, yielded a hit.

It gave forth a truly massive smash, the first of four consecutive No.1s, staying atop the UK charts for seven weeks. It made No.1 in Australia and No.5 in America and was a million-seller at a time when that rarely occurred for British recordings. In one day in 1962, I Remember You sold more than 100,000 copies.

It was actually a remake, best remembered for the performance by Dorothy Lamour in the film The Fleet’s In and said to be about writer Johnny Mercer’s affair with a young Judy Garland.

Hot on its heels were Lovesick Blues, The Wayward Wind and Confessin’ That I Love You (which kept the Beatles’ Please Please Me out of No.1). As well, he had four British top 10 albums: I Remember You, Born Free, Blue Skies andGreatest Hits.

Ifield had supposedly been told by his management not to yodel because it would brand him, but when he finally did make it to the London Palladium, it was to headline a royal Command Performance concert before the Queen and her mother. The Queen Mother had let it be known that she rather wanted to hear “that yodelling song”.

In 1991 a dance remix version of She Taught Me To Yodel, retitled as The Yodelling Song, entered the British charts, his 16th appearance on that listing.

I have a clear recollection around that time of chatting to Animals leader Eric Burdon after a set with one of his many “new” Animals at The Basement. I introduced Ifield to him as “my neighbour”. For the first 30 seconds it didn’t sink in, then he almost turned to water as he turned back and shrieked “Fraaaankie Ifield!” This from a man who was immersed totally in raw blues and soul. In fact, in 1962-63, like every young man in Britain, he was sending the boy from Dural to No.1. Among his biggest fans were most of the members of Status Quo.

Once firmly under Gormley’s wing, Frank Ifield was taking on the great British tradition of pantomimes, as well as supper clubs, tours with Duane Eddy and the Everly Brothers, twice trying out for Britain’s entry into Eurovision (coming in second in a 1962 heat) and posing before cameras for the 1965 musical drama filmUp Jumped a Swagman. Despite being Coventry-born, Ifield presented himself as an Australian artist, as would later ’60s arrivals from Down Under the Bee Gees and the Easybeats.

When performing at Liverpool’s Empire Theatre, Ifield received a message that a stranger at stage door wanted to speak with him. He heard it as Mr Einstein, but it was music manager Brian Epstein, who told him: “I know you’re about to embark on a huge tour. I would very much like if my group could go on your tour with you … they’ve had no experience outside of Liverpool. It’s a new group called the Beatles.” Ifield tried them out with two shows at Peterborough but felt he had to part ways as his audience just didn’t appreciate them, thinking them too loud.

Notwithstanding this, the Beatles were unashamed in their affection for Frank Ifield. Their version of I Remember You was captured on a live Hamburg album and John Lennon has claimed that it inspired his harmonica break on the first Beatles’ hit Love Me Do. They both ended up on Vee Jay Records in the US with the now famous and very valuable LP, Jolly What, offering a side of each.

On a visit to Nashville to arrange his signing to Hickory Records, he said how much he wanted to sing at the Grand Ole Opry in Nashville. It was duly arranged with him being introduced by his hero, Hank Snow. He would go on to perform across North America and undertake a season at the International Hotel in Las Vegas. In what he would call a career highlight, Louis “Satchmo” Armstrong invited Ifield back to his place in New York, declaring him to be “one of us”.

In 1968-69, he was put on tour in Japan, where audiences were quite smitten by his charms. The whirl continued, as did the pressure. He began to have trouble with his breathing. In 1988, he eventually decided to return home to recuperate with his family in Sydney. After the long flight, his lungs collapsed. The operation to repair it, while successful, removed part of a lung and left him unable to use his singing voice.

Still able to utilise his speaking voice, he became a talent spotter for television show Midday, then began a career as a TV/radio host with It’s Country Today on the Nine Network.

He remained active in the music industry and set out to shape and guide the careers of promising young country music performers. He recorded a duet version of I Remember Youwith Nicki Gillis, which became a hit in Britain, enabling her to mount a series of tours there.

Ifield instituted the Frank Ifield Award/International Spur Award from 1998, its recipients including Melinda Schneider, Wayne Horsburgh, Wayne Law, Donna Boyd, Travis Collins, Nicki Gillis, Kirsty Lee Akers, Johanna Hemara, John Stephan and Donna Fisk.

Gillis and Horsburgh took the greatest advantage of the Ifield imprimatur, both appearing on stage with him and the Seeker’s Keith Potger in When Aussies Ruled Britannia, a mixture of songs and tales about their British landmark hits, which toured Australia and England. In 2007 Ifield was inducted into the ARIA Hall of Fame.

Ifield wed Gillian Bowden, a dancer at the London Palladium, in July 1965. They had a son, Mark Phillip, and a daughter, Sarah.

In 1992, he married his second wife, Carole Wood, a flight attendant. They lived together quietly in Dural.

One of his brothers, David, recently mounted a retrospective show for him on the Central Coast.

Frank Ifield died in Hornsby Hospital of pneumonia. Every person who came upon him, in any circumstance, was overwhelmed by his kindness and courtesy. It is a hackneyed phrase, but it can be said that nobody had a bad word about him.

Glenn A Baker

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