Eddie Cochran on the Road: Every Tour, Bill and Poster, 1955-1960

Eddie Cochran had about two and a half years as a name on a poster. Inside them he crossed the Pacific twice, played one of the biggest package tours America ever put on wheels, headlined the first all-rock'n'roll package to tour Britain, and died in a taxi on the A4 at twenty-one.

The records are easy to find. The itinerary is not, and it is the more revealing document: it shows a working musician moving between a stadium in Newcastle, New South Wales and a segregated auditorium in Alabama inside six weeks, billed each time in someone else's typeface.

What follows is that itinerary, rebuilt date by date, together with the printed matter that sold it — the red brush-lettered Australian programme, the theatre posters that Larry Parnes hung across Britain, the sixpenny programme with the running order still legible on its centre spread. Where the sources disagree, this article says so instead of choosing. His American package dates have an article of their own: The Bus.

1955-1956: the Cochran Brothers and the television barn circuit

Cochran was born on 3 October 1938 in Albert Lea, Minnesota — not, as every piece of publicity from 1957 onwards insisted, in Oklahoma City. Hold that thought; the myth has a paper trail further down this page.

Before he was a solo act he was half of the Cochran Brothers with Hank Cochran, no relation, a hillbilly harmony duo signed to the tiny Ekko label in 1955. That is the least documented stretch of his working life, and the honest summary is that it was regional television and package dates rather than a tour in any modern sense.

1955 — two hillbilly singles for Ekko and a promotional run that put them on the Big D Jamboree in Dallas, where they met Elvis Presley. The meeting is the part everybody repeats; what mattered professionally was the booking.
January 1956 onwards — West Coast dates running up through Oregon and Washington, and a regular spot on The California Hayride, the KOVR-TV show out of Stockton, California.
1956 — appearances on the Los Angeles country television circuit: Hometown Jamboree, Town Hall Party, California Hayride.

One of their songs from those days: Latch On.

The duo dissolved in 1956. That autumn a two-minute spot in The Girl Can't Help It, singing "Twenty Flight Rock" in a rooming-house doorway, did what two years of jamborees had not.

October 1957: Lee Gordon's Big Show, Australia

The first proper tour was on the other side of the world. Promoter Lee Gordon put Little Richard, Gene Vincent and the Blue Caps, Cochran and Alis Lesley — billed as "the female Elvis Presley" — into a fortnight of Australian stadiums and theatres.

It went wrong before it started. The Vincent party was offloaded at Honolulu airport, so Gordon engaged a young Sydney singer named Johnny O'Keefe and his Dee Jays to fill the hole and back the Americans. O'Keefe's name does not appear in the forward advertising. It appears in the reviews, and the tour is the reason he became the first Australian rock star.

The dates

1 October — Crown Theatre, Wollongong, NSW. Two shows. Vincent and the Blue Caps missed this one.
2 October — Newcastle Stadium, Newcastle, NSW. Two shows, 6.00 pm and 8.45 pm.
3 October — Brisbane Stadium, Brisbane, QLD. Two shows, 6.00 pm and 8.45 pm.
4-5 October — Sydney Stadium, Sydney, NSW. Two shows on the 4th, three on the 5th.
6 October — Masonic Hall, Broken Hill, NSW. Two shows.
7 October — Wayville Stadium, Adelaide, SA.
8-10 October — West Melbourne Stadium, Melbourne, VIC. Two shows a night.
11-12 October — Sydney Stadium, Sydney, NSW. Two shows on the 11th, three on the 12th.
14 October — Brisbane. Two shows, cancelled.

Two shows a night, rings of seats around a boxing stadium, a bill that ran barely ninety minutes: this was the Australian model, and Gordon had built it.

The advert: Newcastle Morning Herald, 1 October 1957

The best surviving piece of graphic evidence for this tour is not a poster but a full-page newspaper advertisement, and it is worth reading closely because everything about the design is doing a job.

Black ground, reversed-out white lettering. The words ROCK 'N' ROLL are hand-brushed, uneven, stacked on a diagonal and set into a jagged white starburst, with a halftone cut-out of Little Richard mid-leap — arms flung wide, head back — bursting out of the explosion. The supporting names run down the right in heavy hand-lettered italic, each with its selling line underneath in tiny caps:

LITTLE RICHARD — "his complete American 8 piece rock 'n roll band. Stars of the film 'The Girl Can't Help It.'"
GENE VINCENT — "his 7 Bluecaps. Stars of the film 'The Girl Can't Help It.'"
EDDIE COCHRAN — no strapline at all.
ALIS LESLEY — "the female Elvis Presley."

Cochran is third on the bill with nothing under his name. In October 1957 he had one American hit and no film credit worth quoting in Australia; the layout is an accurate ranking, not an oversight.

Across the lower third, five black flashes set at drunken angles read ALL AMERICAN / SUPPORTING / CAST OF / ROCK'N ROLL / ARTISTS!! Bottom left, BOOK NOW!! in gapped caps, "Book at: Palings and Rayfords", "To-morrow only!! (Two shows)". Bottom right, a price box — 8.45 pm: 39/6 and 29/6; 6 pm: 29/6 and 19/6 — beside a small solid-black logo block, THE BIG SHOW — NEWCASTLE STADIUM, over a scratchy line drawing of a band.

And in the right margin, the detail that dates the whole culture: YOU CAN DANCE! AT BOTH SHOWS — £25 each to best couple. A promoter in 1957 still felt he had to explain that you were allowed to get up.

The programme: "1st Australian Tour 1957"

The souvenir programme survives in the Powerhouse collection in Sydney: twelve pages, staple-bound, 272 x 423 mm, printed by Publicity Press Pty Ltd of Regent Street, Sydney.

The cover is a single flat red with everything else in black and white — cheap to print, impossible to ignore on a merchandise table. LEE GORDON presents sits small in the top left in brush caps, then The BIG SHOW in fat black hand lettering, then ROCK 'N' ROLL enormous, white with heavy black outlines, the "'N'" tipped into a black box and knocked back. Two ragged white starbursts carry the images: a line drawing of a band top right, the same leaping Little Richard photograph bottom left, so the figure appears to punch through the cover. The names come in slanted white panels stacked down the lower half, each hand-ruled, each with a hand-lettered qualifier beneath — "and his complete American rock'n'roll band", "and his Bluecaps", EDDIE COCHRAN — RECORDING STAR, "ALIS LESLEY — the female Elvis Presley". Bottom right, angled up: 1st Australian Tour 1957.

Inside, Cochran gets a full page and a moody studio portrait, chin on fist. The biography opens: "Handsome young Eddie Cochran, whose initial recording on Liberty, 'Sittin' in the Balcony', was a national best-seller and catapulted him into the national spotlight, was born on October 3, 1938 in Oklahoma City, Oklahoma."

Right date, wrong state. That is the earliest printed instance of the Oklahoma story, and you will see it again in Britain three years later, still going.

The tour that changed Little Richard

Somewhere in this fortnight Little Richard renounced rock'n'roll, and the story has been retold so often that the details have gone soft. The evidence, as gathered by the University of Newcastle's Hunter Living Histories project, points to Newcastle and to the Stockton punt across the Hunter River.

Johnny O'Keefe, in a letter written in 1978, is the closest thing to a primary witness:

"Richard had been very pensive during the prior days about religious matters and when we arrived at the Stockton Ferry and the bus boarded the ferry, Richard in his own style of speaking said 'I'm quittin' show business and I'm going to serve the Lord'. Basie, his bass player remarked, 'If you're going to serve the Lord Richard, you should give away all your jewellery.' Just as soon as this had been said Richard peeled off his rings (most expensive ones) and his watch, opened the window of the bus and threw his possessions into the Hunter River."

O'Keefe adds that the Newcastle Stadium show that night "was the best one that I ever saw."

Sources disagree on which Newcastle date that was. Roland Bannister's research for Hunter Living Histories records that Little Richard no-showed a second, advertised Newcastle return about forty-eight hours before curtain, without notice or explanation, after adverts had already run in the Herald on the Monday and the Wednesday. The compiled tour itineraries in circulation, by contrast, put Cochran and the package at Sydney Stadium on 11 and 12 October. Little Richard's own accounts have placed the rings variously in the Hunter, off "Carrington Bridge", off a Sydney ferry and off Sydney Harbour Bridge. Treat any single confident version with suspicion.

What is not in dispute: Sputnik went up on 4 October, mid-tour; Little Richard began preaching from the stage in Melbourne; Australian dates were cancelled; and he flew home to train for the ministry.

1957-1958: the American bus

Three days after the last Sydney show, Cochran walked onto the stage of the Shrine Auditorium in Los Angeles and into Irvin Feld's Biggest Show of Stars for '57 — a rolling package booked across 28 states and five Canadian provinces, around 80 shows, running since 6 September. He was not on the opening bill. On 15 October Feld dropped three Black acts and added Cochran, Buddy Knox and Jimmy Bowen, and for the next six weeks Cochran travelled in the smaller type under Fats Domino, Chuck Berry, Buddy Holly and the Crickets and the Everly Brothers.

He did it again in January 1958, on "America's Greatest Teenage Recording Stars", which opened in Charlotte on the 8th and closed at the Jefferson County Armory in Louisville on the 24th.

Fifty-one American and Canadian dates in ten weeks, the swap that put him on the bill, the window card that advertised it and what the cast changes say about segregation in 1957 are a story of their own: The Bus: Eddie Cochran on America's Package Tours, 1957-1958.

1958-1959: the records, the television, the films

Summer 1958 — "Summertime Blues" is recorded and released. It is the record that makes the 1960 British tour possible.
November 1958 — American Bandstand and The Dick Clark Show, performing "C'mon Everybody".
7 February 1959 — Town Hall Party, the Saturday-night show broadcast from a Compton theatre dressed as a barn. The filmed performance survives and is the best moving footage of Cochran working a stage: "C'mon Everybody", "Summertime Blues", "School Days", "Money Honey". In the interview he says he expects to be in Santa Barbara the following Friday and then to work his way up and down the coast and back East — the whole economics of 1959 in one sentence.
1959 — Go, Johnny, Go!, his third film, still billed in British programmes the next year under its working title "Johnny Melody".

1960: Britain, and the first all-rock package tour

Gene Vincent had arrived in Britain in December 1959 to headline Boy Meets Girls, and the reaction was startling enough that impresario Larry Parnes went looking for a second American. Cochran flew into London Heathrow on 10 January 1960, rehearsed on the 12th and 13th, and was on British television on the 16th and again on the 23rd.

The package Parnes built around the two of them was billed as "A Fast Moving Anglo-American Beat Show" — the theatre programmes shorten it to "A Fast Moving Beat Show" — and it is generally reckoned the first 100 per cent rock'n'roll package to tour the United Kingdom. It ran in the variety-theatre manner: two houses a night, six nights in a week at the big Empires and Hippodromes, the local orchestra playing the overture.

The billing, as printed:

Gene Vincent — "Rock 'n' Roll idol of millions"
Eddie Cochran — "First time in Britain"
Billy Fury — "Britain's newest teenage idol"
Georgie Fame — "New singing pianist"
Joe Brown — "From TV's 'Boy Meets Girl'"
Tony Sheridan Trio — "From TV's 'Oh Boy'"
Billy Raymond — "Compere and star of HMV records"

Backing was by the Wildcats, Marty Wilde's band, loaned to the tour: Big Jim Sullivan and Tony Belcher on guitars, Brian "Liquorice" Locking on bass, Brian Bennett on drums. Three of those four ended up in the Shadows or in the London session engine room of the 1960s, and Sullivan's account of the tour — that Cochran could pick up any instrument on stage and demonstrate the part he wanted — is the single most repeated thing any British musician says about him.

The 1960 itinerary

24 January — Gaumont, Ipswich. 5.30 and 8.00, with Vincent and Vince Eager.
28 January — Gaumont, Coventry. 5.30 and 8.45.
29 January — Gaumont, Worcester. Two houses.
30 January — Gaumont, Bradford. 6.00 and 8.15.
31 January — Guildhall, Southampton. 3.00 and 8.15.
1-6 February — Empire, Glasgow. Six nights, 6.25 and 8.40, with the Viscounts, the Tony Sheridan Trio, Lance Fortune and Sally Kelly, compered by Billy Raymond.
7-12 February — Gaumont, Sheffield. Six nights, 5.30 and 8.00.
13 February — Granada, Woolwich, London.
14 February — Gaumont, Taunton. 5.45 and 8.00, tickets 8/6 and 5/6.
18 February — De Montfort Hall, Leicester. Two houses.
19-20 February — Boy Meets Girls television recordings.
20 February — Caird Hall, Dundee. 6.15 and 8.45.
21 February — Empire Pool, Wembley. The NME Poll Winners Concert.
24 February — Globe, Stockton-on-Tees. 6.15 and 8.30, with Vince Eager and the Quiet Three. Seats 7/6 down to 3/-.
26 February — Gaumont, Cardiff. 6.25 and 8.40, with Vince Eager and the Quiet Three.
29 February - 5 March — Empire, Leeds. Six nights, 6.00 and 8.15.
5 March — BBC radio, Saturday Club.
7-12 March — Hippodrome, Birmingham. Six nights, 6.20 and 8.30.
14-19 March — Empire, Liverpool. Six nights, 6.20 and 8.30.
21-26 March — Empire, Newcastle upon Tyne. Six nights, 6.15 and 8.30.
28 March - 2 April — Hippodrome, Manchester. Six nights, 6.25 and 8.40. Vincent collapsed on stage on the 29th and was replaced on the 30th by Peter Wynne.
4-9 April — Finsbury Park Empire, London. Six nights, 6.25 and 8.40.
11-16 April — Hippodrome, Bristol. 6.25 and 8.40, closed Good Friday.

The theatres' own posters correct the compiled tour listings in three places: Stockton and Cardiff carried Vince Eager and the Quiet Three, not Billy Fury or Joe Brown, and Manchester and Bristol played at 6.25 and 8.40 rather than 6.20 and 8.30.

By the Bristol week the American half of the bill had thinned: Dean Webb, Peter Wynne, Georgie Fame, the Tony Sheridan Trio and Billy Raymond around Vincent and Cochran.

The programme, and the running order

The Birmingham Hippodrome programme for the week of 7 March survives as a complete scan, and it explains the economics of the thing better than any poster could.

The cover is not a rock'n'roll cover. It is the house cover: matt black, with the word VARIETY across the top in fat brush lettering, each letter alternating yellow, red and white, the dot of the "i" replaced by a red scribbled loop. Below it, a yellow line drawing of a chorus line — two rows of high-kicking dancers — and a yellow banner cut at an angle across the lower left carrying "At the HIPPODROME BIRMINGHAM" in a sober serif. Along the bottom: PROGRAMME PRICE SIXPENCE. Two American rock'n'roll stars were being sold inside a house style designed for jugglers and soubrettes.

The centre spread carries the running order, printed in red and black with a harlequin mask and a scroll of musical staves in the corners, a boxed MONDAY, MARCH 7th on the left page and a boxed ONE WEEK ONLY on the right, "LARRY PARNES presents / A Fast Moving Beat Show" across the gutter.

First half:

1. Overture — The Empire Orchestra
2. Billy Raymond — your host and compere
3. Tony Sheridan Trio — From TV's "Oh Boy"
4. Joe Brown — From TV's "Boy Meets Girl"
5. Billy Raymond introduces — "For the first time in England, EDDIE COCHRAN, Hit Recorder of 'C'mon Everybody' and 'Summertime Blues'"

Then: INTERMISSION — THE HIPPODROME ORCHESTRA.

Second half:

6. Georgie Fame — New Singing-Pianist
7. Billy Fury — Britain's Newest Teenage Idol
8. Billy Raymond — Star of H.M.V. Records
9. Gene Vincent — "The Rock 'n' Roll Idol of Millions, backed by the fabulous Wildcats (by kind permission of Marty Wilde)"

Under the last line, in small caps: FULLY LICENSED BARS IN ALL PARTS OF THE THEATRE.

Note where Cochran sits. He closes the first half; Vincent closes the show. Note also that the compere gets his own spot at number eight, and that the local pit orchestra plays the interval. This is a variety bill with rock'n'roll in it, not yet a rock concert.

Cochran's own page in the programme runs a studio portrait beside a column of publicity copy that is worth quoting for what it gets wrong: "Twenty year old, Oklahoma-born Eddie Cochran has been playing the guitar since he was six years old." It goes on to explain that his ambition to sing dated from a shooting accident that "put a bullet in his leg" and put him in hospital for months, and it closes with a Personal Note: "Eddie owns 65 sweaters, collects guns, is a keen movie goer, and drives a shooting brake in preference to a flashy sports car."

Oklahoma again, three years and two continents on from the Sydney programme. He was twenty-one by then, too.

The claim it makes about mileage is the one that stays with you: "It has been estimated that already Eddie Cochran has travelled 28,000 miles on concert tours, and has played before more than 3,000,000 people."

16-17 April 1960

The last show was the Saturday house at the Bristol Hippodrome on 16 April. The compiled tour listings disagree about that week — some give the 11th to the 14th and the 16th, others simply book six nights — but the theatre's own poster settles it in three words printed under the showtimes: CLOSED GOOD FRI. There was no performance on Friday 15 April.

Cochran wanted to go home for a few days. A private-hire Ford Consul was booked to take him, Gene Vincent, tour manager Patrick Tompkins and his fiancée, the songwriter Sharon Sheeley, to London Airport. At about 11.50 pm, on the A4 at Rowden Hill, Chippenham, Wiltshire, the nineteen-year-old driver, George Martin, lost control and the car hit a concrete lamp post.

Cochran was in the centre of the back seat. He threw himself across Sheeley. He was taken to St Martin's Hospital in Bath with severe head injuries and died there at 4.10 pm the following afternoon — Easter Sunday, 17 April 1960. He was twenty-one. Sheeley and Vincent survived; Vincent's already-damaged leg was broken again and he never really toured without pain afterwards. The driver was convicted of dangerous driving, fined £50 and disqualified for fifteen years.

The tour did not stop. On 30 April it played the Gaumont, Hanley, with Jerry Keller in Cochran's place; on 1 May the Gaumont, Lewisham; on 3 May Liverpool Stadium. "Three Steps to Heaven" went to number one in Britain with its singer already buried.

What the paper tells you

Read the artefacts in sequence and you get a career in graphic design.

In Sydney in 1957 he is a name in a slanted white box, third down, captioned RECORDING STAR, on a red cover built entirely around somebody else's leap. In Portland the same autumn he is a line of plain white type in the lower third of a window card, the only act on it with no hit title beside his name. In Birmingham in 1960 he closes the first half of a variety bill, on a cover that says VARIETY in the same lettering it used for the chorus line.

He never headlined a poster in his own right anywhere, and he had been dead for a decade before anybody printed one with his face alone on it.

A note on sources, and on what is still missing

The Australian and British itineraries above are assembled from compiled secondary listings and cross-checked against contemporary evidence wherever it exists: the Newcastle Morning Herald advertisement of 1 October 1957 and its review of the 3rd, the Powerhouse Museum's catalogue record for the Big Show programme, scans of both surviving programmes, and Hunter Living Histories' research file on the Newcastle shows. The American 1957 and 1958 dates are handled in the companion article.

Two things remain genuinely open, and if you can close either of them, write to us:

Whether the package played Newcastle again on Friday 11 October 1957, or whether that return was the date Little Richard abandoned.
The whereabouts of any window card or theatre poster from either tour carrying Cochran's name, photographed well enough to read.