Billy Ocean
Sam Wolman used to scoff when the young tailor’s assistant came into his chemist shop on Brick Lane to buy throat sweets, talking about his dreams of making it big in the music business.
“That was when he was nothing,” remembers the proprietor of Wolman’s with a laugh.
“He worked for a feller, a tailor or presser, off of Brick Lane, and he used to come in here and say he wanted to write songs, to sing songs, and I used to pull his leg and tease him something rotten.
“And then the next thing I knew he was having hit records, he was on Top of the Pops. Well it just goes to show, doesn’t it?”
The young no-hoper was one Leslie Sebastian Charles, but he would become better known to fans of pop music and the movies as Billy Ocean.
Leslie was born on January 21, 1950, in Trinidad. Like many other West Indian families in the Fifties, the Charles’ emigrated to England, in search of work, and their son became an East Ender.
He had his dreams of making it in the music business but, like many others, had to find a day job while working on his performing career. That’s how he ended up working in the Spitalfields rag trade, and supplementing his income with work as a session singer.
But all that changed forever when he scored a brace of hits on the GTO label as a solo artist.
Love Really Hurts Without You charted in 1976 and Red Light Spells Danger followed it into the Top 10 in 1977.
A successful career seemed to beckon but, like so often in the fickle world of the pop charts, the momentum was hard to maintain.
Billy’s subsequent releases struggled for radio play and, between 1980 and 1984, Ocean was absent from the UK charts.
But, with the kind of determination that powers pop longevity, he turned his attention to a bigger target the US charts.
Ocean decamped to America at the turn of the Eighties and had a string of successes in the US R&B chart. Then he broke into the mainstream US charts and the hits crossed the Atlantic to make it big in Britain too.
Caribbean Queen (No More Love On The Run) was Ocean’s first national US pop Number 1, and it swiftly became an enormous hit in Britain.
He followed the million-selling 1984 single with There’ll Be Sad Songs (To Make You Cry) in 1986 and Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car two years after that.
It was a dazzling period of chart success, with both records going to Number 1 in the States as well as being huge hits over here.
Suddenly continued the astonishing run of successes, but Billy hit his UK high point in 1986 with another huge Number 1 hit. When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going was the theme song to the smash-hit film The Jewel Of The Nile, starring Michael Douglas.
The video featured Douglas and co-stars Kathleen Turner and Danny de Vito dancing with Ocean, with the quartet dressed in white tuxedos.
Chart success in the UK started to wane once more but Billy, with the canny business sense that had seen him kick-start his career in the States, was one step ahead.
He had released Caribbean Queen in Africa as African Queen and on the Continent as European Queen, each version having specially-rewritten lyrics tailored to its new market!
Just like the old days in the Brick Lane tailors, he was cutting his material to fit. Both versions were just as successful as the original, and it was to the European dance market that the singer now turned his attentions.
Today, Billy is much more a force on the European music scene, though When The Going Gets Tough, The Tough Get Going was covered by Boyzone and became a Number 1 for the second time around.
As sceptical Spitalfields pharmacist Sam said: “It just goes to show…”
With thanks to This Bright Field by William Taylor. £15.99, Methuen Books.