大象传媒

In spite of the title of his 1963 hit Walkin' Tall, was just 5'5", and not even his mum would say he was blessed with the pipes of Caruso. Yet he was strikingly handsome, had a quirky but instantly recognisable voice, and was charismatic enough to build a career that included 15 Top 20 hits, plus starring roles in TV show Budgie and one of the great fictional pop movies, Stardust in 1974.

British pop was a pretty tight-knit world in the early sixties

Bob Stanley

Adam Faith's run of hits in the early sixties were distinctively British - along with , he could be seen as a precursor for mannered, theatrical pop stars like and and others with a music hall bent like and . He stood out from contemporaries like Cliff and Billy Fury - instead of the Elvis quiff, Adam went for a cool French crop. He looked and sounded homegrown. It's no coincidence that Adam's first hit, What Do You Want, was central to a pub sequence in the classic British 'kitchen sink' film Saturday Night And Sunday Morning in 1960.

On Adam's first dozen hits - all Top 20 between 1959 and 1962 - the strings were courtesy of and the often cheeky lyrics (Adam's an absolute hound on Someone Else's Baby and Made You) came from Les Vandyke. This was a pseudonym for Johnny Worth, a singer for the budget Embassy label, which in turn was a pseudonym for Battersea-born Yani 'John' Skoradalides; the Vandyke part of his name came from his local London telephone exchange, while the 'Les' part came from his friend, songwriter and arranger Les Reed, who had helped him arrange What Do You Want before presenting it to Faith and Barry. Les Reed would go on to form a formidable songwriting team with Barry Mason, coming up with ' Delilah and The Last Waltz among others. And Barry Mason, believe it or not, had been the guy in the pub in Saturday Night And Sunday Morning singing What Do You Want as Albert Finney sank pints in a drinking competition. British pop was a pretty tight-knit world in the early sixties.

After the Faith/Vandyke/Barry team broke up, mainly because John Barry's career as a soundtrack composer had taken off, Adam teamed up with writer Chris Andrews and backing group the Roulettes for a couple of fine albums (On The Move and Faith Alive!) and an excellent run of beat group hits: The First Time and We Are In Love were both Top 20 while the raucous It's Alright was his only US hit in 1965 (and unexpectedly made an appearance in the film Good Morning Vietnam). Of Adam's later singles, possibly the best are an atmospheric, jangling cover of Bob Lind's Cheryl's Goin' Home, and the early composition, Cowman Milk Your Cow, with its dreamy, lightly psychedelic production. Not wanting to end up in cabaret, Adam retired from the pop scene in 1968 to concentrate on acting.