From The Cavern Club to Bowness Bay Blues

The speaker on 21st July was Bob Theobold who took us through his journey as a lead singer in a group from The Cavern Club to Bowness Bay Blues.

As a teenager Bob, then a ukulele player, was in his first group, The Vortex Four, who played regularly in their local area, before graduating to “Bobby Lane and The Confederates”, complete with a “branded” old bread van for their transport and a dedicated fan base who even showed up during their holiday in Cornwall.
They had regular bookings all around the Manchester area and were finalists in Frankie Vaughan’s talent contest which took them to Blackpool. This led to a performance at Morecambe’s Floral Hall and then to the rather dingy, but iconic Cavern Club in Liverpool, just as the Beatles were coming to prominence and changing the face and “look” of popular music. 

Bob recounted how the demise of Bobby Lane and The Confederates saw him become half of The Devon Brothers, where he earned enough to buy his first house; not from his day job as a rep for Esso.

Bob left his singing career behind in his mid-30s and moved to the Lake District, but became part of the very popular Elderly Brothers, who performed at Windermere Rotary’s Bowness Bay Blues weekend throughout its life, hence the title of his very entertaining talk