About Jefferson
Hometown
Birmingham, England
Born
March 11, 1944
Genre
Rock
Jefferson was an English singer -- originally and subsequently known as Geoff Turton -- who enjoyed a tiny handful of hits on either side of the Atlantic in the closing years of the 1960s and the outset of the 1970s. His sound varied from sunshine pop to pop/rock ballads but as a performer, his history went back to the British beat enclave in Hamburg, Germany. Jefferson started his musical career in 1961 as Geoff Turton, the lead singer for the Rockin' Berries, who made a minor name for themselves as a harmony vocal-oriented British beat group, mostly covering American pop/rock, in England and Germany. Turton had started out as a guitarist, until one night while playing at the Star Club in Hamburg, Germany in 1962: the group started covering "Hey Paula" and Turton, on the spur of the moment, sang the girl's part in a falsetto. In that one moment, he discovered that he had a singing voice (that eventually proved flexible and powerful) and, even better, the crowd ate it up. The group was soon covering the work of the Beach Boys, the Four Seasons, and the Tokens, among others. That led them into the orbit of producer/composer Kim Fowley, and the recording and release of their first hit, "He's in Town." For the next five years, Turton served as lead singer and de facto music director for the band, seeking out suitable songs but chafing under the group's act, which increasingly included large amounts of stage comedy.
In 1968, the group split up and Turton launched a solo career, using his contract with Pye Records and its Piccadilly subsidiary through the group as the vehicle for his first single, "Don't You Believe It." Its failure led Piccadilly label chief and producer John Schroeder to suggest a change of strategy -- the two agreed on a change of name, to Jefferson. This was the era of Keith and a handful of other single-name artists, including such predecessors as Heinz, and the name had the added virtue of sounding American, at least in most peoples' associations. His debut single, "Montage," was a gorgeous rendition of an even prettier Jimmy Webb song that had been buried in an otherwise lackluster film comedy entitled How Sweet It Is (1968) (which marked the big-screen debut of Garry Marshall as a producer) and also recorded by the Love Generation -- amazingly, in a period when Webb's songs all seemed to generate gold, it failed to chart, although it was a superb record and a beautiful example of sunshine pop. It was his second single, "The Colour of My Love," that put him on the charts, in the British Top 30, and yielded an LP named after the single.
It was at this point that events started going right, and wrong, at once. Soon after the album's release, he was critically injured in an automobile accident -- it was around this same time that his follow-up single, "Baby Take Me in Your Arms," was issued to total indifference in England but hit the Top 20 in America on Janus Records, resulting in the release of a Jefferson LP in the United States. Had he been able to make personal appearances in support of the single or the album, there's no telling how well either might've sold. As it was, he was hospitalized for six months and had to resume his career from a standstill -- an entire second LP was left in the can by the record label, and he was soon shopping around for a new recording deal as well as some quality gigs. Fortunately, he got some work on the far side of the Atlantic, where the hit lingered in the memory, and he found himself greeted as a star when he played before collegiate crowds; this gave him a taste of what fate had denied him, and also the breathing room to reinvent himself, professionally and musically. For the first time in his career, he began concentrating on writing songs and also working and thinking in a more reflective idiom. A contract with Polygram followed, along with a complete LP and one song, "I Love You This Much," that became a European hit for Mouth & MacNeal. In subsequent years, he abandoned the Jefferson persona and rejoined the Rockin' Berries for the second-half of the 1970s. He moved in and out of the group's orbit in the 1980s and 1990s, occasionally writing songs, including at least one recorded by the reformed band. He was working the oldies' circuit in England, doing hits of his own and those of the group, into the new century. In 2001, Castle Records issued the retrospective CD The Colour of My Love, containing most of his output from the Pye label, including part of an entire unissued second album. ~ Bruce Eder
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