IT'S TRAD, DAD (1962)

Released in the States as Ring-A-Ding Rhythm, this British film would seem to have the trappings of a traditional rock & roll movie, especially when you see that the list of performers includes Chubby Checker and Del Shannon. But you would (mostly) be wrong. The sliver of a plot has a small town mayor trying to ban the public playing of loud pop music in town. A young man (Craig Douglas) and woman (Helen Shapiro) decide to head to London to track down a DJ who will host a music festival in defiance of the mayor. They ultimately get three professional DJs and several acts to perform and, though the mayor tries to block the festival, he winds up accepting it when the show is a hit and the town gets good publicity from it. To get the musical concerns out of the way first, the music in here--and the bulk of the movie's running time consists of variety show-type performances--is mostly a kind of modified Dixieland jazz; the title of the film refers to "trad jazz," a 60s revival of Dixieland-style music. The Dukes of Dixieland themselves perform, as does Acker Bilk, a clarinet player who had a #1 hit in the UK and the States with the instrumental "Stranger on the Shore." He gets the most exposure with three songs (though not his big hit), and an odd vaudeville-like group called the Temperance Seven get two songs. A couple of nondescript jazz bands get a few numbers, and the rest, including Checker, Shannon, Gene Vincent, and the Brook Brothers, get one song each, and none of them perform hits, though most of the songs are pleasant enough--I especially liked Gene Vincent's "Space Ship to Mars." The climatic number is "When the Saints Go Marching In," which should give you an idea of just how cutting-edge this was.

As a time capsule of a forgotten period in British pop music (just before the Beatles would wipe most all this stuff away), this is fun. But it's also worth watching for the odd humorous style from director Richard Lester who would go on to helm A Hard Day's Night a couple years later. Lester speeds up the film here and there, and pulls off a few surreal moments. When Craig and Helen (pictured; both actual charting pop stars who had several top 10 hits) need to get to the big city, they ask the narrator for help. He stops the film, pulls away their background and replaces it with a TV studio hallway so they can find their first DJ. Later, the unseen narrator smacks an irritating fellow with a pie, again at the request of Craig and Helen. At the fancy Clique Club, a waiter (Derek Nimmo) pulls off some slapstickish pranks. In a bit that seems to anticipate Monty Python, a TV panel discussion degenerates into fisticuffs. The Temperance Seven (though I think I counted nine people in the band) wins for strangest performance, though their second song feels like overkill. I did enjoy this but I'm glad it wasn't any longer than its 78 minutes [TCM]