Shakin' Stevens

One of the linchpins of the British rock & roll revival of the 1970s and 1980s, Shakin' Stevens ranks among the most persistent performers ever to emerge ultimately as a superstar. Stevens has no less than 30 U.K. Top 40 hits to his name, almost all of them racked up during one single five-year span of chart invincibility. Yet his recording career predated his first hit by over a decade, struggling through a period that might have forced any less committed artist to simply abandon all hope. "Shaky" was born Michael Barratt on March 4, 1948, in Ely, Wales. The youngest of 11 children and a keen amateur singer, he was already married and working as a milkman when he formed Shakin' Stevens & the Sunsets, his first professional band, in 1968. The bandmembers themselves had been playing together in one form or another since the late '50s (when they formed as the Backbeats), and knew Stevens as one of their most devoted fans; he would often join them on-stage to perform a guest vocal or two. With a ferocious live following around South Wales, the band signed to Parlophone in 1970 and recorded its debut album, the optimistically titled A Legend, with producer Dave Edmunds. Reports that they also opened for the Rolling Stones in December 1969 appear to be exaggerated, but the band gigged regularly around Germany and Holland, and scored several European hit singles. Still, they seemed doomed to haunt the rock & roll revival circuit, all the more so after Stevens was cast in impresario Jack Good's musical Elvis in 1977 (he appeared as the Army-era King), and the band was forced into hiatus for the duration of the play's six-month run. Worse was to come, however, as Elvis went on to become one of the year's biggest musicals. Stevens' run was extended to two years, and exploding...