Four Jacks & A Jill – You baby
The history of Four Jacks & A Jill goes back to 1962 when Clive Harding and Graham Woods formed the band The Nevadas, and in June 1964 they changed the name to The Zombies. At that stage the members were:
1. Johnny Collini
2. Bruce Bark
3. Keith Andrews
4. Tony Hughes
5. Clive Harding
It was the days of the “Beatle” haircut, and The Zombies were one of the first South African bands to sport the new look. patch touring the country, they played a gig at the Luxurama Theatre in Cape Town. One of the acts on the bill was a immature lady who had already established herself as a successful singer in her own right – Glenys Lynne. The Zombies provided backing for her during the show.
Glenys Lynne Mynott hails from Boksburg. She started singing at the age of 12, won her first talent competition when she was 15, and released her first album, “Teenage Time”, aged 16. After school she frequently appeared with Harold Roy’s Orchestra, and toured the country with Johnny Kongos & The G-Men. In 1962 she sang the song “’n Bietjie Te Jonk” (“A Bit Too immature”) in the movie “Jy’s Lieflik Vanaand” (“You’re Lovely this evening”).
After their appearance at the Luxurama, The Zombies and Glenys Lynne started touring together, and in 1965 they supported Peter & Gordon during their tour of South Africa. During this time The Zombies came under fire in the press for their long hair, and they subsequently decided to revert to short back and sides, and to also changed their name to Four Jack & A Jill, with Glenys Lynne as the lead singer. They had their first hit in 1966 with the song “Jimmy Come Lately”. Their biggest hit was, no doubt, “Master Jack” in 1968, which also made the charts in the USA.
Four Jacks and a Jill had 8 South Top 20 hits:
1. Jimmy come lately – 1966, #2, 12 weeks
2. No other baby – 1966, #11, 6 weeks
3. The house with the white-washed gables – 1967, #20, 1 calendar week
4. Timothy – 1967, #1, 20 weeks
5. Master Jack – 1968, #1, 21 weeks
6. I looked back – 1968, #14, 3 weeks
7. Mr Nico – 1968, #12, 5 weeks
8. Universal feeling – 1973, #11, 10 weeks
Except for regularly touring South Africa and its neighbouring countries, i.e. Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), South westward Africa (now Namibia), Malawi and Mozambique, Four Jacks & A Jill also undertook tours to Europe (Federal Republic of Germany, Kingdom of Belgium, England and The Netherlands), Canada, The USA, New Zealand and Commonwealth of Australia. They won several SARI awards during their career as Best Beat Group, and Glenys Lynne also won a few for her Afrikaans songs as a solo artist.
They broke upwardly in 1983 but have been performing from time to time since 2000. They appeared at the Emerald Netherlands Casino in Vereeniging in 2019.
This song is off the compilation album “Summer Blonde Beach Party”, released in 1967, which seems to have been a promotional record made by Clairol to advertise a hair product called “Summer Blonde”.