Let's Do The...

Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were a British rock and roll band, formed in Liverpool in 1957, from a school skiffle group called The Sinners. One of the first beat groups in the Merseyside area, they were a locally popular and influential group who were contemporaries and rivals of The Beatles, and featured Cilla Black as a guest singer before her solo career, but had little commercial success except in Germany. The band played local clubs, and Ted 'Kingsize' Taylor (so called for his 6' 5" height) developed a reputation as one of the best rock and roll singers in the Liverpool area as well as being noted for his vivid chequered jackets. By summer 1960, the group were being billed as Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes. They first performed at the Cavern Club in January 1961, when they featured 17-year-old singer Cilla White, who was mistakenly renamed Cilla Black later that year by Bill Harry in an article in his magazine Mersey Beat. At the beginning of 1962, the band were placed sixth in a Mersey Beat readers' poll, topped by the Beatles. Cilla Black sang regularly with the group until 1962.

In the summer of 1962, the band (without Cilla Black) went to Hamburg, where they began making regular appearances at the Star-Club. Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were signed by Decca Records in Germany, and also recorded there for the Philips and Ariola labels. In 1963 they recorded an album, "Live At The Star Club" for Ariola, with whom they had a recording contract, but were also persuaded to make a separate album for Polydor. The album, "Let's Do the Madison, Twist, Locomotion, Slop, Hully Gully, Monkey" was released under the pseudonym of The Shakers and that's the one presented here. Three singles from the album - "Money", "Whole Lotta Lovin'", and "Hippy Hippy Shake" - were released by Polydor in the UK. All the recordings by Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes were covers of rock and roll and rhythm and blues songs by other artists; they wrote no songs themselves. Their biggest success in Germany was a version of Solomon Burke's "Stupidity", also released on the Decca label in the UK. While in Germany, they also performed regularly in Kiel and Berlin, and acted as backing group for Alex Harvey, before returning to the UK to back Chuck Berry and Carl Perkins on tour in 1964. They also appeared on the British TV show Ready Steady Go! The original Kingsize Taylor and the Dominoes split up at the end of 1964.