November 14: Freddie Garrity of "Freddie and the Dreamers" was born on this date in 1936.

He died on May 19, 2006

Freddie Garrity, born in Manchester, England was the singer, frontman, actor and lead comedian in the 1960s pop band, Freddie and the Dreamers. Freddie & the Dreamers were the clowns of the British Invasion, playing their pop music for laughs.  

 

Freddie worked as a milkman while playing in a local skiffle groups - The Red Sox The John Norman Four and finally The Kingfishers, who became Freddie and the Dreamers in 1959. In the early '60s the band switched from skiffle to rock & roll.

In the early years of the band, Garrity’s official birth-date was given as 14 November 1940 to make him appear younger and, therefore, more appealing to the youth market.

Garrity’s trademark was his habit of leaping up and down during performances. This, combined with his almost skeletal appearance and horn-rimmed glasses (without lenses), made him an eccentric figure in the UK pop scene of the early 1960s.

The group's hits were more numerous in the U.K. than in America, where they had only one Top Ten hit, the number one "I'm Telling You Now." As 1965 turned into 1966, the group stopped charting in the U.S. and the hits began to dwindle in the U.K.; by 1968 the original group disbanded.

Between 1971 and 1973 Garrity and former bandmate Peter Birrell appeared in the ITV children’s television show Little Big Time. Garrity also made an appearance on the Granada Television production The Wheeltappers and Shunters Social Club in early 1974. Garrity also appeared in an episode of Heartbeat as a DJ, who played a Freddie and the Dreamers record, "I'm Telling You Now."

After his television career ended, Garrity formed a new version of Freddie and the Dreamers and toured regularly for the next two decades, but no further records or chart success came their way. He continued to perform until 2001, when he was diagnosed with emphysema after collapsing during a flight, thus forcing him into retirement.

With his health in decline, Garrity settled in Newcastle-under-Lyme where he died.

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