The Temperance Seven

Britain's long tradition of music hall and pantomime had already cemented tight connections between jazz and various strains of comedy, many of them decidedly downmarket. Those working on the BBC Radio series The Goon Show grasped this connection clearly; the program, which featured Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe and Spike Milligan along with occasional appearances by Michael Bentine, produced a brand of surreal humor that directly fostered the Alberts, the Scaffold and the Bonzo Dog Doo-Dah Band, while its transatlantic reverberations encouraged similarly skewed comedy-with-brass ensembles such as the Roto Rooter Good Time Christmas Band.

The Temperance Seven made their debut in 1957 under the direction of the flamboyant Alexander Hitchcock Galloway, who supplied vocals together with occasional shouts and remarks amplified through a brass megaphone. Direct personnel overlaps existed with the Alberts, as several musicians from the expanded Massed Alberts configuration migrated into the Temperance Seven; one of these was Ted Wood, brother of Rolling Stones guitarist Ron Wood, who remained with the group for a period. In 1966 the ensemble supplied memorable comic sequences for the film The Wrong Box.

Across its shifting lineups the band has issued numerous albums, yet its British chart impact remained modest save for the chart-topping single "You're Driving Me Crazy." Additional successes arrived with "Pasadena" and "Chili Bom-Bom," the latter tune becoming so ubiquitous that it attained the status of a nationwide craze. The Temperance Seven continue to perform and record as of 1998.