ethanedwards
Brummie Muso
The Plaza's -Handsworth and Old Hill
The Ritz Ballroom- Kings Heath
The Plaza- at Handsworth, now a sikh temple
The Old Hill Plaza was one of four venues run by the legendary
Irish husband and wife team Mr and Mrs Regan.
Mary 'Ma' Regan was an ex-schoolteacher
and a shy but formidable woman.
She came over with my grandfather Joe from Ireland when they were teenagers.
During the Second World War she was a teacher
and became head of PE for girls for Warwickshire.
After that she opened tea shops in the Birmingham area and started tea dances.
This then led to the dance halls. They started on a small scale and they had a lot of success.
I remember once that Jerry Lee Lewis was due to play at one of her venues.
For some reason there was an issue with his piano and they had to use my grandmother's.
She set up The Plaza in High Street, Old Hill, 45 years ago.
It was a dance venue, and hosted almost every top act
that was in the Top 30, before later becoming a bingo hall.
One of Mrs Regan's great pleasures was to tell people about
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Animals,
who all played at The Plaza in the early 1960s.
The Beatles at Old Hill
Bob Bailey, who used to drive the bands, said of The Beatles:
The clubs became known as "the Regan circuit"
Acts on the circuit included The Beatles, Kinks, The Animals, Dusty Springfield, Brenda Lee, The Searchers, The Tremeloes, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, The Moody Blues, Jerry Lee Lewis and Del Shannon.
In their early days, the beat groups from the Wolverhampton
area set their first sights on gaining a toehold on the emerging
and rapidly flourishing, Birmingham beat scene.
To play at either the Plaza in Old Hill or in Handsworth
or the Ritz in King's Heath (the 'Regan Circuit')
was seen as being tantamount to recognition of a group
as possessing genuine 'potential' ,
especia1ly as it was quite likely that you would be playing
alongside successful chart groups from Merseyside or Manchester.
Hardly any of the groups who reached the Top Thirty
during the years 1963 to 1964 failed to play at one
or other of the 'formidable' Ma Regan's venues.
John Howells of the 'N Betweens remembers
the first time his band met Ma Regan:
on to the Regan circuit was an important step forward
Photograph by Bob Summers, Birmingham History Forum
The Ritz Ballroom
in Kings Heath featured
The Beatles on 15.02.1963 and Pink Floyd 16-12 1967
Bev Bevan, ex Move and ELO wrote:-
following the death of 94 year old Mary.
The Ritz Ballroom- Kings Heath
The Plaza- at Handsworth, now a sikh temple
The Old Hill Plaza was one of four venues run by the legendary
Irish husband and wife team Mr and Mrs Regan.
Mary 'Ma' Regan was an ex-schoolteacher
and a shy but formidable woman.
She came over with my grandfather Joe from Ireland when they were teenagers.
During the Second World War she was a teacher
and became head of PE for girls for Warwickshire.
After that she opened tea shops in the Birmingham area and started tea dances.
This then led to the dance halls. They started on a small scale and they had a lot of success.
I remember once that Jerry Lee Lewis was due to play at one of her venues.
For some reason there was an issue with his piano and they had to use my grandmother's.
She set up The Plaza in High Street, Old Hill, 45 years ago.
It was a dance venue, and hosted almost every top act
that was in the Top 30, before later becoming a bingo hall.
One of Mrs Regan's great pleasures was to tell people about
The Beatles, The Rolling Stones and The Animals,
who all played at The Plaza in the early 1960s.
The Beatles at Old Hill
Bob Bailey, who used to drive the bands, said of The Beatles:
.
The clubs became known as "the Regan circuit"
Acts on the circuit included The Beatles, Kinks, The Animals, Dusty Springfield, Brenda Lee, The Searchers, The Tremeloes, Gerry and The Pacemakers, Manfred Mann, The Moody Blues, Jerry Lee Lewis and Del Shannon.
In their early days, the beat groups from the Wolverhampton
area set their first sights on gaining a toehold on the emerging
and rapidly flourishing, Birmingham beat scene.
To play at either the Plaza in Old Hill or in Handsworth
or the Ritz in King's Heath (the 'Regan Circuit')
was seen as being tantamount to recognition of a group
as possessing genuine 'potential' ,
especia1ly as it was quite likely that you would be playing
alongside successful chart groups from Merseyside or Manchester.
Hardly any of the groups who reached the Top Thirty
during the years 1963 to 1964 failed to play at one
or other of the 'formidable' Ma Regan's venues.
John Howells of the 'N Betweens remembers
the first time his band met Ma Regan:
Graham Gomery feels that being accepted
on to the Regan circuit was an important step forward
The Express & Star columnist described Ma Regan as
Photograph by Bob Summers, Birmingham History Forum
The Ritz Ballroom
in Kings Heath featured
The Beatles on 15.02.1963 and Pink Floyd 16-12 1967
Bev Bevan, ex Move and ELO wrote:-
The Plaza Bingo Hall at Old Hill ,has now closedFormer schoolteacher Mary Regan and husband
Joe's original ballroom venue was the
Gary Owen Club in Small Heath, not far from
Birmingham City's football ground, St Andrews.
Then came a converted snooker hall in York Road , Kings Heath
which they re-named the Ritz Ballroom.
Next came the Plaza in Handsworth, and finally the Plaza in Old Hill.
The most memorable day in the short
but eventful life of Denny Laine and the Diplomats
was that of July 5th, 1963, when we were chosen
to open the show for The Beatles
at the Old Hill Plaza on the Halesowen Road,
'Ma' Regan took care of the business side of things,
leaving Joe to run the venues and act as compere,
usually dressed in evening suit and black dickie bow.
He would confidently announce the various bands,
groups and singers in his lilting Irish brogue.
The Handsworth Plaza was the biggest of the four a
nd regularly had half a dozen or more groups performing on the same night.
Old Joe was not much of a book-keeper,
and a few times, on a night off,
we would roll up at the Plaza",
convince him that he most definitely had booked us for the night,
slot in with all the other groups there and play a 30-minute set.
Then we would pick up our .£12 fee
and drive to Alex's pie stand in Birmingham
to celebrate our little con trick.
Mary and Joe Regan played a big part
in the development of rock'n'roll music in the West Midlands
by allowing dozens of local bands the opportunity to play these venues,
in front of usually packed audiences.
They also brought to the area some top-line names.
We opened for The Bachelors, Susan Maughan, Julie Grant and,
also in 1963, an absurdly talented 13 year-old singer,
songwriter, pianist and harmonica player who was promoting his big USA hit Fingertips.
His name was Little Stevie Wonder.
But preceding The Beatles on stage -
wow, this was something else indeed!
Remember that this was the beginning of Beatlemania.
John, Paul, George and Ringo had already had big hit
records with Love Me Do and Please Please Me and had
just registered their first number one with From Me To You.
They were currently topping the LP charts with their
debut album Please Please Me.
Because of our popularity in the Black Country,
Joe Regan decided we were best suited for the
unenviable task of being the group on stage directly
before the biggest pop phenomenon since Elvis Presley.
Actually, the huge crowd - literally hanging from the rafters
- was very good to us and many of our own fans were in the audience
. Nevertheless we still got the occasional chant of
"We want The Beatles, we want The Beatles"
from the dominantly female crowd.
This night was a double-header for the moptops
and their small roadcrew.
Firstly they were booked to appear at the Regans'
other Plaza in Handsworth. Unsurprisingly,
they ran late and our scheduled half-hour spot became an hour or more.
Usually we would perform several Beatle songs in our set,
but obviously we had to drop those from our repertoire.
Truth was, we were running out of songs to play
and reverted to a couple of ambitious instrumentals.
We included Hava Nagila (which had Denny playing
lead guitar behind his back )
and the Dave Brubeck Quartet classic jazz piece Take Five,
which featured me playing a drum solo in 5/4 time.
We realised The Beatles had finally arrived
and we could hear them talking backstage.
Then we saw them all watching us from the side of the stage.
We finished our set, the curtains closed,
the crowd now in a state of nervous, near hysterical anticipation.
Then two, separate, unforgettable things happened.
Firstly, our rhythm guitarist (under strict
instructions from his fianc.©e Gill), had the presence of mind to ask John,
Paul, George and Ringo for their autographs.
They all signed the reverse side of one of
our Denny Laine and the Diplomats black & white,
glossy, handout picture postcards.
So there you have it - the four Beatles autographs on one side,
and a photo of a group on the other that just happened
to feature one Denny Laine, who, 10 years later,
would join Paul McCartney in his band Wings.
This is a unique piece of rock'n'roll memorabilia
that will one day fetch many thousands of pounds
in a Sotheby's music auction.
The second thing that happened is that Paul McCartney
strolled over to where I was packing away my drums
(no roadies in those days!) and began talking to me.
Yes, Paul McCartney of The Beatles
walked over to this awestruck kid from Sparkhill,
Birmingham and said in his broad Liverpool accent:
"
following the death of 94 year old Mary.
