GENE VINCENT Victim of a cruel and contemptible hoax
(Hit Parade)
(August 1960)
GENE VINCENT
Victim of a cruel and contemptible hoax…Nobody in the audience of Nottingham’s Theatre Royal will forget the night Gene walked to the front of the stage and announced “My daughter has died of pneumonia.”
Probably Gene won’t, for to his horror the audience laughed at the announcement - until they realised that he had referred to his daughter, and not (as they thought) to his dog.
With tears streaming down his face he told the hushed audience about Melody - and when the true impact of her death had sunk home, some of the audience cried, too…
It is not generally known that Gene had to be persuaded by those closest to him, to fly back to the U.S. after the telegram.
Always a firm believer that “the show must go on,” he was reluctant to let anybody down…
“I have not had a proper rest in months”, he whispered just before the curtain rang down on his last show. “I must be left entirely alone, and the I can relax completely, and think about things”…
A few days later, the news that Melody was not dead swept the country. A lot was written about Gene’s state of mind, and many critics said that as far as Britain was concerned, he would never be able to return - as if he had known all the time that the telegram was a hoax…
A HIT PARADE round-up of views has shown that Gene has not lost any popularity in having to cancel dates and cause disappointment…
It would seem, that Gene’s fans are quite prepared to listen to what he has to say about the unfortunate affair of recent weeks - but no one is going to hold anything against him. Whatever the truth, Gene to many people is a king of rock ‘n’ roll, and no nasty rumours or stories will remove him from that throne.