‘Why I Decided to Pretend I was American, I Will Never Know’: Rock ‘n’ Roll and ‘The Sixties’ in an English Town

Abstract

NOTGOT One evening in 1956 local singer Arnold ‘Gerry’ Dorsey met a young woman (whom he would later marry) at the Palais de Danse in Leicester, a prosperous but largely unremarkable city in the English East Midlands. He was anxious to impress her. He reflected later: Why I decided to pretend I was American, I will never know! I’d never been across the pond and knew nothing of the great Wild West apart from what I had seen on the big screen. All I knew was that I felt an urgent need to put on airs and graces, and pretend to be somebody — anybody — other than who I was.1