The show's titles theme music was provided with the vocals of the Mike Sammes Singers. The lead singer was none other than Mike Sammes who would specialize in pop music. He and his team would perform backing vocals on pop music between the 1950s to the 1980s. Born in 1928 in Reigate, Surrey, Sammes was the son of Rowland Sammes, a pioneering photographer and filmmaker. He studied at the Reigate Grammar School and played in the school orchestras, before working briefly at the Chappel & Co music publisher in London.
After returning from the RAF in the late 1940s, he attempted to form a male vocal group the "Coronets" with Bill Shepherd, a fellow musician. Once Shepherd withdrew, he was eventually able to form the core group that would be the Mike Sammes Singers, which comprised; himself with John O'neil (The Good The Bad and The Ugly) Irene King, Enid Hurd, Mike Redway, Ross Gilmour, Valerie Bain, Marion Gay and Mel Todd.
Their first pieces of work would include the backing vocals to the Micheal Holliday song "Starry Eyed" in 1960, Holliday would provide the songs for the Anderson for Four Feather Falls. The group worked extensively but usually uncredited. They were employed for the first SUPERMARIONATION series Supercar, Sammes himself providing the vocals for the Supercar theme of the first series, then the whole group altogether for the vocals of the second series. They would also provide backing vocals for another Gerry Anderson series, Stingray (sung by Gary Miller). They would be used once more by Gerry Anderson for the vocals of The Secret Service in 1968. Their extensive work would include "Tears" by Ken Dodd, "Delilah" from Tom Jones and "Strawberry Fair" by Antony Newly.
Their work on TV goes beyond the worlds of Gerry Anderson with "The Bed-Sit Girl" (1966), "The Benny Hill Show" (1967), or even "Q" (1969). However, during the 1970s it was when the need for backing vocals less necessary for shows and films because of the new introduction of synthesizers and multi-tracking. Sammes died in May 2001 at the age of 73, when he failed to recover fully from a fall. His legacy was kept alive when Johnny Trunk from Trunk Records recovered some reel to reel tapes of his songs from his house and was complied as part as Music for Biscuits, as some of his work on advertising from the 1960s and 1970s jingles for Tuc Biscuits.
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The Secret Service: The Vault
Non-FictionThe Secret Service was a 1960s British children's TV series created by Gerry Anderson and the team of Century 21 studios in Slough, from the makers of Thunderbirds, Captain Scarlet and Space: 1999. This was the final of his television series to feat...
