The Hitmakers
On my way home from Kastrup-Rauchel I stood off the train in Hamburg. It was to call to memories and to buy 4 pair of boots to The Hitmakers, in which Bjarne and I should start.
I replaced Benny Qvotrup September 1963, and Bjarne replaced Erik Groenfeldt in October.We performed those month at Jomfruburet. We recorded our first single for Sonet in November, I saw her standing there and She cried.
Our 1 single 1963
1. of January 1964 we hit the chart as number 19 on Top 20.
1964 became a very busy year, we went to Finland for a two month tour.
We started saturday the 4. of January in Forrsa and ended up saturday the 29. of February in Kokomäki. We had only five days off. It was a new town every day, which meant we droved about 10.000 km on slippery roads.
That framed us together, both human and musical.
It was very cold at night, sometimes down to 30 degrees of frost. One night we had a puncture on our way home from a job, 15 km from the hotel, only dressed in the performance-suit. The jack sanked into the thick frozen ice. Out with the instruments, but all the same. Not a car to stop on the road, so in with the instruments and of we went on a flat tyre.
We were bloody freezing, and that felloe was not up to much after that trip.
The finnish roads in the winter.
We performed on finnish TV in Helsinki wednesday the 29. of January 1964
TV - recording
Drumsolo
The finnish People are incredible nice and helpful. It was easy to make oneself understandable, either on swedish or german along the coast. The finnish children learns those two language at school. But when we moved into the country, the difficulties began. And it went from bad to worse close to the russian border, here we didn't got a chance to make ourselves understandable.
I had to learn some finnish, sush as asking for direction, and an important thing such as order food we liked and could eat. I always disliked liver and learned by experience, that it's called "Maksa Pivhi" in Finland. By the way, it looked delicious, a breaded cubic thing with potatoes and brown sauce, until I tasted that it was liver.
It became my job to say "Thanks for tonight and and see you later".
I hope the spelling is right in finnish: "Kitos tästä illasta, ja toivomme näkevämme uudelleen".
We have just given Princess Benedicte our single I Saw Her Standing There, and that's just what the princess are doing here.Home again the 2. of March. we performed at Jomfruburet in the weekdays. Saturday and sunday we performed around the country.
We got a personal manager Niels Wenkens. He started the POP IN TOP Concerts in Denmark, in which was including big foreign names.
Here are some of them:
POP IN TOP - December 1963 - Tivolis Concerthall: Little Suzie and The Hitmakers. It was the first one Niels Wenkens made.
POP IN TOP 1 - March 1964 - Soenderjyllandshallen in Aabenraa:
Little Suzie, Jerry Williams and The Hitmakers.
POP IN TOP 3 - April 1964 - Tivolis Concerthall:
The Spotnicks and The Hitmakers.
POP IN TOP 7 - December 1964 - Falkoner Centret:
The Searchers, Millie and The Hitmakers
POP IN TOP 8 - February 1965 - Tivolis Concerthall: Only danish band:
The Hitmakers - The Defenders - Peter Belli - Sir Henry.The article is from Langlinie Pavillonen, where we performed at Princess Benedicte's birthday. She didn't knew anything about the arrangement. We gently sat up our gear behind some roll doors. When they were drinking coffee, the doors were rolled aside, And we played a couple of numbers to big surprise for the princess.
Tivolis Concerthall
Steen Bergstroem - Joergen Krabbenhoeft -
Torben Sardorf - Bjarne de la Motte
While Bjarne was singing Long Tall Sally, Joergen smashed a guitar, which was bought to the same occasion. That made the audience go wild.
Niels Wenkens was lucky to get The Beatles to Denmark thursday the 4. of June 1964 in the K.B. Hall.
We got the job to warm up together with two other danish bands: The Weedons and The Beethovens.
There were two concerts - respectively at 6 o'clock and at 9.30 in the evening.
