Freddie and the Dreamers: The Zany British Invasion Band’s Output Fills a New Box Set
by Jeff Tamarkin
When you think of the British Invasion of the 1960s, who comes to mind? Undoubtedly there’s the Beatles, the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Kinks, the Yardbirds and the Animals. Those A-listers might be joined by any number of other acts that made a solid impact at the time: the Dave Clark Five, Herman’s Hermits, the Zombies, Marianne Faithfull, Peter and Gordon, the Searchers, Manfred Mann, the Hollies, Gerry and the Pacemakers, Tom Jones, Dusty Springfield, the Moody Blues and several others.
One group that probably doesn’t: Freddie and the Dreamers. The Manchester-based quintet, led by Buddy Holly doppelganger Freddie Garrity, scored one chart-topping single in the U.S., 1965’s twangy, danceable “I’m Telling You Now,” featuring Garrity’s maniacal cackle, and sent five other singles into the Billboard Hot 100, those too all in 1965. Those chart entries included the #36 ballad “I Understand (Just How You Feel)” (originally a hit for the American doo-wop group the G-Clefs), the jaunty “You Were Made for Me” and, for better or worse, the wacky, gimmicky “Do the Freddie,” an uptempo instruction manual on how to do the group’s eponymous dance, which basically required the dancer to thrust arms and legs (one at a time—let’s not get crazy here) off to the side throughout the song, “move your head both ways like you see me do” and—don’t try this at home, kids—”jump three feet to the swinging beat.” The Twist it was not, yet that single made it to #18.
Watch Freddie and the Dreamers perform “I’m Telling You Now” on The Ed Sullivan Show
In their native U.K., the group—which also included guitarist Roy Crewdson, guitarist/harmonica player Derek Quinn, bassist Peter Birrell and drummer Bernie Dwyer—fared even better, logging four Top 10s, the first of which, “If You Gotta Make a Fool of Somebody,” had been a hit for the American soul singer James Ray. There was also a self-titled album that made the charts in both England and America.
Related: What were the #1 singles in America in 1965?
By any measure, Freddie and the Dreamers were not to be counted among the subgenre’s heavyweights. Positioning themselves as a comedic act as much as a rock band—Garrity pushed his and the Dreamers’ silly side to the forefront—they deliberately appealed more to younger kids than those who were diving deeply at the time into the blues-based output of the Stones/Yardbirds/Animals/Kinks faction or the polished, and ever-maturing, pop of the Beatles/Who/Hollies, etc.
Freddie Garrity in 1965 (Photo from his Wikipedia page)
Nonetheless, although they disappeared as quickly as they’d arrived, Freddie and the Dreamers were remarkably prolific, cranking out a respectable amount of material in their initial lifetime (Garrity later tried again with other lineups). The British Strawberry Records label, a division of Cherry Red, has now seen fit to compile the group’s canon into one set, You Were Made For Me—The Complete Recordings 1963-1970. [The Jan. 30, 2026, release is available in the U.K. here and in the U.S. here.]
Housing 128 tracks on five discs, the collection naturally includes all of the band’s single A- and B-sides, released between 1963-68, and bolsters that with the aforementioned self-titled debut album, 1964’s You Were Mad for Me (Mad is not a typo); 1965’s Sing-Along Party, consisting entirely of medleys, typified by the opening “You Were Made For Me/Tip Toe Through the Tulips/I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles”; 1966’s In Disneyland; and their obligatory 1967 nod to the burgeoning psychedelic/prog movement, King Freddie and His Dreaming Nights, which, you can be sure, didn’t threaten The Who Sell Out, Sgt. Pepper’s or The Kinks Are the Village Green Preservation Society in the imaginative concept album category. Rounding it all out on disc five is Oliver in the Overworld, a curiosity at best, albeit one that’s worth a spin if only for its period weirdness.
So, what of all of these non-hit Freddie bits? Is any of it worth revisiting (or, more likely, giving a late-date first listen to)? Sure, but let’s not get carried away either. Garrity, in his giddy guise, was something of a convincing neo-vaudeville entertainer who found a niche that suited him and his mates and brought them attention for a minute. But they had their musical moments: In the earlier part of their run, they were capable of reworking a cover from the top down—their take on the Disney staple “Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah” approached the blasphemous in the way the group slowed the tune by half and gave it a quasi-heavy blues-inflected sound, while their more straightforward remakes of classic rock and roll oldies from “Kansas City” to “Little Bitty Pretty One” are never less than respectable.
Some of the deep cuts are fun, but that isn’t to say that this is an essential collection, by any means. The Dreamers’ catalog is packed with what can only charitably be called filler, and there are more than a few occasions when their attempts at funtime cross a line into annoyingville: no one really needed to hear a British beat group offering an album’s worth of Disney music, and the medleys collection, not dissimilar in concept to the Beach Boys’ Party album, is at best a throwaway—how many pre-WWII novelty songs (“By the Light of the Silvery Moon,” “I’m Just Wild About Harry”) can one possibly ingest as sung by a goofball like Freddie Garrity—who died at age 69 in 2006—before one needs to chase it with Beggars Banquet or Who’s Next?
You Were Made for Me—The Complete Recordings 1963-1970 is, undoubtedly, the final, and definitive, word on a group that scraped into the rock audience’s consciousness for a very brief period, managed to stick around long past its shelf life despite dwindling returns and is mostly forgotten today. Those who only want to own the hits can probably find any of a number of single-disc collections still available. But if, for whatever reason, one’s interest in this marginal group is more than casual, there’s plenty here (and the set also includes fine annotation that puts it all into honest perspective) to enjoy and—excuse us, but we’ve gotta say it—this boxed set was made for you.
Watch: Are you ready to “Do the Freddie”!
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