The first song written by Ken Howard, who has died aged 84, in partnership with Alan Blaikley, was The Yellow Dance, and the pair recorded it on Howard’s father’s Dictaphone in 1954. But it was not until the following decade that the Howard-Blaikley duo shifted into high gear and began to develop into a major force in British pop music.
In 1964 they chanced across a group called the Sheratons playing in the Mildmay Arms pub in north London. They learned that the band were desperate for new material for their imminent audition with the producer Joe Meek.
