Why Should We Not

Why Should We Not opens on a mood rather than a melody. Sax passes to harmonica passes to organ in a rolling, bluesy arrangement that has almost nothing to do with what British pop singles sounded like in the summer of 1963. Paul Jones provides chanted vocals but the instruments carry the track. Manfred Mann recorded it direct to mono during the band’s EMI test audition in May 1963. The tape they handed in became the master. Producer John Burgess heard something in the group’s jazz and rhythm and blues fusion that the other labels had not. It does not sound like a debut single. It sounds like a band that already knew what it was.

Manfred Lubowitz left Johannesburg in 1961 in protest of apartheid. He arrived in England as a jazz pianist and teacher, writing under the name Manfred Manne before dropping the final letter. In 1962 he met drummer Mike Hugg at a Butlins holiday camp in Clacton. They formed the Mann-Hugg Blues Brothers, a large band that included saxophonists and a trumpet player. By early 1963 the group had shrunk to five members and added lead vocalist Paul Jones. Their manager Kenneth Pitt arranged auditions at Pye, Decca, and EMI. The EMI session in May 1963 was the one that worked. John Burgess signed them to HMV and chose a shorter name for the group against the keyboardist’s own wishes. The band was called Manfred Mann because John Burgess decided it should be.

Why Should We Not did not chart. Neither did the follow-up single. Everything changed in late 1963 when the band wrote the theme song for the British television series Ready Steady Go. Released in January 1964, 5-4-3-2-1 reached number five on the UK Singles Chart and gave the band their first commercial foothold. Six months later they covered an obscure Exciters track called Do Wah Diddy Diddy and reached number one in both the UK and the United States. The single that started it all had been sitting quietly for a year. Sixty-three years ago today a jazz pianist from Johannesburg handed in a tape and a band was born.