These Men Were Once Kings

 Trevor Shakes

Whylie Rookwood

Extract from "This Was Not Part Of The Masterplan". Many Have expressed to me how I changed their lives, Trevor Shakes unknowingly changed mine.

Shakes - Club 7 was run by Whylie Rookwood (RIP). All the best dancers would go there on Wednesday nights to hear Trevor Shakes DJ and watch him dance. There was Shakes, Leon Herbert, Foster George (Mutley), Lascelle Gordon, Norman and Bassey Walker, Mohammed, Masher Fontaine, Hoyle Baker, Dennis Alcot and many more that I no longer remember. I recollect that there were not many women and most of us were from the East End, I can’t remember Horace being there; I think he had a posh girlfriend by then. The reason I mention Club 7 is because it planted a seed that would flower five years later. Trevor Shakes was playing the best of the current music, he also dropped some of the old tunes that I had heard at the Lively Lady and subsequently bought at the time. These old records were far better than the latest sounds I was hearing and influenced me into listening to all my old 7” vinyl's again. When Trevor put on a record he would leave the decks and hit the dance floor, getting down with the rest of us, when the record finished he would very casually put it back to the beginning or just turn it over for “part 2”; I was impressed by his total self-indulgence. Unfortunately Club 7 burnt down under mysterious circumstances