New dawn for soul-funkers as Kokomo Rise and Shine

According to the advert, support for this generously-staffed outfit was Mime by Mandy the Majestic Marionette.

The fate of Mandy is unknown, but Kokomo, with a line-up that includes half a dozen of those listed for that gig and on the sleeve of a first album that was hailed as the finest debut by any UK band when it was released in 1975, will be headlining this year's Darvel Festival near Kilmarnock on Sunday, November 30.

Frank Collins, one of the band's four vocalists and the main songwriter on both that album and its US-made follow-up Rise and Shine, is just a year shy of his 70th birthday and still working with fellow singer and keyboard player Tony O'Malley - a professional partnership that dates back to the 1960s.

"There was a page on Facebook called Bring Back Kokomo," says Collins. "I'm amazed at how revered and loved the band are. There are lots of fans out there who thought they'd never see us."

Sue Martin of agency Roots Around the World, girlfriend of guitarist Neil Hubbard, has been the one to translate that plea on social media into performances, Collins acknowledges, and her galvanising influence is the reason that he is just off the phone arranging vocal rehearsals with O'Malley when we speak.

As well as the Darvel Festival, Kokomo have been playing London dates at the 100 Club and the Half Moon in Putney, venues that they'd have been familiar with in their earliest days.

The roots of Kokomo, however, lie in Liverpool, where Collins, Paddy McHugh, and Dyan Birch sang in harmony group The Excelles.

It metamorphosed into Arrival, recording two albums before O'Malley hooked up with Hubbard and bassist Alan Spenner from Joe Cocker's backing outfit The Grease Band and Kokomo came into being, taking their name from a track on Aretha Franklin's Young, Gifted and Black album.

Like their contemporaries, Scotland's Average White Band, with whom they often played, particularly on tour in America, Kokomo were a long way from rock music at the time, even if they were sometimes bracketed with pre-punk "pub rock" and toured with Dr Feelgood in 1974's legendary Naughty Rhythms package.

Joining the singers, Spenner, Hubbard and drummer Terry Stannard in the original line-up were Scots jazz-funk guitarist Jim Mullen, saxophonist Mel Collins and percussionist Jody Linscott.

All had or went on to went on to stellar careers. Mullen formed the fusion group Morrissey Mullen with sax player Dick Morrissey, while Linscott's CV includes stints with Elton John, Eric Clapton, Ray Davies and the Pet Shop Boys. Mel Collins will be missing this time round because of commitments to the reformed King Crimson, but Mullen has brought on board Nigel Hitchcock as a more than able replacement from the jazz world.

As for the nucleus of Kokomo, singers Hubbard and Spenner graced many a hit, being regular members of Bryan Ferry's band among others, and involved in the early sessions for Bob Dylan's Desire album, their input still clearly detectable in the finished product.

So, with such quality in spades in the ranks, why did success not come for Kokomo itself?

"Various factors came along and messed it up," Collins recalls.

"Drugs were part of it, to be candid, and that wasn't specific to us."

The business side was a problem too. Such was the esteem in which the band was held in its earliest days, that potential managers were queuing to sign them, including Miles Copeland before he made stars of The Police. They went with Steve O'Rourke, whose other client at the time was Pink Floyd. The relationship did not last and Collins has heard that Floyd gave O'Rourke an ultimatum when they saw how enthusiastic he was about the ten-piece soul band.

Despite great press coverage, Kokomo's acclaim didn't convert into sales and the band fell apart, making a third, inferior, album in the early 1980s, which yielded their only lowly chart hit, A Little Bit Further Away.

Missing from the revived line-up is bassist Spenner, who died of heart failure in 1991 and Dyan Birch, whom he married, and whose performances these days are restricted by her own respitory health problems.

She has been replaced by Helena May Harrison, recruited by Collins from the support band at the Half Moon sound check.

"She's brilliant, and saved the day that day. She can blend spot- on with Paddy on me, but she is much younger and makes us both look like we need ironing."

What the Darvel concert - for which Kokomo are playing alongside Hamish Stuart of the Average White Band - will not be is a nostalgia feast.

"We fell away from doing all the album stuff," says Collins, "so there will be covers and some new original songs."

Covers include The Pointer Sisters' Yes We Can Can and Aretha Franklin's With Everything I Feel In Me, a live favourite since 1975 (available on a Leicester Polytechnic live recording).

The new material includes Road to Kokomo and Back of the Bag, both inspired by the band's gigging.

"Tony and I have been co- writing, and some of the songs are for his own project while some are more suitable for Kokomo. The plan is to do another Kokomo album, but I'd want it to be well-funded. We might need ramp access and hot water bottles these days, but we are testing the water to see if the band still has legs. It is a big band, though, and it needs big money."

Kokomo and The Hamish Stuart Band are at Darvel Town Hall on Sunday November 30

www.darvelmusicfestival.org