JIVIN’ JIMMY
A Biography of the Creator of Rockin’ Oliver!
Jivin’ Jimmy was born in London, England and moved to Canada with his family in the late 1960’s. He grew up in Ontario and now lives in Toronto, Ontario. A karaoke host and singer and guitar player, Jimmy loves rockabilly music. He is a huge fan of Lionel Bart’s Oliver! and particularly the movie version released in 1968. After watching that film, he was so intrigued by the storyline and the characters, that as a teenager, he began to think about writing a sequel. Oliver Twist was a story about the misery and poverty in the 1830’s, so Jimmy set about creating a story to show the achievement of a much better and kinder society over one hundred years later. Thus, the idea of Oliver’s descendent, which is Rockin’ Oliver Brownlow. Lionel Bart’s Oliver! was a popular musical with songs enjoyed by all, so Jimmy decided that the sequel would have to be a musical, thus a rockabilly musical would be appealing. Rockin’ Oliver! is a child singer to tie in with the Oliver theme and the innocence of the 1950’s.
Jimmy wrote a preliminary stage version of Rockin’ Oliver! in 1975 which was performed at his high school, to the delight of the audience. He did not pursue the idea any further for another twenty years. He continued to work as an office clerk and playing his guitar in his own time. However, by 1998, that all changed. Jimmy became very interested in karaoke and began to sing at a local bar. He found that singing 1950’s rock ‘n roll and swinging and dancing around as he sang, was extremely popular with the crowd and attracted huge applause. In that year, he saw a performance of Cameron MacIntosh’s stage version of Oliver! at the Princess of Wales Theatre in Toronto, Canada. Jimmy enjoyed it so much, that he began to revive the sequel idea and combined it with his rock ‘n roll karaoke enjoyment. In 1999, he completed both the novel and the stage script versions of Rockin' Oliver! Jivin' Jimmy started his own karaoke company, Spotlight Entertainment, in the summer of 2001. The first stage performance of Rockin' Oliver! took place in Okotoks, Alberta, Canada in 2004 performed by Dewdney Players.
