Meet Colgems Artist Alex Keenan

Alex Keenan recorded two singles for the Colgems label and placed a song on the "Otley" soundtrack.

The Scottish singer (not Welsh, as I had erroneously reported) was living in London when he recorded Neil Sedaka and Howard Greenfield’s "One Day Of Your Life," which was a huge hit in Hawaii and was later recorded by Andy Williams.

"I was also one of the staff writers for Colgems at the time I was recording for them," he recalled. Jack McGraw was the managing director (U.K.) at that time, and I got a few of my own songs on the album ["Alex Keenan," which was later released on Trim Records (TLP5100)] as well as a couple of numbers written by Richard Kerr who wrote "Mandy" for Barry Manilow."

When "One Day Of Your Life" took off in Hawaii, Keenan said the label wanted him to go to the 50th state to promote the record, "but I would not have been paid any money for the three week trip, so Jack McGraw advised me, as I had just got married, to wait and see how the second release did."

His next release, another Sedaka/Greenfield song called "Your Heart’s Not In Your Love," did not have the impact of the first song, so Keenan never made it to Hawaii, which he lists as "big regret."

Keenan subsequently appeared many times on radio in Europe with a number of different bands, and ATV Music got a singing group together called Rain which he said had some success in the U.K.

He was doing a lot of session singing until his marriage broke up and He left London, moving to West Yorkshire, where he spent 20 years singing as a solo artist in clubs and bars.

As far as his work on the Colgems label, he said, "I have tried for ages myself to find out if there are any royalties sitting somewhere that are due to me."

However, like others who have sought out the Colgems catalog for one reason or another, he has run into numerous brick walls trying to find out.