Brad Newman
British singer-songwriter (1938-1999)
Brad Newman (born Charles Melvyn Thomas in Wakefield, West Yorkshire, England, 6 December 1938, died in Spain on 18 January 1999) was an English singer-songwriter and pianist who, in 1962, reached number 47 in the UK Singles Chart with the song "Somebody to Love".
Career
Charles Thomas's musical career started with a vocal trio called The Kingpins whom he joined as a pianist following six years at the Leeds College of Music. After a while he began to sing with them as well. In 1955 The Kingpins topped the bill at the Newcastle Palace, and went on to make successful appearances at the Pavilion Theatre in Glasgow. Then he was called up and he served two years in the RAF. Afterwards he returned to join the group on the TV show Six Five Special. More success followed after they became the resident group on the BBC pop show Drumbreat, which also starred Adam Faith, the John Barry Seven, Vince Eager and Billy Fury. After another seasonal theatre show at Weymouth, Dorset with Morecambe and Wise and a tour with Cliff Richard, the trio broke up after which Thomas decided to go solo.
Before he launched his own solo career, under the pseudonym Brad Newman, he went to the Isle of Wight in 1961 to play piano in the residents' bar at the Sandringham Hotel, Sandown. During this period he and Tommie Connor wrote a song called "Somebody to Love". When Newman performed it the audience received it enthusiastically and one of them, a songwriter himself, advised him to go to London and contact the publisher Dick James.
“Brad Newman” enters the record as british singer-songwriter (1938-1999). Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Brad, Newman and British can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Brad Newman” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Brad, Newman and British provides the most credible route into that argument.
Biographical claims are most persuasive when dates, appointments and relationships can be traced to records created close to the events described. The source revision retrieved here is dated May 4, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q4954152. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1938, 1999, 1962 and 1955.
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This entry incorporates text from “Brad Newman” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.