Samantha Juste

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Samantha Juste
Samantha Juste (left) with Pete Murray on Top of the Pops (BBC TV c.1965)
Born	Sandra Slater May 31, 1944 (1944-05-31) (age 64) Manchester, Lancashire
Other name(s)	Samantha Dolenz
Spouse(s)	Micky Dolenz (1968-1975)

Samantha Juste (born Sandra Slater on 31 May 1944), became widely known on British television in the mid 1960s as the “disc girl” on BBC’s Top of the Pops. In 1968 she married Micky Dolenz of the Monkees. Their daughter is the actress Ami Dolenz.

Contents 1 Background and choice of name 2 Top of the Pops 3 Recording career 4 Micky Dolenz and the Summer of Love 4.1 London and California 4.2 Randy Scouse Git 5 Married life 5.1 Friends and celebrities 6 Divorce and afterwards 6.1 Business interests 7 Notes 8 External links

[edit] Background and choice of name

Sandra Slater was born in Manchester, Lancashire. Her mother Phyllis was an accomplished dressmaker and she herself studied textile and dress design at Rochdale College of Art .

As a “leggy” blonde, Slater became a teenage model, taking the name “Samantha Juste” ^[1].

[edit] Top of the Pops

Top of The Pops was a weekly half-hour programme of current popular music, conceived and produced by Johnnie Stewart (1917-2005). It was first broadcast from a converted church in Manchester on 1 January 1964 and lasted until 2006. Samantha Juste was assistant to Cecil Korer, the programme's assistant producer.^[2]

After taking over from Denise Sampey, who performed the role for the first few programmes, Juste’s prominent function for 3½ years was to sit alongside the host (a role that initially rotated between disc jockeys Jimmy Savile, David Jacobs, Alan Freeman and Pete Murray), to place gramophone records on a turntable and to apply the needle just as the relevant artist or group was about to perform in the studio.^[3] Simon Dee, who first introduced the show in 1966, recalled that “I got my introduction right [and] didn’t get too distracted by the luscious Samantha Juste, my lovely co-host”.^[4]

Some viewers found Juste’s ritual, though obviously for effect, incongruous since the artists were there to perform; however, since they were miming, something about which the BBC made no secret,^[5] there was a certain honesty about the procedure. Indeed, on one occasion, a record by the Swinging Blue Jeans was played at the wrong speed as they were about to perform.^[6]

[edit] Recording career

Juste made a few records of her own. She was one of two British women signed to Strike records (whose first single and only "hit", Neil Christian's That's Nice, was issued in February 1966) and its subsidiary Go. The other was Jacki Bond, a secretary with Strike, who, like Juste, had little or no musical experience.^[7]

Juste performed No One Needs My Love Today, written by Phil Phillips, on Top of the Pops on 24 November 1966. This record was produced by Miki Dallon, the backing music being provided by an orchestra conducted by Ken Woodman, who had worked with Chris Andrews and Sandie Shaw and is probably best known for his recording of Town Talk, which became the theme tune of The Jimmy Young Show when BBC Radio 1 opened in 1967. No One Needs My Love Today was not a commercial "hit", but it was featured as a "climber" by the offshore "pirate" station Radio London in the week beginning 20 November.^[8] One critic has commented that "any vocal shortcomings on this single are outweighed by her charming delivery".^[9] Both No One Needs My Love Today and its "B" side, Pierre Tubbs' If Trees Could Talk, were available on compilation discs and to download forty years later.

[edit] Micky Dolenz and the Summer of Love

During her time on Top of the Pops Juste met most of leading artists who contributed to the British rock boom of the mid 1960s. In January 1967 an American group called the Monkees, which had been formed for an eponymous television series, reached the top of the British sales charts, the basis of the TOTP schedule, with I'm a Believer, a song by Neil Diamond. The Monkees' drummer Micky Dolenz^[10] (b. 1945) recalled that, when he and fellow band member Mike Nesmith made a guest appearance on Top of the Pops, he spotted Juste as he passed a studio cafeteria:

She is tall, blond [sic], beautiful, and wearing an emerald green outfit that ends up in a short skirt (very short) which tops off her unbelievably gorgeous legs ... She hold his glance briefly then looks quickly away with that haughty sophistication that only the British can do so well.^[11]

During the show, on which he and Nesmith were interviewed by Jimmy Savile, Dolenz was, as he put it, "in another world ... He just keeps watching the girl in the green dress as she plays a record, smiles, flirts with the audience, and dances".^[12]

[edit] London and California

Juste and Dolenz began a whirlwind relationship, prompting such headlines in the press as "Samantha traps Monkee" and "Pops girl goes ape".^[13] Dolenz appears not to have realised initially that Juste was a significant celebrity in her own right and so the attendant publicity took him by surprise. In addition, the effect of "Monkeemania" was such that some of the Monkees' female fans resented Juste - "she even showed up one day with ink stains on the emerald green dress" - and Dolenz claimed that the couple spent a whole week in effect holed up in her "trendy" London flat.^[14]

For much of 1967, Juste and Dolenz spent time together alternately in England and California. Rick Klein, a friend of Dolenz and subsequently best man at his wedding, described a vacation with him in England during which Juste acted as their "permanent guide", travelling with them to Shakespeare's birthplace, Stratford-upon-Avon, in a rented Triumph car. Then, a few days later, savouring the atmosphere of "Swinging" London:

Micky and I went to the Carlton Towers to see Samantha Juste in a fashion show and she looked outasite [sic]. After the show, we took off for Carnaby Street again and we went crazy buying clothes ... Micky really dug all the clothes at Biba's and Susan Lockes and practically bought out the stores. He also bought a dress for Samantha. It was the same dress that Sam wore in the fashion show and it looked fantastic on her.^[15]

Juste wrote several articles for the teenage music magazine 16 about time spent with the Monkees.^[16] She eventually gave up her job on Top of the Pops and, at the height of the hippie era, moved with Dolenz to California, where they lived at his home at Laurel Canyon in the Hollywood Hills. In June 1967 they had attended the Monterey pop festival, which ushered in the so-called "Summer of Love", Dolenz being photographed in an Indian headdress:^[17]

Peter Tork [of the Monkees] and Micky turned up at the pop fest in Monterey, Peter acting as one of the emcees [masters of ceremony], Micky wandering around the grounds dressed as an Indian with a lovely British bird, Samantha Juste, at his side.^[18]

[edit] Randy Scouse Git

In the same month as Monterey, the Monkees’ recording of Dolenz’s best known song, "Randy Scouse Git" (whose title derived from a recurring slang phrase in the BBC TV comedy series, Till Death Us Do Part^[19]), was released.^[20] Reaching number two in the British charts,^[21] though not issued as a single in America, it was based on Dolenz's time in England: "The Beatles, Samantha, the parties, the chemicals [i.e. drugs] ... It even has a reference to Mama Cass (Elliot of The Mamas & the Papas) who was in London at the same time".^[22] The opening lines almost certainly referred to Samantha Juste:

She's a wonderful lady

And she's mine all mine

And there doesn't seem a way

That she won't come and lose my mind.

Whether or not Juste was the “girl in yellow dress” to whom it was easy to hum songs, it seems likely, given the apparent intensity of her transatlantic relationship with Dolenz at the time, that she was “the being known as Wonder Girl”:

It's not easy tryin' to tell her

That I shortly have to leave.

[edit] Married life

Juste and Dolenz were married in Laurel Canyon in July 1968.^[23] Dolenz's stepfather Dr Robert Scott officiated at the ceremony. The couple's daughter Ami Bluebell Dolenz, who became a film actress, was born in Burbank in January 1969.^[24]

[edit] Friends and celebrities

Dolenz has recalled the sense of order and sophistication that Juste brought to his home. They hosted a number of large-scale parties that were attended by other musicians and celebrities; Ringo Starr of the Beatles apparently dubbed Juste "Earth Mother" for her having made him a chip butty (a french-fry sandwich) and eggs when he arrived on her doorstep after a "rip-roaring all-nighter".^[25] Their friend, the songwriter Harry Nilsson invited Dolenz and Juste to travel with him to Ireland to lend credibility (in Dolenz's words, "Samantha maybe ... but me?") when he met the parents of a woman whom he thought he might marry.^[26] Juste's father, Leslie Slater, helped Dolenz to construct a home recording studio which was used for "jam" sessions by, among others, John Lennon of the Beatles, Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys and the Dolenzes' neighbour Vince Furnier, who became better known as Alice Cooper.

[edit] Divorce and afterwards

The Monkees had disbanded by the end of the 1960s, and it is clear from Dolenz's own reminiscences that his increasingly self-indulgent and chaotic lifestyle took its toll on his marriage. Juste and Dolenz were divorced in 1975, with Juste retaining custody of their daughter, although they were reconciled as friends by the early 1990s.^[27] In 2002 Juste was photographed with Dolenz at Ami's wedding in Beverly Hills to actor and martial artist Jerry Trimble^[28] and, a few months later, attended Dolenz's own wedding in Calabasas to his third wife Donna Quinter.^[29]

[edit] Business interests

While living in California, Juste began her own fashion business, which she moved to Acapulco, Mexico in 1976. She worked for a time in Ireland, where she taught design, but later returned to California, where she and Ami Dolenz began an on-line jewelery business called Bluebell Boutique.

[edit] Notes

[edit] External links

• Samantha Juste at the Internet Movie Database

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Persondata
NAME	Juste, Samantha
ALTERNATIVE NAMES	Slater, Sandra
SHORT DESCRIPTION	Television personality, singer
DATE OF BIRTH	May 31, 1944
PLACE OF BIRTH	Manchester, Lancashire
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH