Darryl Sambell

Darryl Lloyd Sambell (26 November 194519 September 2001) was an Australian accountant, talent manager and music promoter from the mid-1960s.

In 1967 Samball established the "Australian Musicians Booking Organisation" (AMBO), with fellow talent agents, Gary Spry and Jeff Joseph, to act as a music promoter for their artists.

He initially managed Bev Harrell, The Masters Apprentices in 1968–69 as well as Zoot. His longest lasting management relationship was with teen pop idol, Johnny Farnham, for the early part of Farnham's career from 1967 until 1976,

Sambell, a heavy smoker, was diagnosed with lung cancer in early 2001. He died of the disease later that year, aged 55.

Biography

Sambell was born on 26 November 1945 to Ivy Irene ( Haynes, 1913–2011) and Donald George Sambell (1918-1984). He grew up in Gawler, South Australia with an older brother and two younger sisters. By the early 1960s he was an accountant for a concreting business in Adelaide.

In 1965 Sambell started managing Bev Harrell. The singer briefly joined Adelaide-based pop-rockers, the Clefs in 1966 as co-lead vocalist. In April 1967 Sambell was in Cohuna, Victoria to see Harrell perform at a dance when they heard her support act Melbourne band "Strings Unlimited" Farnham's early solo performances were in Adelaide, but soon Sambell relocated to Melbourne. In January of the following year it peaked at No. 1 on Go-Set National Top 40 for five weeks.

In Go-Set in January 1968, Farnham described Sambell, "My manager is pretty good to me. He irons my clothes, washes them, too. Packs all my cases and carries all 27 of them." Farnham's father had initiated legal proceedings when his accountant had checked his son's financial records. According to Duncan Kimball of Milesago website, "it turned out to be a mixed blessing. He was a master networker and great at getting publicity... He was also a partner in the newly-formed AMBO booking agency... this proved very helpful for concert bookings. But in the long run Sambell was more interested in promoting Farnham's career... Sambell's pop tastes were also were at odds with the developing progressive direction of the Masters' music." Sambell had already worked with Zoot in Adelaide in 1965 when they were known as Down the Line and had used them as a backing band for Harrell's early performances. Sambell was Farnham's best man at his wedding to Jillian Billman, a former musical theatre dancer, in April 1973. Sambell disapproved of the wedding: Australian music critic, Ed Nimmervoll, opined, "it's a symbol of just how out of touch Sambell had become with Farnham's needs personally as well as professionally." Sambell later managed cricketer, Martin Crowe, and continued the involvement in the horse racing industry which dated back to his time with Farnham - the two owned a horse named Seascape - including an interest in Bonecrusher.