When Hampshire-born blues star Paul Jones and his fellow Manfreds steps on the Concorde stage he will be marking a pop milestone.

For this year marks the 60 th anniversary of ‘Do Wah Diddy Diddy’, one of the most popular and instantly recognisable songs of the ‘60’s, and still the biggest audience pleaser at Manfred concerts.

Manfred Mann, as the band were called in those days, topped the charts in 1964 with Do-Wah-Diddy. Released on July 10 1964 it spent two weeks at No. 1 in the UK singles chart in August and two weeks at No. 1 of the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 in October.

Do Wah Diddy Diddy was written by Jeff Barry and Ellie Greenwich and originally recorded in 1963, as "Do-Wah-Diddy", by the American vocal group the Exciters.

But it was the British R&B, beat and pop band that put it on the global map and it is bound to be high on the playlist when The Manfreds return to Eastleigh's Concorde Club on April 26 following a hugely successful tour celebrating the band's own 60 th anniversary.

Daily Echo: R&B session at the Concorde Club in the sisties featuring Manfred Mann who where the resident band.

The Concorde Club which started life at the old Bassett Hotel is the spiritual home of The Manfreds and it's where it all began when as Manfred Mann they were club's resident house band.

They first took the pop world by storm with an infectious little number called 5-4-3-2-1 which was countdown to stardom. It soared into the charts when they were the resident band at The Concorde which in the early sixties was squeezed into the backroom of the Bassett Hotel in Burgess Road.

The Concorde was the launch pad for the 60s success story which gave the band, including local lads – Portsmouth-born Paul Jones, Mike Hugg, from Gosport and Mike Vickers, a former pupil at King Edward V1 School, Southampton - 15 UK top 20 singles and mega hits on both sides of the Atlantic.

Paul, lead singer and harmonica player, has fond memories of performing in those early Concorde days, describing it as a red hot experience because there was nothing remotely resembling air conditioning.

He said: “I do remember the enthusiasm of the people who were in the audience.”

Daily Echo: Interview with the Manfreds at the Concorde Club for weekend magazine - lead singer Paul Jones (left) with Mike Hugg (right).

Paul will always be grateful for The Concorde for giving them their first break and said: “We were still playing there when we had 5-4-3-2-1 and Hubble Bubble. I don't think we gave up the residency until we had Do-Wah-Diddy. After that it was enormous.”

Concorde boss Cole Mathieson recalls that in the club's Bassett Hotel days, clubbers queued around the corner to catch Manfred Mann.

He said: “To this day I have rarely seen as much excitement as generated by the Manfred Mann band. It was Southampton's equivalent of Beatlemania.”

And the Manfred mania and the electric atmosphere of Southampton's 1960's music scene was captured in a rare film which was discovered on the other side of The Atlantic after a painstaking 50 year search.

Cole had almost given up hope of finding the footage of the club's rhythm and blues session led by Manfred Mann who went on to become one of the super groups of the decade.

Daily Echo: The Bassett Hotel, once home to the Concorde Club..

The incredible discovery was made in a treasure trove of more than 100 hours of classic British TV drama and documentaries which film historians feared had been wiped out.

A chance find by an American television researcher at the Library Congress in Washington DC uncovered an amazing collection of previously lost British television.

Manfred Mann had been filmed by Southern Television's (forerunner of Meridian ) teatime programme, Day By Day when the band were on the verge of the big time.

Cole had been trying to get hold of the film ever since it was made and explained : “It was made on 16 mm film reel and there was no video so we thought it might have been deleted. I was absolutely delighted that after all those years we found it.”

It was a Concorde member who alerted Cole to the British Film Institute's (BFI) Missing Believed Wipe presentation, documenting lost clips of more than 65 unique recordings of British television.

Daily Echo: Manfred Mann playing at the Concorde Club in 1963, part of a recently discovered film of the band. The crowd..

The Concorde boss went to BFI's London headquarters for a screening of the lost Concorde film.

It was through Mike Hugg, an original member of Manfred Mann, that Cole managed to get a copy which now has pride of place in the club's archives.

The fast moving film captures the red hot atmosphere of Concorde's Bassett Hotel days when lead singer Paul Jones and his bandmates raised the roof and whipped up a R 'n' B frenzy in the packed club.

Cole recalled : “Every inch of the dance floor was taken.”

More pop history will be recorded on April 26 when The Manfreds return to the Stoneham Lane club for a 60th anniversary airing of Do-Wah-Diddy and set the scene for another rousing sixties style singalong.