May-minded

 

Today is the first of May, which reminds me of an edition of the Russell Davies Song Show. Mr Davies is still gainfully employed by BBC Radio in another role but I miss the particular pleasures and illuminations offered by that series, axed in 2013.

I was so taken with it that I once tried to analyse an episode, hoping to find pointers for creating a podcast equivalent of this blog. I didn't get much farther than buying a microphone before the madness wore off but the exercise wasn't entirely a wasted one as it gave me a keener appreciation of the craft involved in preparing an hour of radio which doesn't sound slung together.

80@80 (Spencer Leigh autobiography)

 

 

I have just finished reading Spencer Leigh's autobiography 80@80: A Liverpool Life in 80 Chapters, which was published in February last year, and can warmly recommend it. As the title suggests it has eighty chapters to tie in with its venerable author reaching the milestone of his eightieth year, despite the still-boyish features displayed on the cover. (How does he do it?)

A thoroughly enjoyable read from start to finish for the musically inclined, it covers a wide range of genres, as you'd expect from his show On the Beat, a former fixture on Radio Merseyside, but there is much else besides. I didn't realise, for instance, that broadcasting and writing about music had been, in effect, merely a hobby for him until the mid-1990s and that for over thirty years he had a day job as an actuary - and appears to have been efficient and well-respected in that entirely different field too. 

No Off Switch: of Andy Kershaw and others

  I was sorry to hear of Andy Kershaw's death.  As he presented programmes on BBC Radios 1, 3 and 4 there will almost certainly be a tribute to him on one station or another in the coming days but in the meantime I can recommend his very entertaining, full-throttle autobiography, aptly entitled No Off Switch. It's mentioned in the reposted piece below, written in 2012:

Rock & Roll Man (musical about Alan Freed)

On Saturday I went to see Rock & Roll Man, an agreeable musical about Alan Freed, at the Cambridge Arts Theatre; this week it's playing at the Lighthouse arts centre in Poole, and if you are within reach it's worth a visit. As far as I know that will be the end of the production's short UK tour though it deserves a longer life. The show had a three-month Off-Broadway run in 2023; this British production has retained Constantine Maroulis as Freed, and the passion and conviction which he brings to the role are a big part of its success.

Neil Brand's radio play Stan repeated today on Radio 4 Extra

 

Not to be confused with a later television adaptation, Stan, Neil Brand's 2004 radio play about Stan Laurel, has just been broadcast again on Radio 4 Extra and will be available on BBC iPlayer for the next thirty days. Stan, the radio drama, is very good indeed and a natural for the medium; the TV version doesn't simply add visuals but has been considerably reworked: we see scenes from the pair's past rather than their simply being recounted by the elderly Stan. Nothing wrong with that, but the intimacy of the radio play, and in particular that feeling of luck and privilege in being magically present, unseen, at the last meeting of these two great clowns is diluted.

Crying My Heart Out For You: the flop which made Sedaka a hitmaker

 

Crying My Heart Out For You is one of my favourite Neil Sedaka songs. It's not wildly original, and was not a hit in the US or UK when it first came out - Italy is the only country which seems to have warmed to it - but for me the anguished wails which bookend this simple tale of love lost make the recording.

His later songs might have become more artful but Sedaka retained his love of doo wop. In 1993 he took part in a live radio broadcast hosted by the DJ Cousin Brucie and was so taken with the superb acapella group 14 Karat Soul, also appearing, that he sang a few impromptu numbers with them, including Earth Angel. These are understandably less than perfect - "I goofed it, I goofed it!" as he shouts when he messes up a couple of lines on the Penguins' classic - but there is obvious love and enthusiasm in the performance. 

Leaves off Snodgrass (after posting the following supplementary observations)

 

If you've read the earlier post about alternative Beatles histories, here are more thoughts about Snodgrass, the short story by Ian R. McLeod which imagines the group achieving success without John Lennon.

 In that earlier piece I had been relying on my memories of the original story and the film adaptation (above, with Ian Hart as Lennon); since then I have reacquainted myself with both, and it's interesting to note the differences between the two.

The Fabulous Beatles - literally

Listening the other day to Ray Connolly being interviewed by Tim Haigh on BooksPodcast about his novella "Sorry, Boys, You Failed The Audition", I remembered that it is well worth reading. There have been earlier attempts to evoke the Beatles in imaginative ways, some of which I'll discuss below, but Connolly has the distinct advantage of having known the group well, especially John Lennon - he's also written a biography of Lennon and, according to the critic Philip French, the protagonist played by David Essex in Connolly's film That'll Be the Day was based in part on John. (I haven't seen this claim made by anyone else but Jim McLaine's relationship with his mother does seems to resemble that between Lennon and his stern-but-loving Aunt Mimi.) 

Sans Everything

In 2019 I wrote a piece about a 78 rpm record which I'd picked up at a jumble sale or record fair in Glasgow in 1975 or 1976. The disc was credited to the Harry Donaldson Orchestra, the vocalist one Sanky Franks. The side I preferred began with a voice - Donaldson? The producer? - advising: "Hey Sanky, try to get a kick out of it!" - and as far as I'm concerned he did. 

When I left the family home I foolishly left the record behind, along with a lot of other stuff;  some years later a massive clearout which I only learnt about after the deed had been done meant that letters, books, music and even the odd piece of art vanished forever.

Yes, yes, I'd been foolish to assume that a little corner of the family home would remain forever mine but it was a painful lesson and that erasure of memories, or at least the precious objects triggering so many memories, remains a hard blow. 

This may help to explain why it felt important to find out whatever I could about that record, which isn't listed on discogs or other online sites. I didn't dream it into being, and I wanted to hear it again if I could, or at least find out as much as I could about it, to make it substantial, solid again, one thing retrieved from oblivion.

Farewell, My Lady Nickerteen

 

D.J. Taylor, who celebrated the songs of Allan Smethurst, AKA the Singing Postman, in a 2010 radio documentary, announced today on social media that the troubadour's muse Molly Bayfield (the Molly Windley who "smokes like a chimbley" in his most famous song) had  died. 

Smethurst's songs have considerable charm although the simpler world he describes seems so remote now that for a moment it seemed astonishing to think that the woman who inspired his most famous number had still been around for the first quarter of the 21st century.

A BBC News article by Laura Devlin describes the day, momentous only in retrospect, when Smethurst visited his old schoolfriends, Albert Bayfield, and his wife, Molly, in the seaside village of Mundesley, on the North Norfolk coast:

Uncalled-for review

 When the late Eric Midwinter submitted a review of the Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull on spec to The Call Boy, the magazine of the British Music Hall Society, it wasn't accepted for publication, so far as I know - because Thackray's songs are more aligned with music hall as the French understand the term, perhaps? A friend of the singer, Ian Watson, once wrote that "the UK does not have the sort of music-halls that you find in Paris, dedicated to a long tradition of popular, serious song."

Whatever the reason, it deserves an audience.

"Plus a Twistin' New Year as standard ... non-negotiable!"

 Christmas just wouldn't be Christmas without this blog's annual cursory nod to the season, so here are some Christmassy doo wop sides, some of which have been posted here before, some not.  You can find some of them on Christmas Past, a compilation of Christmas-related songs from "the Roulette family of labels" released by the now-defunct UK company Westside, which reissued quite a lot of doo wop and is worth investigating on disogs or wherever you buy your music. This collection isn't limited to doo wop but does include some choice items.

 

Here's Harry ...

 

 

It may be a name which springs less readily to mind these days, but in the 1960s Harry Worth was a major TV comic with a genial, bumbling persona, forever confounding petty officialdom. 

If that suggests a touch of Tony Hancock, however, nohow and contrariwise: Worth had none of Hancock's pomposity or aggression. Like Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot he was entirely guileless, an innocent who never seemed out to cause the trouble which invariably happened when he was around. The cause was his circumlocutory way of putting things which would inevitably tie the listener in knots, governed as it was by a logic comprehensible to no one except the mild and agreeable speaker himself. (Arthur Haynes was perhaps more closely linked to Hancock, and has been described as ITV's answer to Hancock, though Haynes's tramp character was several notches down from Hancock's TV persona socially.)

Terry Johnson

 For those not already aware of the sad news, Terry Johnson, the last surviving member of the Flamingos, died yesterday in Las Vegas at the age of 86 - "performing to the end", Marv Goldberg says. He can be seen above (with guitar) on the cover of Flamingos Serenade, the 1959 album of standards which includes his arrangement of I Only Have Eyes For You, the Al Dubin-Harry Warren film song which finally gave the group the crossover success they'd been seeking. 

Terry Johnson was not an original member of the Flamingos but had a vision, when he first saw them perform in October 1956:  "I saw a glow of light around them and I saw myself with them." He auditioned the day after this mystical experience and was invited to join on Christmas Eve. 

Notes on the Finborough production of The Truth About Blayds by A.A. Milne

 

When I wrote about this play's imminent revival at the Finborough Theatre a few weeks ago I hoped for the best but wasn't sure what to expect. Would there be the appropriate balance of seriousness and comedy in the playing? Would contemporary theatregoers take this example of Milne's adult work to their hearts as readily as audiences of a hundred years ago, weaned on his pieces in Punch magazine?

Lloyd Price musical coming to London

 

If you are able to get to London's Royal Festival Hall there will be two performances of a new musical about R&B/rock'n'roll pioneer Lloyd Price on Saturday 11th October.

 Audio of an extensive 2005 interview with Price can be found on Matt the Cat's site here, but for all the undoubted importance of Lawdy Miss Clawdy to the development of rock'n'roll (none of which seems lost on Price himself in that interview) Daniel Wolff's biography of Sam Cooke suggests that the recording was actually part of an ongoing process for Specialty Records owner Art Rupe, and that he'd already been experimenting with accentuating the beat on gospel recordings:

A.A. Milne Part 4 (Sarah Simple)

 

As with A.A. Milne's first novel (of sorts), Lovers in London, the mere fact of this play, Sarah Simple, being available again is welcome news. It's not included in the various collections which still crop up in secondhand bookshops, and I'd been searching for a copy for quite some time. Before the publication of Anne Thwaite's biography of Milne I had only come across a single mention of it, in a history of theatre published in the 1930s. 

In praise of Rock & Roll Graffiti (1999) again

  

If, like me, you've been tantalised by the many clips on youtube of a TV show entitled Rock & Roll Graffiti, the good news is that most of that show, hitherto available only as an expensive DVD box set, can now be obtained on two reasonably priced 3 disc sets; I'm based in the UK and ordered them from America for around £14 each around ten years ago though you will need to round that up to £20 or thereabouts now. These are the covers to look for:

Unvarnished Soul: Sonny Til

 

 Today marks the centenary of the pioneering doo wop/R&B singer Sonny Til, lead singer of the Orioles. They are perhaps best known for Crying in the Chapel (1953) but here's the story of how the group came to record It's Too Soon to Know, now widely regarded as the first doo wop record, in 1948.

The sharpest blades: C.S. Calverley and A.A. Milne

 

The poet who features in A.A. Milne's play The Truth About Blayds, soon to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London, may have been Milne's own creation - but he did pinch the name. If J.M. Barrie was Milne's main inspiration for playwriting the Victorian author C.S. Calverley was the man whose light verse he had sought, from his earliest days, to emulate. That's "light verse" as distinct from poetry proper: for Milne that meant the serious application of his craft to the lightest of trifles, and he had little time for the less punctilious efforts of others in the field.

Also admired by Lewis Carroll - they had even considered collaborating - Calverley wrote poems which were comical, often parodic, mocking the cliches employed by other poets or - as in this example - songwriters: 

A.A. Milne's The Truth About Blayds to be revived

 

A.A. Milne's 1921 play The Truth About Blayds is about to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London. This is good news as Milne's plays for adults are rarely produced these days. William Gaunt is playing the Blayds of the title, an elderly, much-revered, poet; having played King Lear as well as sitcom patriarchs he ought to have the necessary gravitas.  

"Like an HM Bateman cartoon. Only with budgies."

 

Today marks 61 years since comedian Freddie Davies's debut on TV talent show Opportunity Knocks - and eleven since the publication of his autobiography Funny Bones, which tells the story of that life-changing experience.

New Jake Thackray book to be published in August

 

 

I have just learnt from Paul Thompson, cowriter of the excellent Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull, that a collection of Thackray's prose will be published by Scratching Shed on 1st August. As the title, The Unsung Writer, suggests, this will offer readers a chance to explore the full scope of his writing and perhaps get a deeper sense of his character than is possible through those artfully constructed songs - or another side of his character, at least.

Skylark

When I think of the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer song Skylark it's an unlikely recording which first springs to mind. Memory had insisted that it was acapella, which turned out to be wrong when I heard it again recently after a gap of about fifty years.

New edition of Rebel Rebel about to be published

 

For those who don't own a copy of the original edition - and even for those who do - the first volume of Chris O'Leary's excellent song-by-song Bowie study is about to be published in a considerably revised and expanded version, as depicted above.  

Lost Tapes: One

I freely admit that I haven't researched this meticulously but it seems to me that, more and more, any new TV documentaries which revisit the familiar tale of some much-loved comedian or double act seek to entice viewers by incorporating the words "The Lost Tapes" or "The Unseen Tapes" into the programme's title. 

More often than not this turns out to be misleading, to put it politely. Even if the tapes for some old show have not been seen for a while on telly they are often easy enough to find online. And in the rare cases where something unxpected has been unearthed we may be presented with no more than a few slivers of fresh material, the rest of the programme padded out with the usual well-worn anecdotes so the makers can get an hour out of it, frustrating though such superfatted displays may be for aficiandos.

Having got the above off my chest, rest assured I will not be talking in this post about batons left in Chicago or other reheated dishes. This is the first of a series about genuinely lost tapes which have some personal significance for me.

The first is a cassette of poor quality; the brand name was Crescendo. At some point, maybe in 1972, I put together a sketch and music show of sorts on tape, with almost no effort on my part, in order to entertain a friend (but mainly, I suppose, myself). I had the Bonzos' Doughnut in Granny's Greenhouse, which I owned, and a Davy Graham LP I happened to have borrowed from the library, among other materials; I read random bits of literature, accompanied by some Eastern Graham piece, and I improvised a sketch making use of Neil Innes' song Beautiful Zelda.

Walking With Wilson

 

Hearing of Brian Wilson's death yesterday my immediate thought was of the duophonic cassette of Pet Sounds which had been my regular companion on late-night walks in the early eighties, slotted into one of the bulky Walkmans of the day. Water was an integral part of the scene - not a surf-tormented shore but a loch, centrepiece of the local country park, which I would circle.  

Doc Pomus and Mort Shuman documentary and books

 

I have just watched AKA Doc Pomus, a documentary about the songwriter best known for his partnership with Mort Shuman in the late 50s and early 60s. The mix of images, interviews and the obvious taking of pains has resulted in a compelling and satisfying account which feels like the last word: we see, for example, not only footage of Pomus's wedding but also the song ideas he scrawled on the backs of unused wedding invites - including the one which was to result in Save The Last Dance For Me, one of Ben E King's finest moments as well as its writers'.

Tweet in store as Blackpool Show goes legit

I have just learnt that the 1966 episode of The Blackpool Show featuring Freddie "Parrotface" Davies at the height of his fame can be found on a newly released Blu-ray edition of The Punch and Judy Man; Tony Hancock is hosting the show, hence its inclusion.

As far as I am aware this is the first legitimate release of this programme, the only one which survives of the series; Bob Monkhouse also appears, so possibly the recording originated from his famously extensive collection. 

Cheapo Cheapo resurrected for Black Friday?

This almost defies belief, and I'm still not sure whether it's just an elaborate wind-up, but according to the information I have been given the much-missed Cheapo Cheapo Records of Rupert Street, Soho, will be resurrected, or regenerated, or what you will, for "a month and a day", starting on Black Friday (November 29th).

Forever Doo-wop: review of book by Cadillacs' backing musician

 

For those who might be interested in a book about doo wop which is more than just a history of the changing personnel of a group or groups, let me draw your attention to John Michael Runowicz's Forever Doo-wop, published in 2010. It examines how the music is perceived by different sides: the largely white audience who pay to see live acts; the increasingly elderly singers, still making a living from serving up their past - significantly fewer in number now in 2024, of course - and those in the middle who promote and make money from the enterprise.

A Distant Signal: Scott Walker

 

Scott Walker died five years ago today, the 22nd of March. I first heard about it on Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of the 25th and immediately sat down to write the following.

 The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, as recorded by the Walker Brothers, is one of those rare non-Beatles songs remembered from childhood before I became any kind of conscious music fan (the Beatles, part of a fraternal bond, were obligatory). But even when I started buying records, for a long time I didn't have - didn't want - a copy of it in any form, fearful of holding the experience up to the light. This went beyond stereo/mono snobbery or any notion of good taste or coolness: for me the magic was in the memory of the warmth and fuzziness of first hearing it on a medium wave radio in another room in another house.

New Peter Skellern CD on kickstarter - pledge by March 8th

 

For those who might be interested, Richard Moore, who has already put together two comprehensive collections of Peter Skellern's recordings, thus rescuing Skellernites or Skellernatics like me from the frustration of earlier random collections, is doing it once more for Happy Endings,  the album of the TV series for which Skellern wrote the songs and in which he appeared.

Outrageous: new book by Kliph Nesteroff

 

Kliph Nesteroff is the author of the book The Comedians,  a gossipy, scandalous, irresistibly written history of the underside of the development of American stand-up comedy. But although you get all sorts of juicy details along the way (the Mafia figure prominently) it does also provide an excellent overview of how the form evolved in America and is hugely enjoyable. His new book, Outrageous, overlaps to some extent, as comedians feature prominently, but its focus is on the culture wars in the US - far from a recent phenomenon, as Mr Nesteroff reveals. He starts in the 1800s with a discussion about blackface, and the many protests by successive immigrant groups - Irish, Jewish, Italian, among others - to stereotypical depictions by comics. The long-running Amos 'n' Andy radio show had two white performers playing black characters whose personae had been stolen from two black performers, who were never remibursed; when, much later, it moved to TV there were black actors surrounding the two stars, and despite protests from the NAACP those actors defended the show on the grounds that without such programmes, demeaning as they were, there'd be no work for them at all.

Waterloo Sunset excerpt

 

I must have been eight years old when I first heard Waterloo Sunset, in the year of its release, and - like just about everyone else in the world - realised it was something special.

New play about Thomas Hardy on in London until Saturday 2nd December

My recommendation comes rather late, but if you are based in London and interested in the relationship between Thomas Hardy and his wives I can recommend the play What I Think of My Husband by David Pinner, running at the Grey Goose Theatre in Camberwell until Saturday, 2nd December. 

Merely Players? Pah!

  

 

There is, or so I've been given to understand, One who has numbered all my days.

Despite the occasional pointer in the form of various aches and pains, however, no clear indication of the date of my last go-round has been vouchsafed to me as yet. 

Which is a bit annoying, though not because I'm desperate to husband such energies as remain in order to produce one final creative flourish before gasping my last or anything like that.

Permit me to explain. 

Pennies From Heaven Revisited

 

 Someone mentioned on social media recently that Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven has not been broadcast or made available via streaming services for quite a few years. To be clear, that's the original 1978 TV series about a naive and optimistic songsheet salesman (Bob Hoskins), using 30s and 40s recordings to which actors mime, not the US film adaptation. In the book Potter on Potter the writer told Graham Fuller his thoughts about the latter:

The G-Clefs as seen by a backing musician

Before I review another book about the experience of being a backing musician for a doo wop group I thought I'd repost this assessment of Michael G. Devlin's account of working with the G-Clefs of I Understand and Ka-Ding-Dong fame. I've corrected a few of my own typos - so much for my criticism of his style - but otherwise left the piece much as it was.

 
It has to be said at the outset that this is not, in the technical sense, a well written book: there are  grammatical errors or infelicities which mean you occasionally have to rewrite a sentence in your head to make sense of it - and don't get me started on the apostrophes. Was there really no one to cast an incisive eye over musician Mike Devlin's MS before it was shared with the world?

The Iceman Writeth

 

If you're reading this blog then you will probably know that Jerry Butler was a member of the Impressions, a doo wop/soul group which also featured his childhood friend Curtis Mayfield. For Your Precious Love, which Butler cowrote and sang lead on, was a meld of doo wop and gospel which sounded as though it had been recorded in a cathedral; it was a big hit on Vee-Jay Records in 1958 and is now regarded as a doo wop classic. 

B̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ B̶o̶y̶s̶ Cheapo Cheapo: Very Complete

In 2018 I wrote a piece for this blog entitled "Cheapo Cheapo Records - The Complete Story". It was a reworking of several earlier posts about coming to terms with the closure of the Soho record shop which I'd been frequenting for 24 years.

Those original posts were more discursive, and a fair amount of pruning and reworking went into the rewrite, which can be read here. 

That'd be the sensible choice. But if you're an idler who fancies the scenic route consider me your enabler, as I've assembled the unedited posts together below.

Novel by Angela Milne republished

Every so often over the years, more in hope than expectation, I've trawled the internet in search of a copy of One Year's Time, a rare novel by Angela Milne, niece of A.A. Milne. I first came across it in the National Library of Scotland in the mid-eighties when researching the plays of her uncle; like him, she had worked for Punch and had a light and appealing prose style. 

Jeffrey Holland as Stan Laurel back at the Edinburgh Fringe (2023)

 

For readers who might be visiting the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Jeffrey Holland is currently appearing again in Gail Louw's play ... And This Is My Friend Mr Laurel at the Pleasance Courtyard Upstairs at 11.20am, most days from 2nd August onwards. Tickets can be bought from the Fringe website here.

Here are my notes about the show from its 2016 London run:

New book by Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers (review to follow)

 

Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers has just published the first part of a two-volume autobiography. As  the first memoir written by a member of this pioneering group, this is a significant publication; I will add a review here shortly. You can buy an autographed copy direct from Pearly Gates Publishing here, although the cheaper option in the UK seems to be to buy from a certain well-known online shop. On its facebook page the company states that "Pearly Gates publishes and promotes Christian literature by authors who empower, inspire, and educate".

Sound It Out (BBC 4 record shop documentary)

 

I've just learnt that Tom Bouchart, owner of the Stockton record shop Sound It Out, has died, so I'm reposting this 2012 review of Jeanie Finlay's documentary about the store.

I commend unto you Sound It Out, a documentary about an independent record shop in Teesside. It was broadcast on BBC 4 yesterday, and will be repeated on Monday, and available on BBC iplayer here for the next six days. Nothing earth-shattering about it, really, just a warm and sympathetic look at the owner, the assistants, and a handful of the customers, but that's a plenty for me - and, it seems, many others.

That'll Be the Day - fifty years on

 

 

Incredible though it sounds, it is now the fiftieth anniversary of the film That'll Be The Day. I have never owned a copy of the soundtrack album, although its songs had a profound effect on my musical tastes, igniting my love of doo wop and rock'n'roll.

I Say a Little Prayer

 

 

Like many other people, the recent news of Burt Bacharach's death sent me to youtube to remind myself of his achievements. And the thing which particularly caught my eye was a clip of a studio rehearsal before Dionne Warwick's original recording of I Say a Little Prayer. 

Nolly (review of new drama about Noele Gordon)

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I have just finished watching Nolly, the new three-part ITV drama about Noele Gordon's sacking from the longrunning soap opera Crossroads, and was pleasantly surprised: the series seems very well judged, executed with a lightness of touch yet never dismissive of its subject, unlike - or so it seemed to me - the recent ITV drama about absconding politician John Stonehouse.

John Lennon

 

 

To mark the 42nd  anniversary of John Lennon's death, extracts from two earlier posts, both written in 2010. Links to the full versions can be found at the end. 

Jerry Lee Lewis

 

It has now been confirmed that Jerry Lee Lewis has died. 

There can't be any doubt that he was the last of the true greats from the golden age of rock'n'roll; I can still recall the excitement of first hearing Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On, different from the frenzy of Little Richard's recordings but every bit as potent. In The Sound of the City Charlie Gillett had especial praise for his ability to sing, as it were, in inverted commas, never wholly abandoned like Richard but "almost always" with "an edge of detachment or even cynical derision", as though not quite buying into this "love" business:

 This detachment enabled Lewis to pace his records, and control his audiences at live performances, with a finesse few rock'n'roll singers showed. He would have needed only Chuck Berry's flair for writing songs to be a comparably important figure.