Birkenhead to Barrow or The Moving Theatre

If you saw the recent documentary about Freddie Davies on Talking Pictures TV you will have caught a glimpse of his grandfather, the comedian Jack Herbert, walking past a theatre and standing in the auditorium. That footage had been taken from a 1969 TV documentary about Sid Field, a sketch comic revered by Tony Hancock; Jack and Sid had worked together in revue in the 1920s, Sid as juvenile lead and feed to Jack, then an up-and-coming comedian. Sadly, however, there is very little of Jack on film, and the Field programme, part of a Thames TV series called Applause! Applause!, contains almost all there is.

When I was working with Freddie on his autobiography it was assumed that the theatre pictured was the Argyle, Birkenhead, then derelict; there had been no reason to question this overmuch as the source was Jack's half-brother John, but seeing the recent TPTV broadcast I was reminded that there had been a street name by the side of the theatre, and indeed a name running up the building. A quick search of social media put it beyond doubt that the venue was actually Her Majesty's in Barrow in Furness. 

The edition of Applause! Applause! was presumably made around the time of its broadcast; I'm not certain, but I think Her Majesty's, like the Argyle, had become derelict by that time, which might explain how the mistake occurred. 

There is another minor mystery which I haven't yet been able to solve. The Sid Field documentary was shown in two parts but when I obtained a screener for research purposes the DVD only seemed to contain the second programme - or maybe even just a rough assembly. 

The Stage has a review of the first programme and makes the point - which could certainly apply to the second part - that as there is so little film of Field around it was largely a case of bricks without straw, using shots of railway timetables, etc., to pad it out. (A more recent programme about Field presented by David Suchet, who had played the comedian onstage, suffered from the same, perhaps unavoidable, fault, with a particularly pointless scene with Suchet in the chip shop where Field might have celebrated his marriage with a glass of Tizer.)

It may well be, therefore, that there was nothing of any import in the missing Field programme. But at least Freddie's grandad is prominently featured in the follow-up - and having been first transmitted in the days before video records and catch-up, Freddie had never seen it before, so watching it was an emotional experience for him.

The show includes testimony from others that Jack had been a major influence on Sid's act but it's interesting to see how the elderly Jack reacts to the idea that his former colleague pinched some of his mannerisms: although he seems to brush it off, laughing, he appears to be demonstrating them while doing so.

If the name of Jack Herbert is new to you I wrote a piece for the British Music Hall Society magazine the Call Boy about him, which you can find here - and if that whets your appetite you could search out a copy of Freddie's autobiography, Funny Bones, what I cowrote - though one possible consequence of the Talking Pictures screening of the Freddie programme is that secondhand copies, normally cheaply available, appear to have escalated in perceived value. The final chapter is devoted to Jack's life and career, exploring why he didn't become a major star like Sid Field.

I mentioned at the start of this piece that Applause! Applause! included almost all there was of Jack which had been captured on film. When we were working on the book, Freddie told me that Jack and his partner Ruth had been extras in A Journey for Jeremy, a 1940s short about a little boy who literally dreams about being a train driver on the Glasgow to London route. I tried to obtain a copy of this but the one person in a position to help made it clear that for all my talk about the sentimental associations for Freddie in seeing his grandfather again he had no intention of budging ... maybe he thought I was intending to set up a rival series of train talks.

Anyway, there the matter was left ... until a happy discovery a couple of days ago.  

Not expecting anything new, I made yet another of my periodic searches for the film's title online and this time discovered that there was a complete version viewable online on the Huntley Film Archives website, albeit without sound; Jack, and his (personal and theatrical) partner Ruth Beaumont, are glimpsed getting off the train when it finally arrives at a still-arched Euston. The visual quality isn't all that great - it's from a 16mm film - but I was glad that I could let Freddie know about; he'd last seen it many years before in the cinema, as a supporting feature. 

 

Freddie Davies documentary on Talking Pictures TV

If you missed the broadcast yesterday, Martyn Tott's "chatumentary", as he has called it, about Freddie Davies is currently available to watch online on TPTV Encore - for a week, I imagine. You will need to subscribe in order to watch but provided you can tolerate the adverts it's free to watch. 

No leading definitions

 

 A distinction drawn in Radio 4's Today programme between the genres of autobiography and memoir  may be less than wholly convincing - is "a work of literature that is verging on fiction" really an adequate definition of a memoir? - but it did remind me of my feelings when reading the comprehensive 2016 biography of the playwright and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff, best remembered for Journey's End. 

Musical differences: Sven Klang's Combo

 

At last the film Sven Klang's Combo (as it was known on its UK release) is - at the time of writing, anyway - available to watch online here. This is a big deal as when I last checked a few years ago it wasn't possible to buy a DVD with the appropriate subtitles - and it's well worth seeing.  Benny Green reviewed it very warmly in Punch as the most convincing portrayal of a band's interactions he had ever seen on film. 

Of Gospel Groups and Coastal Cottages ...

 

 

When I first heard the Flamingos' doo wop classic Golden Teardrops I was puzzled by the reference to "a cottage by the sea", which seemed an arbitrary place in which to picture the loved one. Did it perhaps signify something to the record's original audience which I had missed?

 ... I'll remember, 
No matter where you'll be -
In a crowded room 
Or a busy street
Or a cottage by the sea  ...

That was around fifty years ago but I didn't think to investigate further - until now.

Kommendable Kinks Kompositions

 

As the Guardian has published a list of the Kinks' 40 greatest songs which omits several of my favourites I've dusted off these notes about some of Raymond Douglas Davies's finest. 

Summer day reflections on two socially distanced Leitch gatherings

Donovan, that seeming child of faerie, recently turned eighty. He is still performing and only a week or two ago on social media trumpetingly denounced as "fake news" the possibility of his retiring. At the time of writing his most recent concert was four days ago, in Cork; another, in Galway, is scheduled for October.

I don't think I'll be buying a ticket should he ever venture to England again, but I'm glad I went to see him a few months ago at Richmond Theatre; it felt like a final farewell to one whose music had once meant a great deal to me.

Settling into my (very comfortable) seat an usher handed me a Donovan CD. Possibly this happened to everybody - I was rather late in arriving, so don't know - but for a moment it felt like a "thank you" from the veteran troubadour himself, a way of acknowledging all the cash I must have thrown his way over the years, though later I did entertain the unworthy thought that his merch people might have been trying to offload copies of the less well-known albums which hadn't attracted many buyers in the foyer.

A few years ago in these pages I described my disappointment at a 2004 Dono-concert at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, the first experience to test my Dono-faith, nevermore to resume residence in my heart with the same ardency. As I finished that piece, I found myself being pulled two ways: he had meant so much, even if he was no longer what he had been. Then, still searching for the precise words with which to tie a ribbon neatly around the experience of those long years of fandom, I noticed that his official site had a link to a live concert in Germany ...

Click.

Your budget stationer's has left its Croydon once for all

 

Danish chain Flying Tiger Copenhagen has been based in Croydon's Whitgift Centre for at least seven years, but its store is now labelled as "permanently closed" on Google Maps. 

[Daily Express, 28 April 2026]

The above news is, as a friend of mine would put it, "A wee shame." Especially as Croydon's Tiger store is not the only branch of  these cheap but inviting stationer's-cum-giftshops to have closed in recent times; I mourn the loss of a North London branch which happily occupied many post-prandial minutes when I was working nearby.

More than a hundred Tiger establishments remain aroar in the UK though it seems that their days might be numbered too: according to a recent report the Flying Tiger company is about to be taken over by the private equity firm which acquired and rebranded WH Smith as TG Jones. That might not be the reprieve it seems: as 150 of those translated Smith's are now at risk of closure that surely doesn't augur well for other acquisitions.

The Croydon branch of Tiger seems to have been particularly popular with its customers, so why did it have to close? According to the Extra London News website it's merely one of many retail casualties, the result of "economic pressures, high business rates, and the post-pandemic e-commerce boom".

True, you can still find shops which stock inexpensive stationery and the sort of small impulse-purchase which Tiger specialises in but for me, at least, they aren't a viable alternative - even if, like Paul Simon, I took (and take) some comfort there. 

The blunt fact is that whatever their consolations most of the correspondingly cheap'n'cheerful emporia lack, or lacked, Tiger's style. Wandering into the branch of Wilkinson's (before its contraction) which was situated upstairs from Tiger in that North London mall I remained in a state of painful sobriety, acutely conscious that I was merely frittering away what remained of my lunch hour by looking through cheap tat. The moment I stepped into Tiger, however, its decor and choice of background music was enough to give me, however fleetingly, a kind of spiritual elevation: with Wilkinson's above me only in the literal sense I felt, for a moment,

little lower than the angels

And - to proceed at last to the point of this post - quite apart from their less inspired surroundings, Tiger's rivals never seem to stock the stationery item which I prize above all else: The Modestly-Priced A5 Unlined Notebook. 

Number One? Ah, that'll be THIS day ...

 

The soundtrack double album for the fifties-set British film That'll Be the Day was number one  on the UK charts today in 1973, or so I have recently been informed on social media. Its featured oldies helped foster a love in me for doo wop and rock'n'roll more generally even though I have never owned a copy. Tracks were played on the radio at the time - Luxembourg as well as Radio 1 - and I still recall the moment I first heard Frankie Lymon hitting a certain note on Why Do Fools Fall in Love.

The modest film, written by Ray Connolly, has endured, probably because it wasn't primarily conceived as a means of shifting records. Quite the reverse, in fact: the soundtrack LP came into being in order to raise the rest of the finance to make the film, as Connolly has said.

[Producer David] Puttnam went to see a small Canadian television marketing company and proposed building our movie around a plethora of old hits they could promote as a tele-marketed compilation album.

They would pump more than £200,000 into an advertising campaign, showing clips from the film, so all we had to do was put together a 40-track soundtrack album of oldies but goldies.

We’d always planned to have some songs in the film, but 40!

Shuttling between Count Arthur Strong's radio and video shows

Although I found Count Arthur Strong's Radio Show on Radio 4 entertaining I had reservations about whether it really worked as a sitcom, as opposed to an extended sketch or "turn". I could see that he belonged to a noble tradition of bumblers but a big part of the pleasure of, say, The Shuttleworths (the original Radio 4 series featuring John Shuttleworth), is the sense it conveys of the constricted world which Graham Fellows' creation inhabits: hospices, garden centres (with their newfangled "campuccinos"), fun runs etc. 

I didn't get a similar sense of a precisely realised setting during the Count's radio outings: such details of his showbiz career as occasionally escaped his lips in those shows seemed vague and fragmentary. Had his showbiz career all been in his mind? If not, just how far had he ascended on the showbiz ladder and what had gone wrong?

Safka's Metamorphosis

 

Today, or hereabouts, marks fifty years since West Country group the Wurzels had a UK Number One with Combine Harvester, their parody of Melanie's Brand New Key, a British hit in 1972. Memory insists, however, that the group originally sang a rather different version in live performance in which their lead singer, rather than boasting of having acquired a large and expensive item of farming machinery, merely declared his possession of a Brand New Pair of Underpants.

Let me say at once that I haven't heard those alternative lyrics for myself but I'm pretty sure that the existence of this ur-Harvester was reported in the music press at the time - or in one paper, at least. But as I used to read most of them and can't be certain of the date of this article, nor how many of those publications might await in digitised form in the British Library or elsewhere, it's not a search I feel particularly eager to begin - and if anyone tells me those yellowing pages haven't yet been scanned and I'll have to turn over page after inky page even to the edge of closing time then fuggedaboutit. 

I speak from experience. Researching a book, I once spent a fruitless day at the former newspaper library in Colindale, leafing through copies of the variety artists' paper The Performer. It was an enjoyable enough activity in one sense, as all sorts of interesting titbits presented themselves along the way, including a joke about the near-miraculous way in which a comedian well-known at the time had saved himself from drowning - "He clawed the d*** pier" - but no trace could be found of the vital piece of information which had been the sole purpose of my quest.

morecambeandwise

 Today, as is readily apparent on social media sites, marks 100 years since Eric Morecambe was born. I don't recall Ernie Wise's centenary making a similar hoo-ha last year, which is a pity: as with the pair's onetime TV guests, the Beatles, there have been many books, articles and documentaries about Morecambe and Wise, and, just as Ringo is given short shrift in some assessments, the role which Ernie played in securing the laughs for the pair often seems to be undervalued, as though Eric was really a solo act. 

Nohow and contrariwise. I don't suppose sculptor Graham Ibbeson had much of a say in it himself but there seems to me to be something fundamentally wrong about a joint tribute to Stan Laurel and Oliver Hardy in Laurel's birthplace, Ulverston, when Eric Morecambe is depicted on his own in the former Eric Bartholomew's home town; even with a pair of binoculars bunged on the statue to indicate interests beyond comedy no one is going to look at it and think: "Wow, that's one ace birdwatcher!"

How's that for serendipity?

 

Just realised that an edition of Serendipity with Sykora can be found online which takes its theme as the month of June, positively demanding comparison with the Maytime episode of the Russell Davies Song Show discussed in the previous post. It's harder to compile an equivalent playlist, however, as Sykora often plays only a brief snatch of music, not the whole record, with artists and even song titles frequently left uncredited. 

With thematically linked quotations from poems, newspapers and other sources added to the mix, the overall effect is more stream-of-consciousness than Russell Davies's May-minded show. Yet it works: Sykora's choices don't seem random because his links do serve to make us feel that the jumble of information is the musing of one man. I'd forgotten just how soft-spoken and intimate his presenting style is, ideally suited to night-time broadcasting, when the mind may be permitted to wander more freely than within the constraints of daytime programming. (My memory is that Serendipity was on late at night though other shows he presented about big bands and the like were early evening.)

The Serendipity show does not consist, as I'd thought, of the Great American Songbook plus a few token novelties but is genuinely wide-ranging, with music from many other countries included. His distinctive voice and avuncular manner make it feel all of a piece but it's less formally educational than Russell Davies's programme - not that Mr Davies is formal in manner, merely that the narrower scope of his musical choices inevitably teaches you a lot about that golden period of American songwriting between the twenties and fifties in particular, whereas the experience for the listener to a Serendipity programme is more like falling into a kind of dreamy pinball game, rapidly (but not violently) shot from one musical or literary idea to another.

May-minded

 

Today is the first of May, which reminds me of the much-missed Russell Davies Song Show. I once tried to analyse a episode broadcast around this time of year, hoping to find pointers for making a podcast equivalent of this blog. I didn't get much farther than buying a microphone before the madness wore off (there really ought to be a proverbial phrase advising caution about purchases made during this month) but the exercise did give me a keener appreciation of the craft involved in preparing an hour of radio which doesn't sound slung together.

Like his predecessor on Radio 2, Benny Green, who had created the blueprint, Russell Davies's focus in his show was on the Great American Songbook, drawing the listener's attention to forgotten or neglected numbers awaiting within that capacious tome, making surprising connections between songs and celebrating felicitous lyrics. 

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.