Pismotality: 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.

Beware of the Bull: The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray

by Eric Midwinter

I have hitherto surmised in these meritorious pages that decent biographies come in two sizes. One is the full-scale, no holds barred life story in elaborate detail, offering a complete and informative coverage. The other is the shorter, sharper text, which captures the very essence of the subject, be it performer, politician or other personality, something akin to a revealing painted portrait. Paul Thompson and John Watterson opt expertly for the encyclopaedic rather than the essential, and they do so with sedulous resolve in a remarkable feat of in depth research. Jake Thackray’s life and work may be followed year by year, sometimes week by week, and there are some 80 pages of end material to reinforce their work. No one needs to do this again: it will act as the standard compilation for Jake Thackray for a generation.

The general reader will probably recall Jake Thackray in his lively television forays round about the 1970s in Braden’s Week or Esther Rantzen’s That’s Life. The clever brightness and delivery of his freshly minted topical songs, accompanied by his guitar, were well-received. There was quite a clutch of smart and amusing folk songsters in those later decades of the 20th century. Richard Stilgoe springs to mind, while, more on the wholly comedic side, there were the likes of Mike Harding, Jasper Carrott and early Billy Connolly. What this carefully crafted biography urges is that, for the dedicated circle of adherents of this genre, Jake Thackray was a most highly esteemed artist, especially perhaps in the intricate delights of the ninety or so lyrics he wrote. He himself idolised the French master of chanson, Georges Brassens, although, later in his career, he came to recognise Noel Coward as a star in the lyrical galaxy. For many years, then, Jake Thackray, was adored and welcomed by knowledgeable gatherings in pubs and clubs.

Jake Thackray, born and bred in Leeds, rather reluctantly gave up his teaching post to turn professional – and that reluctance was never quite overcome. Fiercely self-critical and abnormally nervous about performing, he shied away from success, disdainful of the appendages of celebrity. He much preferred, to the evident dismay of his agents, the snug parlour with a handful of listeners to the much more profitable expanses of the large concert hall. As the years drew nigh, he became more unreliable and, whilst regaining some ground as a newspaper columnist, his later years were marred by a broken marriage and something close to penury.

The authors do well to outline, with kindly sympathy, the mixture of his somewhat convoluted psychology. His simple Socialism and what might be described as his field-Catholicism made him, it appears, suspicious of both the hierarchies as well as the gimcrack wrappings of show business. However, possibly the most compelling clue is his alcoholism and self-denial of it. All in all, it makes for an intriguing story of a very special artist, a story at once uplifting and yet sad.

I worked with Eric a few years ago on a ghosted showbiz autobiography which has yet to be published. It was a very happy experience, particularly the conversations we had about comedy on the train journeys to and from our subject's home. We kept in touch and I later sent him a copy of the Thackray book in the hope that a review by him might help spread the word.

A link to my own notes about the book can be found below, along with some other Thackray-related posts. The first one is the most personal and includes an account of an unfortunate encounter with the man himself in his later years; had the information in the book been published by then I wouldn't have dared approach him to praise his appearances on a show he particularly disliked.

Before you click onwards, a musical interlude. Country Girl, from the LP Jake's Progress, is one of my favourite Thackray songs. It's both lyrical and bawdy, the two sides of his writing achieving a perfect balance. I don't know whether it ever got an outing on Braden though I can't imagine it would have set a BBC studio audience a-chortle, though it celebrates sex as the more obviously comic songs do, and bears out his friend Colin Evans's claim that sexuality in Thackray songs is a metaphor for the life force: without the prospect of a "good-looking boyo" what would life hold for the country girl?

One line is enough to illustrate the confinement of her existence, especially if you can hear the tenderness of the guitar accompaniment at that moment:

Dressed in her very best clothes that she chose from a catalogue.

It's also a memorable performance, which sounds like the trio - Jake himself plus another guitarist and a bass player - were playing live in the studio as Jake sang rather than fitting his vocal into a prerecorded slot, a constraint which Ralph McTell has suggested hampered his vocal spontaneity on his first album, some of whose songs were saddled with rather more elaborate arrangements ... which reminds me of another faux pas when I wrote a letter to Jake, many years earlier - all is revealed in that first post linked to below.

A new Jake Thackray CD set has just been released, gathering material from a range of sources. I intend to write about it, and the lost Thackray recordings I most mourn, soon.