Unvarnished Soul: Sonny Til

 

 

As today marks the centenary of Sonny Til, here's the story of how the Orioles came to record It's Too Soon to Know, now widely regarded as the first doo wop record.

Deborah Chessler, who wrote it, was trying to make sense of her feelings after a disastrous early marriage. It's Too Soon to Know wasn't her first song, though earlier pieces had similarly questioning titles and directness in the words, coaxing a more emotionally direct form of singing from Til and the group.

The number which kickstarted the whole doo wop shebang - or shboom? - came about when a supportive male friend who offered to help pay for Chessler's divorce suddenly declared his love. Normally it's parents who counsel caution in these matters but  her mother was all for it; it was Deborah who told her mother: "How can he love me? It's too soon to know."

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.

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.  

Milne had a run of hit plays in Britain and America between the wars but Blayds, more serious in tone than most, did not receive the level of acclaim he thought it deserved, and it rankled: he dwelt upon its reception in his 1939 autobiography It's Too Late Now, his disappointment still keen almost twenty years after the event. 

The problem, as he saw it, was that after the first act critics and audiences seemed to be expecting a different sort of play:

"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.  

Based on posts in his blog Pushing Ahead of the Dame, Rebel Rebel originally appeared in 2015. I haven't yet read the refashioned tome but with ten years to amass more information, drawing on memoirs published after Bowie's death as well as the posthumous release of so many outtakes and demos, there will be a lot of new stuff to enjoy - and in addition to analysis of newly unearthed songs there has been an all-round revision.

The first edition of Rebel Rebel wasn't a simple transfer of blog to book; there was more detail, in print, about how songs worked musically - though not so technically phrased that the non-musical reader might feel alienated. 

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.

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'.

And if that isn't enough Pomus's wife, the addressee of the song, is on hand to talk, with understandable emotion, about her response when first hearing it - although here and elsewhere you never feel the director is exploiting the situation, merely recording the depth of feeling which these songs and their creator evoked in so many.

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. 

Reasonable-quality pirate DVDs of The Blackpool Show have been available for some years but according to the Tony Hancock podcast Very Nearly an Armful a great deal of work was put into restoring The Rebel for a companion release, so here's hoping The Blackpool Show has received a bit of a boost too. (The above image is not from the new release.)

I believe that, despite the name, The Blackpool Show was essentially a continuation of Blackpool Night Out (1964-65), only without Mike and Bernie Winters, the earlier hosts. It was recorded at the ABC Theatre, where Freddie, enjoying the early years of his fame after his 1964 breakthrough on Opportunity Knocks, was appearing every night in summer season. 

Variety theatres had closed in the 1950s, but major seaside resorts still had what were in effect fixed variety bills with a major star headlining (the form later migrated to cruise ships, where it has stayed). Bob Monkhouse also appears on the show but seems a bit too wordy for the crowd; it's the psittacine one, on home ground, who makes the more audible impact (not only had he been appearing on the same stage every night but he was living in Blackpool at the time).

Compere is not a role Tony Hancock was best suited to, as several biographers have said.  Nor was he comfortable with the terrain, as Freddie told me: