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: