Today is the first of May, reminding me of some earlier notes about the broadcaster Russell Davies, who used to host a weekly programme on Radio 2. A few years ago - before someone foolishly decided that retaining the regular services of a witty and literate musical authority was an expense too far for the station - I paid close attention to one edition of the show as I was considering creating a podcast as a possible extension of this blog. Sadly, for me if not the general public, I didn't get much farther than buying a suitable microphone but what I wrote then might still be of interest to anyone thinking of putting together a music programme.
Russell Davies's show was a successor to Benny Green's; both were aired on a Sunday and concentrated on the Great American Songbook, frequently drawing the listener's attention to forgotten or neglected numbers lurking within that capacious tome, making unexpected connections between songs and writers.
When this blog began it was dedicated to doo wop but quickly expanded to include whatever retro music took my fancy, so I was interested to see how Mr Davies linked his selections together in my short-lived quest to uncover the secret of Broadcasting Man's Red Fire.
A radio veteran by the early 1970s, Ken Sykora got over the problem of selecting records by calling his show on the newly created independent station Radio Clyde Serendipity with Sykora: provided some associative process, however tenuous, could be cited then just about anything went.
He was my introduction to Spike Jones, among many others, and one of Jones's masterpieces of musical mayhem also happened to feature in the Russell Davies show I chose to examine, broadcast on Radio 2 on Sunday, the 2nd of May, 2010.
Below are the summaries I jotted down of Mr Davies's rationale for each selection, followed by further thoughts at the time:
Mel Tormé — One Morning In May
Because it's May.
Billie Holiday — That Old Devil Called Love
Because 2nd May is birthdate of lyricist Doris Fisher.
Spike Jones and His City Slickers — You Always Hurt The One You Love
Because this is another Doris Fisher lyric and Spike Jones died on the 1st of May.
Matt Dennis — Mountain Greenery
Because 2nd May is the birthdate of Lorenz Hart and anyway 1st May is mentioned in the lyric.
Ella Fitzgerald & Chick Webb — A Tisket A Tasket
Because 2nd May is the birthday of Van Alexnder, a white bandleader now in his nineties who sold arrangements to Chick Webb including the above, which was recorded on Alexander's 23rd birthday.
Dean Martin — At Sundown
Because this is an example of a later Van Alexander arrangement as an antidote to "Ella's juvenilia" (No additional May connection proffered on this occasion).
Matt Monro — Try To Remember
Because 2nd May 1960 was the night before the opening of The Fantasticks.
Harry Belafonte & Odetta — The Hole In The Bucket
Because it's from a 2nd May 1960 Harry Belafonte concert at Carnegie Hall.
The Spirits of Rhythm — Nobody’s Sweetheart
Because scat singer Leo Watson died on May 2nd 1950. Thereafter we're told "So much for May 2nd, which if nothing else has been a good excuse for staving off thoughts of May the sixth and the ballot box" - ie the imminent UK general election.
Li’l Abner Original Cast — The Country’s In The Very Best Of Hands
Because despite appropriation by various political parties "songs go better in fantasy elections in Broadway musicals." And because lyricist Johnny Mercer's biographer Gene Lees died recently (actually in April).
Perry Como — One More Vote
Because this film song is "a stylised form of a hustings speech of the mid-forties." Thereafter we're assured us we won't return to this topic.
Frank Sinatra — Let’s Get Away From It All
Because this provides an opportunity to hear a lyric by Matt Dennis who sang Mountain Greenery earlier. Oh, and, er, the orchestra leader is Billy ... May.
Tina May — When In Rome
Because - in Mr Davies' final, impudent flourish - "Let's stay May-minded to the very last."
To
lay bare the rationale for inclusion like this, shorn of almost all of the presenter's comments, is, it must be admitted, grossly unfair: as with some other broadcasters I've praised in this blog, his linking comments
display a breadth of reference and an ability to make associative leaps
which extend far beyond the chronological coincidences cited above,
which are merely a mildly amusing extra.
Interesting, too, that like Ken Sykora, Benny Green, Hubert Gregg and
Ian Whitcomb, he is also a musician, which may have helped foster the
catholicity of taste on display; the programme's subtitle is "The art,
craft and inspiration of the popular song" - which may not quite be
Anything Goes, but just about, with a cut-off point for compositions of, say, around the mid-fifties, though there are exceptions.
The show appears to be scripted, but he has a real gift for succinct,
accessible phrasemaking. It's different from Hubert Gregg's conscious
stylisation, more like ordinary speech - but in a more compact, vivid
form than the unscripted alternative, just as an advert on
British television for some kind of wonder yoghurt (or some such) boasted of its invigorating effects with the slogan: "You - but on a really
good day."
Lorenz Hart, for example, is summed up as "Pint-sized genius of the
lyric and tragical boozer" and we're told Spike Jones is "well known for
taking the sweetest rose and crushing it till the petals fall - with a
thunderous crash."
These brief quotes don't do justice to his links, where four or five
interconnected ideas may whizz by in the transition from one record to
another. So let's take the preamble to You Always Hurt ... After That
Old Devil Called Love finishes playing, we are told, among other
things, that Alison Moyet's pop revival is now twenty five years old;
that he has been reading The Tin Pan Alley Song Encyclopedia, "one
of those books that are there to be disagreed with," which omits that
Doris Fisher song but includes You Always Hurt the One You Love,
described in the book as a "fatalistic ballad" recorded by the Mills
Brothers and others including Brenda Lee, Al Martino and Ringo Starr - "which," we are told, "suggests a certain breadth of interest in this
song." That is the authentic Davies note: waspish understatement in a
slightly raised voice, inviting you into the joke. Leading into the
Spike Jones remark already quoted, he then goes on to point out that
there is no built-in protection for compositions against "uprincipled
rogues" - such as Jones.
It is a performance - odd interview clips I've heard reveal
someone more tentative - but as with Hubert Gregg, to whom I have paid tribute elswhere, it's the right
performance for that context, and in Russell Davies' case he fairly
rattles along, a raised eyebrow here, the ghost of a wink there, as
there is always so much to impart with what I can only describe as a
kind of trademark measured zest.
And although the programme has been shunted from the 2pm slot which it
had occupied since the days of Benny Green, in favour of something
rather less interesting (to me, anyway), and although I'd rather it were
back in that slot, maybe there is a sort of justification in having
something so pleasing just at the hour when some of us may need
diversion from thoughts of the working week.
Sadly, Russell Davies's show was only to last another three and a half years. Here's what I wrote on learning of the sad news in 2013:
And so ends a line which stretched, for me, from the seventies and Benny Green in the same slot (before it was shunted from the afternoon, during the Davies era, to make room for the chumminess of Ms Paige).
It's also a source of sadness because although I believe he will still be presenting the odd programme for Radio 2 this marks the end of regular broadcasting of the last of those presenters who educated me in pre-rock'n'roll music, most notably Benny Green, Hubert Gregg, Ken Sykora and Robert Cushman.
Of that quartet only Robert Cushman is still alive, although as far as I know he is no longer broadcasting.
I'm not going to go into detail here about why the decision to drop Russell Davies is so wrong. The "presentation reason", as we psychiatrists say, is that he isn't, apparently, cost-effective for a programme only lasting one hour - even though one hour is precisely the right amount of time for something which demands more direct attention than most of Radio 2's output.
The suggestion - made by Mr Davies himself, among others - is that his show being dropped is part of the plan to make Radio 2 into "Radio one-and-a-half", catching those who have grown out of Radio 1.
By and large I have approved of that scheme in the past, and enjoyed the music documentaries and spots for different genres on Radio 2. But there has to be room for the popular music which preceded the rock explosion.
Is it about time passing? I can't remember exactly when "Radio one-and-a-half" was first mooted - I suppose around the time of Matthew Bannister's cull of dinosaur DJs at Radio 1, and he was appointed controller twenty years ago.
Has somebody therefore made the pragmatic decsion that Radio 2 cannot go on infinitely expanding its capacity and so the earliest decades - the thirties and forties - must perforce be jettisoned?
It sort of makes sense, I suppose ... provided, that is, you don't believe that any of the subsequent songwriters benefited from the example of those who came before. (Wonder what Macca would have to say about that? Or Lennon, come to that, who was taught Scatterbrain, a song I first heard on a Hubert Gregg show, by his mother.)
It's significant, I think, that the majority of the broadcasters I have mentioned were working from a script - in other words what they were giving us was something polished, not just chatter to fill the moments in between recordings. And - like Russell Davies - Benny Green and Ken Sykora were musicians, and Hubert Gregg was a singer, songwriter and all round man of the theatre.
Robert Cushman is a journalist and critic - he may play an instrument, for all I know, but the point is that in all of these cases you were getting something which hadn't been thrown together, and there was an implied respect for the audience. More than that, you had the sense that they were sharing something which was precious to them, but their knowledge was worn lightly; you never felt you were being lectured.
In terms of world events I suppose the end of a radio programme means - well, not that much. But regular listeners will know that with the closing down of this show something important is going from Radio 2 and from our lives. We will no longer be introduced to songs, and odd pairings and coincidences, by someone who had taken the time to shape his thoughts for us, and who opened our ears to the richness of the catalogue of music before Chuck Berry.
Links:
Here are some posts from a series called They Turned Me On, praising the broadcasters who helped shape my musical tastes:
Ian Whitcomb
Ken Sykora
Hubert Gregg
Benny Green & Robert Cushman
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