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. You will need to subscribe but provided you can tolerate the adverts it's free to watch. 

It was made in 2017, three years after the publication of Funny Bones, Freddie's autobiography (what I cowrote), and yesterday was its first screening on the Talking Pictures TV channel, though Freddie has already been involved with them, appearing in a couple of their live events; on one of those occasions, calling to mind his time as a Redcoat at Butlins, he led the audience in a singalong.

No leading definitions: R.C. Sherriff

 

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 Ronald Wales's comprehensive 2016 biography of the playwright and screenwriter R.C. Sherriff, best remembered for Journey's End. I had greatly enjoyed Sherriff's own account of his life, No Leading Lady, around thirty years earlier, and was prompted to read it again after finishing the more recent work.

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. 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. 

It's about a group of Swedish musicians in the late fifties, happy to play Dixieland jazz and other crowd-pleasing music until they are joined by a  saxophonist with Charlie Parker-type aspirations. Either with permission from the leader or out of devilment (I haven't yet rewatched the film), he plays a Parker-type solo in the middle of a dance, and the reaction is interesting: displaying none of that "Go home dirty Bopper" reaction which famously greeted Bruce Turner's joining Humphrey Lyttleton's band, the crowd opt to remain quite still until he has finished and the more familiar, danceable style kicks in once again.

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. 

The prompt was a transfer of the Swan Silvertones' 1957 recording of the gospel song A Lady Called Mother; despite some crackles it sounds sharper and clearer than any I'd heard online before - and it reminded me that the parent of the title is "in a cottage far away."