Terry Johnson

 

For those not already aware of the sad news, Terry Johnson, the last surviving member of the Flamingos, died yesterday in Las Vegas at the age of 86 - "performing to the end", Marv Goldberg says. He can be seen above (with guitar) on the cover of Flamingos Serenade, the 1959 album of standards which includes his arrangement of I Only Have Eyes For You, the Al Dubin-Harry Warren film song which finally gave the group the crossover success they'd been seeking. 

Terry Johnson was not an original member of the Flamingos but had a vision, when he first saw them perform in October 1956:  "I saw a glow of light around them and I saw myself with them." He auditioned the day after this mystical experience and was invited to join on Christmas Eve. 

It wasn't until they left Chess and signed with a major, Decca, the following year, however, that he really came into his own. When high tenor Johnny Carter, who also did the arranging, was drafted it fell to Johnson, as the only musician, to take over the task - and this, in effect, was the beginning of what could be termed a Mark II, more pop-oriented, Flamingos. 

While recording for Chance and Parrot Records in 1953-54 they had been more inclined to R&B, despite incorporating pop numbers into their repertoire; Robert Pruter uses the phrase "deep R&B doo wop" to describe some of those early sides. There had also been a looser, jazz feel in the backing, something which began to change during their time at Chess, as Pruter and Robert L. Campbell explain:

In 1955, when doowop groups emerged as rock'n'roll entities, the record labels - notably Chess and Vee-Jay in Chicago - consciously worked with their session men, most of whom had jazz backgrounds, to change their accompaniment style from jazz to rock 'n' roll.

Success on a grand scale continued to elude them at Decca, however, partly because of difficulties arising from their lead, Nate Nelson, still being signed to Chess as a solo artist. And it seems as though Decca didn't really know the worth of what they had. Despite Johnson's involvement with the group's arrangements he didn't have the final say in the studio, as he told Richard Buskin when remembering, with some regret, what he considered the most promising Decca side:

The Ladder Of Love was such a beautiful song. I changed the chords a little and made it build, because when Nate first gave it to me it was bland. As the only musician in the group, it fell to me to do the arranging, and this was my first time really arranging the harmonies. Again, what I gave them was different, but Decca took my harmonies and buried them in the track, and then they had three white girls doing another kind of harmony structure that their own arranger came up with. It sounded more like something Pat Boone would do, and we were a little upset about that. I think we recorded 10 songs, and The Ladder Of Love was my baby because I thought it was the only one that really had potential, but the company wanted us to sound too white.

The Decca recordings, while interesting for students of the group, don't make for satisfying listening generally, in large part because of those bolted-on elements, and it's a particular sadness to me that Kiss-A-Me, with a very strong lead by Nate Nelson, is similarly overburdened; I'd really love to hear a sparer version.

 

But things changed for the better when the Flamingos left Decca and were picked up by George Goldner's End Records. They had a hit with the dreamy Lovers Never Say Goodbye, penned by Johnson and sung by him and Paul Foster: 

His arrangement for the song gave George Goldner an idea, as Terry Johnson told Richard Buskin:

"He and Richard Barrett had a meeting,” Johnson recalls, "and they asked Jake [Carey] and me to come in so they could tell us, 'You guys have just crossed over into the pop market. The white people love your music, and that's very different.' After all, most black music was R&B at that time. So he brought me 33 songs — he and Richard went out and picked all of these old standards and asked me if I could change them around and do some different things with the vocals.”

A neat turnaround from the time the Flamingos, in their earliest days, were actually turned down by a record company for sounding "too white" ... Johnson particularly took to the task because he had been brought up with classical music and white pop - R&B had been discouraged in his home, though he later discovered it by himself. Back to Buskin:

Johnson and his colleagues ran through all 33 songs, a dozen of which ended up on their first LP, Flamingo Serenade, and included covers of compositions by George Gershwin, Lorenz Hart and Cole Porter. However, the number that gave the co‑producer the hardest time was I Only Have Eyes For You.

At this point, let me refer you to a short clip from  Episode 3 of the Radio 2 documentary series Street Corner Soul, in which Terry Johnson describes for himself the way in which the arrangement for I Only Have Eyes For You eventually came to him; unfortunately I can't seem to embed it here but here is the link. 

And here is the original mono record:

You can read the rest of Richard Buskin's excellent article about the recording of I Only Have Eyes For You on the Sound on Sound website here, and my review of Todd Baptista's book about the Flamingos can be found here. For more about the Johnny Carter-era Flamingos, a guide to my posts about the group's Chance and Parrot recordings can be found here. 

This really is the end of an era. Marv Goldberg's R&B Notebooks page on the Flamingos, here, which I have also drawn upon for the above, succinctly explains the significance of the Flamingos, and of Terry Johnson's role in their history:

The Flamingos are one of those groups (and there are very, very few of them) that had a deep, lasting influence on R&B music. Most of the groups of the 50s listened to the Flamingos. They had a superb R&B lead singer in Sollie McElroy and a superb lead singer, period, in Nate Nelson. Throw in Johnny Carter's high tenor and arranging, and then Terry Johnson's arranging, matched with George Goldner's know-how, and the Flamingos were a mighty force.

 

 

Notes on the Finborough production of The Truth About Blayds by A.A. Milne

 

When I wrote about this play's imminent revival at the Finborough Theatre a few weeks ago I hoped for the best but wasn't sure what to expect. Would there be the appropriate balance of seriousness and comedy in the playing? Would contemporary theatregoers take this example of Milne's adult work to their hearts as readily as audiences of a hundred years ago, weaned on his pieces in Punch magazine?

Lloyd Price musical coming to London

 

If you are able to get to London's Royal Festival Hall there will be two performances of a new musical about R&B/rock'n'roll pioneer Lloyd Price on Saturday 11th October.

 Audio of an extensive 2005 interview with Price can be found on Matt the Cat's site here, but for all the undoubted importance of Lawdy Miss Clawdy to the development of rock'n'roll (none of which seems lost on Price himself in that interview) Daniel Wolff's biography of Sam Cooke suggests that the recording was actually part of an ongoing process for Specialty Records owner Art Rupe, and that he'd already been experimenting with accentuating the beat on gospel recordings:

"Actually," Art Rupe has declared, "I dug gospel music even more than rhythm and blues," and the producer often made his own crucial modifications to the songs. In 1952, he seems to hear a new, beat-heavy sound on the horizon. A month after this [February] Stirrers's session, he'll go to New Orleans and cut "Lawdy Miss Clawdy," a run-away #1 r&b hit by Lloyd Price that sells to both white and black fans.

Here [Wolff continues], Rupe approaches from the gospel end, adding drums to the Stirrers's usual mix. At first, it's an awkward fit. Compare the single of "It Won't Be Very Long" to the alternative takes, and you can hear the predictable beat dumbing down the complex rhythms. But towards the end, an odd synthesis starts to happen. The lead voices jump with urgency, and the group seems to open up and let the drums in. Social critics have argued that the concept of the teenager was an invention of the 1950's. If so, here's evidence that it happened not just in the malt shop but across the street, in church.

This seems to be the take which Wolff is talking about: 

 

 And here is the original 1952 Specialty version of Lawdy Miss Clawdy, with Fats Domino on piano:

 

Links:

The information above was extracted from a longer post about Sam Cooke and the Soul Stirrers entitled Waxing/Waning Crescent Moon, which can be found here.

 Matt the Cat's highly recommended Juke in the Back series, which provides excellent musical overviews of R&B artists and record labels, can be found here. I haven't listened to it yet but one programme is devoted to Lloyd Price's Specialty sides and includes excerpts from the interview mentioned earlier.

If the above has whetted your appetite details about booking for the Lloyd Price musical can be found on the South Bank Centre website here. 

A.A. Milne Part 4 (Sarah Simple)

 

As with A.A. Milne's first novel (of sorts), Lovers in London, the mere fact of this play, Sarah Simple, being available again is welcome news. It's not included in the various collections which still crop up in secondhand bookshops, and I'd been searching for a copy for quite some time. Before the publication of Anne Thwaite's biography of Milne I had only come across a single mention of it, in a history of theatre published in the 1930s. 

It is not, however, a neglected masterpiece - something which it has in common with that novel. If you're already familiar with Milne's work for the theatre there will be little here to surprise you: a wife, presumed to have divorced her husband, suddenly reappears as he is on the verge of marrying a somewhat more stolid partner. Once, long ago, I embarked on a dissertation on Milne's plays but my tutor was not keen, joshing about his struggles to remember which missing spouse featured in which play. (In the end I switched to Tennessee Williams and still slightly regret it).

In praise of Rock & Roll Graffiti (1999) again

  

If, like me, you've been tantalised by the many clips on youtube of a TV show entitled Rock & Roll Graffiti, the good news is that most of that show, hitherto available only as an expensive DVD box set, can now be obtained on two reasonably priced 3 disc sets; I'm based in the UK and ordered them from America for around £14 each around ten years ago though you will need to round that up to £20 or thereabouts now. These are the covers to look for:

For those unfamiliar with this show, DJ/producer Larry Black and singer Gene Hughes of the Casinos (Then You Can Tell Me Goodbye) assembled a number of rock'n'roll, pop and soul stars of the late 50s and early 60s in a TV studio in 1999, got them to reminisce over several days about their experiences and sing one or two of their most famous songs, backed by a versatile and sympathetic band called Sons of the Beach. With the performers given the dignity and context they deserve but don't always receive the results are, at times, deeply moving and never less than thoroughly entertaining and informative.

Unvarnished Soul: Sonny Til

 

 

Today marks the centenary of the pioneering doo wop/R&B singer Sonny Til, lead singer of the Orioles. They are perhaps best known for Crying in the Chapel (1953) but here's the story of how the group came to record It's Too Soon to Know, now widely regarded as the first doo wop record, in 1948.

Deborah Chessler, the young songwriter behind it, had been 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 also had a direct and conversational tone in their titles and lyrics (Jerry Leiber was an admirer), and It's Too Soon to Know coaxed out a correspondingly fresh and emotional style 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 was helping with Chessler's divorce suddenly declared his own love for her. 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:

Cheapo Cheapo resurrected for Black Friday?

This almost defies belief, and I'm still not sure whether it's just an elaborate wind-up, but according to the information I have been given the much-missed Cheapo Cheapo Records of Rupert Street, Soho, will be resurrected, or regenerated, or what you will, for "a month and a day", starting on Black Friday (November 29th).

It's an appealing idea in theory, but from the little which I've been told about the project it sounds like a rather Disneyfied way of bringing the beloved record shop back to life - and not cheap, either: instead of free admission and handing over a few pennies for bargain finds would-be customers will be obliged to hand over a tidy sum simply for the privilege of revisiting its racks once more. 

Despite that it'll be a case of "look but don't touch" - or at least "look and touch but don't take to the counter or slip surreptitiously under your roomy coat": none of the stock is available to purchase until the installation is dismantled on or around New Year's Eve. 

Forever Doo-wop: review of book by Cadillacs' backing musician

 

For those who might be interested in a book about doo wop which is more than just a history of the changing personnel of a group or groups, let me draw your attention to John Michael Runowicz's Forever Doo-wop, published in 2010. It examines how the music is perceived by different sides: the largely white audience who pay to see live acts; the increasingly elderly singers, still making a living from serving up their past - significantly fewer in number now in 2024, of course - and those in the middle who promote and make money from the enterprise.

A Distant Signal: Scott Walker

 

Scott Walker died five years ago today, the 22nd of March. I first heard about it on Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of the 25th and immediately sat down to write the following.

 The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore, as recorded by the Walker Brothers, is one of those rare non-Beatles songs remembered from childhood before I became any kind of conscious music fan (the Beatles, part of a fraternal bond, were obligatory). But even when I started buying records, for a long time I didn't have - didn't want - a copy of it in any form, fearful of holding the experience up to the light. This went beyond stereo/mono snobbery or any notion of good taste or coolness: for me the magic was in the memory of the warmth and fuzziness of first hearing it on a medium wave radio in another room in another house.

New Peter Skellern CD on kickstarter - pledge by March 8th

 

For those who might be interested, Richard Moore, who has already put together two comprehensive collections of Peter Skellern's recordings, thus rescuing Skellernites or Skellernatics like me from the frustration of earlier random collections, is doing it once more for Happy Endings,  the album of the TV series for which Skellern wrote the songs and in which he appeared. 

The songs were issued on LP at the time - that's the image which adorns the top of this post - but the forthcoming CD expands that compilation - and judging by Mr Moore's earlier CD releases it is likely to be in top-notch sound, and comes, moreover, with the approval of the Skellern family. There are only a few days left so hurry, if you're interested. It's great that someone has taken the time to put together the kind of release which major companies obviously don't think will be cost-effective. 

Outrageous: new book by Kliph Nesteroff

 

Kliph Nesteroff is the author of the book The Comedians,  a gossipy, scandalous, irresistibly written history of the underside of the development of American stand-up comedy. But although you get all sorts of juicy details along the way (the Mafia figure prominently) it does also provide an excellent overview of how the form evolved in America and is hugely enjoyable. His new book, Outrageous, overlaps to some extent, as comedians feature prominently, but its focus is on the culture wars in the US - far from a recent phenomenon, as Mr Nesteroff reveals. He starts in the 1800s with a discussion about blackface, and the many protests by successive immigrant groups - Irish, Jewish, Italian, among others - to stereotypical depictions by comics. The long-running Amos 'n' Andy radio show had two white performers playing black characters whose personae had been stolen from two black performers, who were never remibursed; when, much later, it moved to TV there were black actors surrounding the two stars, and despite protests from the NAACP those actors defended the show on the grounds that without such programmes, demeaning as they were, there'd be no work for them at all.

Waterloo Sunset excerpt

 

I must have been eight years old when I first heard Waterloo Sunset, in the year of its release, and - like just about everyone else in the world - realised it was something special.

Perhaps for a child the fact that it wasn't, strictly speaking, a love song had something to do with it, even though lovers figure in it. But for someone growing up in Scotland the song's setting was enough in itself to suggest something magical, even if the Engerland in my head may not have swung like a pendulum do. My childish notions of the country and its capital came largely from Ealing films on the telly, all decency and community spirit, tempered by odd glimpses in police series of a modern day city seemingly awash with criminals, spies and pyromaniacs like George Cole  (below) in Gideon's Way.

Whatever the reason, the song stayed in my imagination. A few years later, when a family holiday finally necessitated an overnight stay in London, I eagerly craned out of my room's tiny window to take in the stretch of water in the reddening dusk: it was Waterloo Sunset.

We were in Camberwell at the time.

New play about Thomas Hardy on in London until Saturday 2nd December

My recommendation comes rather late, but if you are based in London and interested in the relationship between Thomas Hardy and his wives I can recommend the play What I Think of My Husband by David Pinner, running at the Grey Goose Theatre in Camberwell until Saturday, 2nd December. 

You can find fuller details at the theatre's website (link at end), but for those who are unfamiliar with the story the essential facts are that the writer Thomas Hardy's marriage to his first wife Emma soured over time, with the couple eventually living largely separate lives under the same roof, but an outpouring of grief and guilt after Emma's death led to a sequence entitled Poems of 1912-13, generally agreed to be his best work in that form. 

Merely Players? Pah!

  

 

There is, or so I've been given to understand, One who has numbered all my days.

Despite the occasional pointer in the form of various aches and pains, however, no clear indication of the date of my last go-round has been vouchsafed to me as yet. 

Which is a bit annoying, though not because I'm desperate to husband such energies as remain in order to produce one final creative flourish before gasping my last or anything like that.

Permit me to explain. 

I listen to music via an mp3 player, a model which is no longer manufactured. Its inbuilt battery has a finite life and cannot be removed or replaced unless you know about things like soldering and the match last night. So I regularly find myself on a well-known auction website in search of backup devices.

Most of the replacements I've bought - only ever this favoured model - are secondhand, and I can't tell how long they will continue to operate. I've had reasonable luck with purchases so far, even though the average playing time between charges for a pre-loved one is a little less than that of a pristine device. But a day inevitably comes when its power reading starts falling from 100% and I know that I must steel myself once again for the sadness ahead.