Like an enormous YEAH YEAH YEAH! or The Hottest CD Box Set Ever Compiled?

Please note the question mark in the title as a) the set below is issued by Proper Records, whose quality control is not always of the best, and b) I haven't yet got my mitts on a copy.

But I still need to draw your attention to this four disc collection of the jazz which poet and funster Philip Larkin very publicly liked. Ignore the cruel remark of a friend who said that this blog would not be her first port of call for dependable information about musical figures; in the area covered by this compilation I can speak - er, with intermittent authority. At the very least.

I discovered Luis Russell (commemorated philatelically, above, by the homeplace hymned in his masterpiece) before realising Larkin was also a fan - before realising Larkin existed, in fact. But reading All What Jazz, his collection of music crticism, led me to other jazz artists and helped cement my love for Louis Armstrong.

Not that this was a forsaking of pop: I seem to remember that when the Beatles' Hamburg tapes eventually came out on vinyl I borrowed it from my local library along with an Armstrong memorial compilation (on Parlophone, incidentally), as though to test whether I could find the same magic in both.

On Again! On Again! or Strangers on a Train

I was sorry to hear of Jake Thackray's death; I remember fondly, albeit dimly, early appearances on the Sunday afternoon children's TV show Tickertape (though he once replied to a letter of mine saying that he reddened to remember the songs). I also remember a (presumably live) performance on Bernard Braden's show in which Jake, possibly singing Sister Josephine, went on beforehand about his bowels to the amusement of the audience, prompting a slightly acidulous Braden to congratulate him on stretching out a three minute spot to nearer eight.

Years later, probably around the mid 90s, I was on a train going to or from Wolverhampton, saw what I thought was a spare seat and, approaching, thought I recognised the man sitting opposite: "Mr Thackray?" He acknowledged that it was indeed him, but I then launched into a rambling adulatory spiel, mentioning Tickertape, that was probably highly embarrassing for him in that public place with no escape short of the communication cord. But he simply said mildly, "Yes, well, I think that seat is taken," and I moved off.

Actually, it was Bantam Cock. But more on that brief encounter later. That's not the end of the story.