I had despaired of ever seeing it but 14 Karat Soul's first ever TV appearance, on Saturday Night Live on January 24th, 1981, can now be viewed online at the Internet Archive website, which is cause for celebration if you care for this sort of thing.
For anyone who doesn't know, Matt the Cat's shows about the Flamingos in his Juke in the Back series are currently being repeated via his website and can be recommended: he plays most of their records and provides a potted version of their story along the way. At present it's Episode One, which covers the group's time on Art Sheridan's Chance Records, their first label (1953-1954);
When a young soap actor who originates a role is replaced does he or she have any legal recourse? That's the question posed in a new book, Outside Soap, by Charles Hamm, to be published tomorrow. The timing couldn't be better, as a case may soon be going to court: this week a former star has announced his intention to sue for loss of earnings, based on the number of years in which his successor played the role. And if the action is successful that may prove quite a tidy sum, so alarm bells must be ringing in the offices of television companies up and down the land.
For viewers of British soaps it's a familiar story: a young actor plays a character for ten or fifteen years, often right from the moment of his or her onscreen birth, only to be replaced by - well, not even a lookie-likey in many cases.
I've already paid tribute to Hubert Gregg but this footnote has become necessary because I've just discovered the details about a record he played on his radio show Thanks for the Memory which had been eluding me for - ohhh, only around the last four decades or so.
If you have read Robert Webb's memoir How Not to Be a Boy you may remember that the youthful Webb mentions an unlikely source of comedic inspiration: the mainstream sitcom No Place Like Home, which ran for five series on BBC1 in the 1980s.
It's about a middle-aged man, chagrined to find his grown-up children have taken up residence in the family home once again - a bit like Eric Chappell's Home to Roost, on around the same time - only more so, as this put-upon dad is lumbered with four kids and a wife. Not the most obvious sitcom, perhaps, to stir the blood of one who went on to star in a gloriously dark example of the genre but that's what seems to have set the seal on Webb's decision to become a performer.
Not that he offers an unqualified tribute to the ability of its writer, Jon Watkins.
I don't suppose it will be news to many of its former customers that the London bakery chain Percy Ingle's closed all its shops last year. But it certainly came as a shock to me when I made the discovery a few weeks ago.
Even though the local branch had been shut ever since the first lockdown it didn't occur to me that this might be the end. Call it denial, arrant stupidity, or what you will, but I think I'd vaguely assumed that they were waiting for the final all-clear, reluctant to go head to head with the more widely known rival depicted above, or, I dunno, maybe one of the assistants had got covid or the family-run company was reluctant to put staff at risk, or ...
In my defence, although the shop had been shuttered there had been no other indication that anything might be afoot, no sign of building work or the interior being stripped or anything - until, that is, one morning a comparatively trendy eaterie was suddenly there in its stead. Which led me to search out the articles online and read the sad details about this situation.
My one and only foray into karaoke (literally "empty glutton", unless I'm thinking of something else) occurred a few Christmases ago, on a Scottish island blessed with several pubs. My companion and I were visiting our friend, whom I'll call Ronaldo; he was working in one of those establishments, and on the first night of our stay we went there - not to sing but to do a recce.
I have to admit that I had come to scoff - or at least, that's what I presumed would be the outcome of my visit. Blessed, or cursed, with a certain amount of knowledge about popular music, and being, furthermore, in possession of two elder brothers, the idea of what is and is not cool, musically speaking, is lodged firmly in the Pismotalitian brain, permitting of no deviation.
Anyway, that first night we perched at the bar, stopping occasionally to listen to what was, in youthful parlance, "going down". Did I splutter into my beer at some of the punters' efforts assailing our ears? Did I then fall to the ground, clutching my stomach while crying out, again and again: "No more! Oh, in God's name, no more!"?
Three months on from the previous posting I hereby declare my "wee phrase" of buying up old cassettes from a well-known auction website exhausted. Not that this means I'm any nearer a conclusion about the wisdom of re-embracing this ancient medium. If I could be said to have embraced it: an air-peck-on-the-cheek, if anything. Even though I must have bought around a dozen I've only listened to a few.
Why the reluctance? Two reasons, one more fanciful than the other.
It may be a passing fancy, and in time may go, but I wish to announce that I have re-embraced the humble cassette, that much-loved companion of This Great Nation's former days, and to boast - or confess - that even though I've already got a couple of large plastic crates piled high with 'em I've been spending most of today buying even more via a well-known auction website. I'm aware that this frenzy could be spent out in a matter of days: I haven't listened to any of my old tapes yet, and as one of those crates was slumbering on a shelf very near my TV it may be that they have become magnetised and unlistenable.
Now who, in their right minds, would buy a CD like this?
In my case the answer is simple: this was one of the discs which always seemed to be there as you walked into Cheapo, entreating you to buy it: the musical equivalent of a lonely pup in a Christmas shop. I must have scanned the tracklisting on more than one occasion then replaced it. I mean ... Pat Boone? Why Do Fools Fall in Love by the Diamonds? I Count the Tears as a solo Ben E King track even though the Drifters are credited on Save the Last Dance for Me? The absence of an apostrophe on a Clyde McPhatter hit? I could go on ...
Whenever I start to recreate a visit to Cheapo Cheapo Records in my head I always find myself striding purposefully towards the very back of the shop, ignoring the lure of those goodies nearer the entrance.
Which is odd, because this wasn't something I ever actually did.
2. Up the Swanee tells the story of the dispute between father and son puppeteers Harry and Matthew Corbett; a more faithful account may be found in Geoff Tibballs' biography of Sooty.
A selection of eleven comedy-related posts, mostly reviews of books or TV programmes. Click on any image to be taken to the post described immediately below.
1: Eric and Ernie
Well, I say "reviews" ... in the case of this first piece it would be more accurately described as: "notes reflecting on the few aspects which interest me because that's how I roll."
This first piece is about Peter Bowker's TV drama Eric and Ernie, recreating the early days of Morecambe and Wise, and because I'd read so much about the pair I became fixated on sins of omission, as you will see if you click on the picture above, which shows Victoria Wood as Eric's mother, Sadie Bartholomew, being waved off, her job done, as the pair embark on their career.
Another eleven posts from the archive. Click on the image to read the piece described below.
1 : Golden Teardrops - the Flamingos
Although a more extensive piece on the Flamingos' Golden Teardrops can be found elsewhere, I'm fond of this earlier attempt to describe it during my 2000 dialogue with Clarke Davis. The style - of my writing, I mean - may be a little overheated but it reflects the excitement I felt at the new experience of sharing my passion for doo wop with like-minded people, and I'm eternally grateful to those who expressed their appreciation by sending gifts of CDs, tapes and videos which couldn't be found in the UK.
2 : You Have Two (I Have None) - the Orchids
3 : Waterloo Sunset - the Kinks
At some point in 2010 I gave myself permission to stray from the exclusive consideration of doo wop in these pages. This piece about Ray Davies's Waterloo Sunset was part of Gnome Thoughts, an unplanned, ever-expanding, series about David Bowie's early musical influences.
To mark eleven (count 'em!) years of blogging, an introduction to a selection of posts from 2009-2020, one from each year.
Click on any image to read the piece described immediately below.
2020
 |
Billy Shelton taught Pookie Hudson how to sing in the glee club at Roosevelt High in Gary, Indiana and formed a trio with him and another schoolfriend, predating the Spaniels. In the 1990s, when the original Spaniels reformed, Billy took the place of Ernest Warren, then a minister, and he still leads a group of Spaniels today. This piece, distilled from several lengthy interviews with Billy in 2016 and 2020, is around 25,000 words and covers his whole life and career. There aren't too many people still around from the very beginning of doo wop, so it was a privilege, as well as a pleasure, to help spread the story of one of the originators. (Photograph from 1950 school yearbook, shared by Todd Baptista on social media.)
2019
In 2019 I interviewed Pete West as part of ongoing research into the songwriter Alan Klein: Pete had been lead guitarist in the group which morphed into "the Al Kline Five" after Alan joined in the late fifties. For several years they played weekend gigs around North London but when the chance of a summer season at Butlins Skegness meant turning pro Pete had to decide whether he wanted to give up the security of his well-paid job ... (Thanks to Ken Aslet for the photographs of the band which illustrate this piece; that's Pete in the foreground above.)
