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.
Someone mentioned on social media recently that Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven has not been broadcast or made available via streaming services for quite a few years. To be clear, that's the original 1978 TV series about a naive and optimistic songsheet salesman (Bob Hoskins), using 30s and 40s recordings to which actors mime, not the US film adaptation. In the book Potter on Potter the writer told Graham Fuller his thoughts about the latter:
Before I review another book about the experience of being a backing musician for a doo wop group I thought I'd repost this assessment of Michael G. Devlin's account of working with the G-Clefs of I Understand and Ka-Ding-Dong fame. I've corrected a few of my own typos - so much for my criticism of his style - but otherwise left the piece much as it was.
It has to be said at the outset that this is not, in the technical sense, a well written book: there are grammatical errors or infelicities which mean you occasionally have to rewrite a sentence in your head to make sense of it - and don't get me started on the apostrophes. Was there really no one to cast an incisive eye over musician Mike Devlin's MS before it was shared with the world?
If you're reading this blog then you will probably know that Jerry Butler was a member of the Impressions, a doo wop/soul group which also featured his childhood friend Curtis Mayfield. For Your Precious Love, which Butler cowrote and sang lead on, was a meld of doo wop and gospel which sounded as though it had been recorded in a cathedral; it was a big hit on Vee-Jay Records in 1958 and is now regarded as a doo wop classic.
In 2018 I wrote a piece for this blog entitled "Cheapo Cheapo Records - The Complete Story". It was a reworking of several earlier posts about coming to terms with the closure of the Soho record shop which I'd been frequenting for 24 years.
Those original posts were more discursive, and a fair amount of pruning and reworking went into the rewrite, which can be read here.
That'd be the sensible choice. But if you're an idler who fancies the scenic route consider me your enabler, as I've assembled the unedited posts together below.
For readers who might be visiting the Edinburgh Fringe this year, Jeffrey
Holland is currently appearing again in Gail Louw's play ... And This Is My
Friend Mr Laurel at the Pleasance Courtyard Upstairs at 11.20am, most days from 2nd August onwards. Tickets can be bought from the Fringe website here.
Here are my
notes about the show from its 2016 London run:
I've just learnt that Tom Bouchart, owner of the Stockton record shop Sound It Out, has died, so I'm reposting this 2012 review of Jeanie Finlay's documentary about the store.
I commend unto you Sound It Out, a documentary about an independent
record shop in Teesside. It was broadcast on BBC 4 yesterday, and will
be repeated on Monday, and available on BBC iplayer here
for the next six days. Nothing earth-shattering about it, really, just a
warm and sympathetic look at the owner, the assistants, and a handful
of the customers, but that's a plenty for me - and, it seems, many
others.
Incredible though it sounds, it is now the fiftieth anniversary of the film That'll Be The Day. I have never owned a copy of the soundtrack album, although its songs had a profound effect on my musical tastes, igniting my love of doo wop and rock'n'roll.
Like many other people, the recent news of Burt Bacharach's death sent me to youtube to remind myself of his achievements. And the thing which particularly caught my eye was a clip of a studio rehearsal before Dionne Warwick's original recording of I Say a Little Prayer.
I have just finished watching Nolly, the new three-part ITV drama about Noele Gordon's sacking from the longrunning soap opera Crossroads, and was pleasantly surprised: the series seems very well judged, executed with a lightness of touch yet never dismissive of its subject, unlike - or so it seemed to me - the recent ITV drama about absconding politician John Stonehouse.
To mark the 42nd anniversary of John Lennon's death, extracts from two earlier posts, both written in 2010. Links to the full versions can be found at the end.
It has now been confirmed that Jerry Lee Lewis has died.
There can't be any doubt that he was the last of the true greats from the golden age of rock'n'roll; I can still recall the excitement of first hearing Whole Lotta Shakin' Going On, different from the frenzy of Little Richard's recordings but every bit as potent. In The Sound of the City Charlie Gillett had especial praise for his ability to sing, as it were, in inverted commas, never wholly abandoned like Richard but "almost always" with "an edge of detachment or even cynical derision", as though not quite buying into this "love" business:
This detachment enabled Lewis to pace his records, and control his audiences at live performances, with a finesse few rock'n'roll singers showed. He would have needed only Chuck Berry's flair for writing songs to be a comparably important figure.
A few years ago I wrote a series of pieces about the radio broadcasters who had contributed the most to my musical education over the years. Not all of these figures were attached to the BBC, but most were; and to celebrate that institution's 100th anniversary I've condensed those memories into one handy single post - no strenuous clicking required.
The Jake Thackray biography having arrived, I couldn't resist devouring it immediately, even though it's the kind of work which ought to be savoured at leisure. What follows is more by way of a few initial thoughts than a comprehensive review, but based on my frantic run at the thing the good news is that the book is all that might have been hoped for and can be recommended without reservation to thoroughgoing Thackrayites and the Jake-curious alike.
Today marks 25 years since a play of mine about a pizza delivery man and his determinedly awkward customer was first performed. It was part of a writers' showcase based around food - the theatre producing it had recently moved to new premises in an area associated with eateries. The building's transformation from its previous use had not yet been completed, however, and perhaps because this event took place before the official opening there is little mention of it online. Which seems a pity to me - and I daresay five others might feel the same, though they will have to tell their own stories in their own doo wop-related blogs.
A biography of Jake Thackray, written with the cooperation of friends and family, is due to be published by Leeds-based company Scratching Shed this August. I don't think anyone will be disappointed.
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
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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.)
TOTP was something shared
exclusively between myself and my brothers. There wasn't a great deal of music in our
house. I do recall one rare single bought by one or other of my parents: Tears by Ken Dodd - though I don't recall its being played except by one of us. True, Dodd was a Liverpudlian, but we knew wasn't the same as the Fab Four.
The Beatles, as the most newsworthy representatives of the new style of music to be heard on TOTP, were half-heartedly tolerated by my mother but actively disliked by my father, who considered their financial success as unfairly earned and saw their creed of pleasure as something dangerous. I recall listening to the White Album for the first time on a brand new Boots stereo bought by my immediate elder brother, and the paternal disapproval over the collage-type insert with bare flesh: "I'm not very happy about that." Mild words - but as Bertie Wooster would have put it, he meant them to sting.
For UK readers, Michael Epstein's 2010 documentary LENNONYC, known over here as Lennon: The New York Years, has just been repeated on BBC 4 and will be available to watch on BBC iplayer until November 8th. It's well worth watching if you didn't happen to catch it last night.
Even if you did see it you may not be aware of the documentary equivalent of bonus tracks available on the PBS website: the raw audio for ten interviews in which director Michael Epstein can be heard gently prompting - and occasionally prodding - interviewees to talk about matters which, in some cases, they haven't discussed publicly before.
Dono-fans will be pleased to learn that the concert at London's Cadogan Hall which had to be cancelled in April has now been rescheduled for Monday, 12th October. He will be playing two shows that day, to allow for social distancing, and both will be livestreamed.
Tony had written an account of his search for his father, the singer Johnny Flamingo, which was published in the Guardian, and it struck me that it had potential as a drama; we chatted about it and he suggested I try and work something up and send it to him.
Billy Shelton has described himself in interviews as "a prehistoric Spaniel". He wasn't with the celebrated doo wop group during their hitmaking days on Vee-Jay Records in the 1950s but he taught their leader, James "Pookie" Hudson, how to sing during their time together at Roosevelt High School in Gary, Indiana, forming a vocal trio called the Three Bees with Pookie and another schoolfriend, Calvin Fossett.
Billy left school before Pookie, who was eventually prevailed upon by other schoolmates to join the group which became the Spaniels. A few years into their professional career Billy received several invitations to join them but resisted; he didn't become a member until the late 1980s.
This was the second lineup of Spaniels, to be heard on later Vee-Jay sides such as Everyone's Laughing. Around 1990, however, Pookie decided to reform the original group, who had sung on Vee-Jay's debut release Baby It's You and the classic Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite. All the original members, who had long been out of the business, were keen to get back together with the exception of Ernest Warren, who had become a minister, and Billy took his place.
Now Billy Shelton is the last man standing from those Roosevelt High days – and still leading a group of Spaniels. They can be seen in Episode One of the BBC documentary series Rock'n'Roll America, with Billy intoning those immortal bass notes of Gerald Gregory's which usher in Goodnite, Sweetheart, Goodnite.
As mentioned in the previous post, Brent Wilson contacted Ben E King for the doo wop documentary Streetlight Harmonies but the singer died before an interview could be set up.
It's a great pity, in more than one sense. Wilson seems to have taken considerable pains to gain the trust of the artists who took part, and even though contributions were heavily edited in the final version the raw footage must have been quite extensive if the case of Vito Picone of the Elegants is anything to go by. According to a virtual Q&A Picone was "in the chair" for a straight six hours before someone realised it might be time to break for a meal.
I have just watched Streetlight Harmonies, Brent Wilson's new documentary about doo wop, and it's well worth your attention whether you are an aficionado or merely, as it were, doo wop-curious. A little over eighty minutes, it provides a very clear overview of the era as well as some discussion about the genre's lasting influence. It may not be the first film dedicated to the subject but where it excels is in the deft editing of the testimony of a large number of interviewees, allowing the story of this music to be told almost entirely through the artists' own words. Charlie Horner, credited as historical consultant, makes an occasional appearance when context is needed and DJ Jerry Blavat ("The Geator with the Heater"), songwriter Jeff Barry and some others appear, although the vast majority of interviewees are group members (including some representatives of girl groups).
Interviews have been cut up and are spread throughout the film according to theme. The focus is on doo wop as a phenomenon and the experiences common to all those involved rather than having large sections dedicated to individual artists or groups. That might sound bitty but it isn't; the narrative flows very well. At the beginning we get an introductory segment about the form's gospel origins then we move to the Orioles and then - no, not to the Dominos, as a more detailed chronological approach might have taken us, but Frankie Lymon ... which is a bit of a jump, though it can certainly be justified as another major breakthrough.
Like all right-thinking people I follow Alwyn Turner's online series Revive 45 on the Lion and Unicorn website, and I urge the more malleable reader to go forth and do likewise. Once a month Mr Turner casts his eye over the top ten from forty five years ago, and the resulting mix of insight, original research (he's interviewed quite a few of the artists) and unashamed enthusiasm for hits long condemned as "uncool" by others has frequently been an ear-opener for me - and he knows how to turn the odd pleasing phrase too. The most recent post considers the charts from April 1975, including Bobby Goldsboro's oft-disparaged Honey (above).
Reading the piece has prompted me to listen to Goldsboro's record again and to look at the lyrics more closely. But before I get onto a more detailed examination I need to bring a certain hangup of mine into the open. The notional "coolnesss" or otherwise of certain records has often proven a hurdle to my fullhearted enjoyment of them, so I rather envy Mr Turner's lack of shame in that respect. I suppose it all goes back to my childhood ... childhood ... childhood ...
Update: Spencer Leigh's Could This Be Magic? has now been been published as an e-book and is available worldwide from UK amazon here and US amazon here.
This is to let readers know that the DJ and author Spencer Leigh has written a book about doo wop which will be published this Friday, 17th April.
The current crisis means that it will be issued initially in e-book form, although it's hoped a hard copy will be available later. I recently read an advance copy of the book, which is entitled Could It Be Magic?, and chatted to Spencer Leigh about it.
There will be no hooliganism. There will be no vandalism. There will be no bevvying ... because the world is watching us.It was repeated today on BBC Radio 4 Extra, and as far as I can tell will remain available, for UK and US listeners alike, for at least a month - very possibly longer.
