Freddie Davies in The Secret Garden at King's Head, Islington

For fans of Freddie Davies within reach of London, the happy news that he is currently appearing in The Secret Garden at the King's Head, Islington, on Saturday and Sunday nights until Sunday 17th March. Click here for more details and to make a booking. The performances are at 7.15 but there is also one matinee performance at 3.00 on the last day.

Freddie is recreating the role of Ben Weatherstaff, the gardener, which he played in the original RSC production at Stratford which transferred to the Aldwych in 2001. The King's Head production is a concert version, so dancing is out, but on the plus side you're very close to the cast, who make good use of the limited space: there are effective moments as they walk through the audience.

I'm not the greatest fan of the singing style in some modern musicals but even I could appreciate that the singing was top notch throughout (no amplification either) and that the songs were about revealing character, advancing the story. There were several musicians onstage, too, so it wasn't just a piano backing. The orphaned Mary is a resolutely un-cute Ana Martin, and Freddie has a particularly affecting moment in Act 2 when, in a beautifully judged speech, he recalls her mother.

I have to declare an interest, as I am acquainted with several of the cast, but there is another review here and here, and you can find more online.



Read an earlier post about Freddie Davies here. 

Photo credit for above: Claire Bilyard.

Richard Briers

 

Have just read that Richard Briers has died. I was lucky enough to see him in Ray Cooney's Run For Your Wife at the Shaftesbury Theatre around 1983, in what may have been the first run cast which included Carol Hawkins, Bernard Cribbins and Royce Mills. Naturally I knew him from television but this was of a different order altogether: there was a sense of his absolute control of the audience, his surfing the laughs which he had chosen precisely when to unleash. Can you unleash something which you subsequently surf? Probably not, but anyway he made it happen, and then he shaped it, determined the length. We were his willing instrument.

This may even have been my first visit to a London theatre, a couple of years before I moved here. Every single moment of that production - and Richard Briers was present more or less throughout - was sheer pleasure. I believe there is, or is going to be, a film version but I suspect it's a purely theatrical experience, and something akin to music. Coachloads may have come in to see Briers because of his telly fame but there is no doubt that he owned the stage and knew this genre inside out. I've only had a handful of great nights in the theatre but that was undoubtedly one of them. There had been a review in the Sunday Telegraph which may be online somewhere; if I can find it I'll add it below, but the main point it made was that farce is closely aligned to tragedy in terms of structure but it is "one of the hardest of theatrical trees to climb" (if I remember the crtic's words correctly) although Ray Cooney had successfully done so on this occasion.

So the source material presumably wasn't any hindrance to Briers giving a good performance, although I can think of other Cooney farces with other stars which don't stay in the mind in the same way. So let me salute the memory of a performer whom I was lucky enough to see in a farce which was a perfect fit. He once said of his 1956 performance as Hamlet (top) that it wasn't one of the best, but it was one of the fastest; beat by beat on that night in 1983 in the Shaftesbury Theatre there could have been no possible complaints about timing.


Postscript:

I have found an extract from that Telegraph review:

“A frolic? It is much more than that, it is a triumph. The brilliance of the structure, the imaginative joy, the scope for comic acting … put this entertainment at the top of the hardest of all theatrical trees to climb - that of farce.”

And I have just read that the film premiere of Run For Your Wife was only a couple of weeks ago.

With one Danny Dyer in the Richard Briers role.

Think I'll pass.

The Beatles' Please Please Me: Remaking a Classic

This documentary about younger artists recreating the Beatles' day-long recording session for their first LP was better than I expected. It will be available on BBC iplayer here until 1:39AM GMT until Wednesday the 27th, and is worth watching.

As you may have guessed from this blog my interest in popular music and its makers falls off sharply by the seventies, so my expectations weren't very high: why watch this when you could be listening to the original album? But what was interesting to see was that quite a few of those involved were okay about following the Beatles' blueprints - not slavishly copying, but seeing them, not unreasonably, as a pretty reliable guides. And it was, essentially, about an act of homage, at a historical moment (the fiftieth anniversary to the day) in the place where it originally happened, so there was never likely to be much in the way of iconoclasm.

But it wasn't a tribute band experience either: Mick Hucknall's remaining ginger locks were neither literally nor metaphorically concealed beneath a Beatles wig. He made the point that Lennon stuck pretty close to Arthur Alexander's vocal for Anna, and the show was partly about acknowledging those artists like Alexander and the Shirelles, who had been covered by various Liverpool groups.

Hello Walls

I have written earlier in this blog of the surprising omission, in later editions of Philip Larkin's All What Jazz, of his review of St Louis Blues as recorded by Louis Armstrong and Luis Russell's Orchestra.

In the first hardback edition of this collection of jazz criticism, as pictured above, Larkin called it "the hottest record ever made" and claimed  that by a certain chorus you could actually feel the walls move.

In these days, when archive recordings are often compromised (don't get me started), it's harder to put that to the test but I certainly seem to remember experiencing such a sensation, or something like it, when I first heard St Louis Blues on the little record player I once owned. Listening to it now, however, the arrangement sounds too basic, too unadventurous - and maybe at some point Larkin felt the same and recanted. Or maybe someone in the chain messed up, who knows?

The other side, Dallas Blues, continues to excite, and there's a fair bit of bassist Pops Foster in there too, who must take most of the responsibility for any perceived wall-wobble in either performance. But Panama, recorded by the Russell Orchestra without Armstrong, is even better than Dallas Blues. In fact - and I'm talking cold, hard scientific fact, be certain of that - it is the Best Jazz Record Ever.

Spector trial film

It may sound like a premature April Fool, but according to Rolling Stone magazine Al Pacino is to costar with Helen Mirren in an HBO (ie TV) film on March 24th about Phil Spector's trial, written by David Mamet, and here is the trailer to prove it:

You Gave Me the WRONG Answer

Today, on a certain social networking site, I was informed that Paul McCartney has set up a new Q&A feature on his website entitled You Gave Me the Answer, named after the Honey Pie-style pastiche which appears on the Venus and Mars album. This prompted me to listen more closely than heretofore to the lyrics of said song, and it is not too much to say that the experience stunned me. Below is my analysis.

Such have I dreamed

Granted, the internet is full of a number of things, but here's something I really didn't expect to find. Someone has sampled the opening chords of one of my favourite (but little known) doo wop records, Chimes by the Pelicans. Not saying that I particularly like the result but it is - interesting.

The More the Mercerer

A quick note about the latest Bazza programme, this time about lyricist Johnny Mercer. No, Baz didn't play the Astaire version of One For My Baby, but there was a high proportion of archive recordings featured this time; he even said at one point that he preferred the older recordings, liked to imagine Mercer hearing his songs on record for the first time.

Tiger, Tiger or Let the newt see the steam train

Ah, I know what I did now. Tried for too much in the same day. Like Icarus. Or Bruce's Big Night Out.

Unplugged ... and Unequivocal

Found this version of Macca's Unplugged show on youtube recently - suspect it won't be up for too long so don't blame me if it's already disappeared by the time you click on the embedded link below.

More songs (and repeats) than the CD or the original televised MTV programme, and while there is nothing spectacular in the material which appears here for the first time the whole is very enjoyable. The performance comes from 1991, so is already more than twenty years old, and what I mostly remember from the CD is a reworked And I Love Her (47.12) slowed down and effective in a different way, and a beautiful instrumental performance of Junk (1.15.02) which is better than the studio original.

Brighten the Corner ...

 

Had a small but pleasing moment today which I want to share.

After I had lunch at the local shopping centre (ooh, classy) in the area of North London where I work I had a few minutes before I had to return to business. "What's it to be?" I thought to myself. "A mooch in HMV?"  But as I a) couldn't remember whether it was still open, and b) couldn't imagine finding much of interest there anyway, I went instead into the shop known as Tiger, really just to waste some time.

If you don't know about this chain, Tiger is full of lots of little things which contain the promise of creativity, though in my case it's rarely followed through, as though on some level I've tricked myself into believing the act of acquisition is enough in itself: sad to report my flat is full of such empty promises.

They Write the Songs: Dietz and Schwartz

 Not too much to say about the latest episode of Barry Manilow's They Write the Songs (available on BBC iplayer here until Thursday) except that I enjoyed it. Felt that the langurous, melismatic version Something to Remember You By (Etta Jones this time, not James) did a disservice to the song - it's a plea, not a seduction - but then I have Turner Layton's more modest version firmly lodged in my head (not available on youtube or Sp*tify, so you will have to search it out for yourself).

But the main thing is that after several episodes I'm more keenly aware of, and warming to, Barry's particular skills: he's chatting casually about something he loves, so you're not going to get the precision or detail of a Russell Davies or Robert Cushman, but that's the wrong thing to be looking for. As easy, friendly introductions to these songwriters these are well done - provided you accept Barry's personality.

When Barry bigged up Harry

Spare those keyboards, embittered Manilovians contemplating a pre-emptive strike, for I am happy to report that the most recent episode of Barry Manilow's BBC Radio 2 series They Write the Songs, available on iplayer until Thursday, is a wall-to-wall good 'un, and warmly recommended. This week's subject is Harry Warren, whose songs  - particularly those penned with lyricist Al Dubin - featured frequently in Benny Green's Sunday radio show.

But despite a remarkable output over several decades it's fair to say Warren's name is not generally known, for all the enduring popularity of his songs. He is, as Barry puts it, "the most non-famous songwriter I know" - a form of words which seems precisely right on this occasion, suggesting a difference of kind, not degree.

The question Round Britain Quiz (possibly) dared not use ...

 ... or, as is equally likely, I didn't send it in - can't remember now. Or maybe it just wasn't good enough. You'll have to ask Paul Bajoria.

Look, let's not keep going on about it. The point is I found an old attempt at a Round Britain Quiz question and decided to share it with the nation - or that small but significant proportion of same whose eyes habitually slide over these musings.

Barry - this week's deliberate mistake

Have just listened to the second episode of They Write the Songs, on Cole Porter, currently on BBC iplayer here.

As with last week's programme about Jerome Kern, you get to hear most of the composer's best known songs (usually in the most Radio 2-friendly versions), some basic information (in Porter's case: lots of hit songs but fewer hit shows), and at the end Barry sings snatches of some Porter songs he didn't have room to include, so there's no doubt he owns the material he's presenting, and if the effect of the programme might be to turn more listeners on to Porter, that can only be a good thing.

So what have I found to complain about this week?

I Didn't Write the Song, Not Really ...

As AA Milne would have phrased it, I am become obsessed with the music of Jerome Kern. This might have manifested itself in some form on this blog at a later date, but something has forced my hand. I speak of a programme devoted to Kern which was broadcast last night as part of Barry Manilow's They Write the Songs on BBC Radio 2 (listen to the 7/7/14 repeat here for one week).

This is a series in which that much-loved entertainer aims, in a chummy kind of way, to enlighten those of us who know nothing, or who seek to know a little more than the little they already know, about major contributors to the great American songbook (you know, that thing which was around before rock'n'roll).

This is the start of a second run, and the shows have been decently done: you don't need to be a Manilow fan to feel buoyed up by his good humour and enthusiasm for his subjects. As an entry level guide it's well pitched, and there isn't the sense of a celebrity name fronting a show in which he has nothing invested.

But there was something which annoyed me a great deal in last night's show and, as I couldn't find details of a producer on the BBC's site, I'm venting here. You don't have to read it but I have to write it (hey, that could be my slogan).

From Matthew Street to Abbey Road (Beatles radio documentary)

 No time to trick this out with lots of pics and clips but I want to alert readers, before it's too late, to Spencer Leigh's very enjoyable three part radio documentary From Matthew Street to Abbey Road, chronicling the Fabs' gravitation from Liverpool to London via Hamburg in 1962. Sadly, the first programme, recently repeated on BBC Radio Merseyside, has already outlived its one week span on BBC iplayer, but you can catch the remaining two programmes for the next four and five days respectively by going here (part two) and here (three). Don't bother clicking the image above as it's only a screengrab.

The story will be known, at least in outline, to most people reading this, but the beauty of this series is that with a narrowness of focus and three whole hours to play with Leigh can dig a little deeper than other docs and uncover all manner of fascinating details, many of which will be unknown even to the most ardent of Beatle People.

For example you may well know, as I did, that at George Martin's insistence the Beatles recorded Mitch Murray's How Do You Do It? And you may have heard it: not unpleasant, a competent job even though their hearts clearly weren't in it. Ah, but have you also heard the demo which Martin gave them to work from? And have you heard Murray's thoughts on the job the Beatles did on what he considered to be his finest song to date?

Those Bad Cabaret Medleys in full ...

Thanks to audacity (the software, I mean) those of you wondering how those mooted clubland medleys in the Christmas quiz might sound can hear for yourselves, as they have been uploaded to soundcloud - links below.

The Richest Songs in the World (BBC 4 documentary)

If you're like me - a reasonable supposition if you've elected to read this blog - then this TV documentary probably didn't seem the most enticing of prospects. Another excuse for a musical countdown: cue overfamiliar info, annoying celeb soundbites and those frustrating, miniscule fragments of the songs themselves which make you wonder why you're wasting your time when you could be, I dunno, writing a play or something.

Still, always a bit of manufactured tension to be savoured after you've allowed yourself to get hooked and fall to wondering just what songs will feature higher up the list - though to extract maximum enjoyment it's generally wiser to record this kind of show, not watch it live: that way you've got a fighting chance of skipping to the good, or goodish, bits without being driven crazy in the meantime by the aforesaid celebs' unremarkable musings or, worse, the portentous tones of a certain ubiquitous, rent-an-authority commentator.

In the event, however, he didn't feature, and in fact this show proved to be something a great deal better than the norm, which is why I'm writing about it below, and recommending that you catch it on BBC iplayer here, where it will be available to view in the UK until the 1st of February 2016. [updated link]

Christmas Quiz- Answers

As I'm going to be out later I am posting the answers to the Christmas Quiz now, but entries will still be accepted up to 10pm GMT today (Boxing Day). So go to the entry here if you still want to take part and don't click below to read the answers until you have submitted your entry via the Comments box in the Questions post. Good luck, everyone, and thanks for taking part - hands across the water, indeed. 

I have tricked out the answers with a few pics and youtube links, so even if you didn't outperform the others at least you will get a bit of diversion. I now feel slightly bad that I didn't contribute a prize - maybe next year. Okay, prepare yourself. And the blogger's decision is final, unless you can provide proof positive to the contrary (and no, self-adjusted wikipedia entries don't count):

Valentines - A Christmas Prayer

As a reluctant nod to the season, herewith Christmas Prayer, a lesser-known Valentines track from 1955 - at least it isn't on the Collectables Best of collection that I have. I first came across it on a UK compilation  of Christmas-related songs from "the Roulette family of labels" on the now-defunct Westside label, which issued quite a lot of doo wop.

Snodgrass or Lost John

Today marks the third anniversary of this blog and I was all ready to do some reflecting on what it's all been for - and possibly some shameful admission of the amount of time I've wasted and why I ought never to write another word here and devote myself to Important Writing. But then I saw something and I thought: Wow! 


Now I don't know whether you will share my reaction, but I do know I want to record it for those who might. Ready? Okay.

Beat.

They're making a film of Snodgrass.

Ian Whitcomb

If you were turned on to Ian Whitcomb as a result of reading an earlier entry in this blog - or even if you've just alighted in search of information about him -  then you may be concerned to know that he is currently recovering from a stroke: details on the ukelelia site here. Luckily he and his wife Regina were at a restaurant two blocks from a hospital when it happened and Regina recognised the symptoms. He has already resumed broadcasting - I've just been listening to the second part of his Before the Beatles show - but get well cards can be sent to PO Box 451, Altadena, CA. 91001.

Jonathan Richman - Corner Store

Alright, it's not about a record shop as such but a Jonathan Richman song from the above album seems the most appropriate way of following the previous post. When the chorus, with its nonsense words, swells up for the first time (about 1.44 in) it seems stupid, old fashioned and odd - yet a joyous release, as though it does indeed embody the store, is the "ghost smell", the "old wooden smell" made audible, the shop magically - well, re-stored, I suppose you'd have to cry it.

Sound It Out (BBC 4 record shop documentary)

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.

Turn on, tune in, tape dropout

There have been various programmes on the radio to commemorate the fact that it's now ninety years since the BBC started broadcasting. This post isn't going to be a digest of them - though I register, without much interest, that Damon Albarn's recent soundscape met with less than universal acclaim - but I thought one series might be of particular interest to readers of this blog, as it's a history of radio in the US and UK, presented by the Beeb's American import Paul Gambaccini (above). You can find available episodes here and listen to them via BBC iplayer.

Parker final part

Have just realised that I haven't really put in much about my own response to Junior Parker. Already possessing the Rounder CD with all the Sun sides, I recently opted to buy the Complete Blues collection (below) instead of the all-encompassing Fantastic Voyage CD, as this seemed to have most of the sides represented in the songbook.

The Feelin' Good Factor or Boogie Chillen's Twisting Chillen

Following on from the previous post about Junior Parker's Stand By Me, I happened to be listening to an old edition of Steve Propes' 45s Show  which included Henry Strogin's Old Folks Boogie While the Young Ones Twist.

This record, new to me, reminded me of an earlier Junior Parker recording, made for Sun Records. (The above is the album on which I first heard Parker's Feelin' Good back in the days when Charly put out records which sounded, as well as felt, good, but that's a topic for another time.)

Anyway, I investigated a little online and found there was a missing link between Parker and Strogin. More to the point, I also discovered that Parker had previous. As with his recording of Stand By Me, Feelin' Good wasn't exactly the fountainhead.

Don't Stand So Close By Me

 This is by way of a coda to an earlier post, here, about the origins of Ben E King's recording of Stand By Me. If you have read that - or even if you haven't - you may know that the famous song which is credited to King and Leiber and Stoller derives in part from a 1960 Soul Stirrers number called Stand By Me Father, cowritten by Sam Cooke - though that came in its turn from an early gospel song by Charles Tindley simply entitled Stand By Me. (With me so far?)

Deborah Chessler

From October 23rd onwards, the highly recommended documentary series Street Corner Soul is to be repeated on BBC 6 Music - details of upcoming episodes here; details of episodes currently available to hear on BBC iplayer can be accessed here. Earlier posts about the series, an account of the rise and fall of doo wop as a force in popular music, can be found here.

I'm sorry to pass on the news that Deborah Chessler, composer of It's Too Soon to Know, has died. This 1948 Orioles hit is the number commonly credited with ushering in the doo wop era, so whether or not her name is known to you - and I wasn't aware of her until recently - she played a major part in musical history.

Two radio plays available on BBC iplayer

Love Me Do by Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran
Everything Between Us by David Ireland

There aren't many drama reviews on this blog, unless the piece in question is in some way music-related. I've succumbed to the odd post about comedy when the urge has proven irresistible (annoyingly, these get more hits than my pronouncements about doo wop), but in the main I've tried to keep this blog as a logical extension of the online dialogue with Clarke Davis which sparked it off: music is the main focus. But I thought I'd break my rule today because I've just listened to a couple of plays still briefly available on BBC iplayer which seem an interesting pair of bookmarks. I greatly prefer one to the other but both are good fits for their respective slots.

Love Me Do: the Beatles '62 (BBC documentary)

I watched Love Me Do: the Beatles '62 last night, a documentary commemorating the fiftieth anniversary of the Beatles' first single. It is available on BBC iplayer, here, until next Sunday. If you're like me, you will know most of the main points in this programme already: Brian Epstein buying up records; Pete Best replaced by Ringo who was temporarily replaced, in turn, by Andy White; the record which was a creditable start but far from a smash ... it's all in the numerous biographies which you've already read. If you're like me.

So why bother with this?

No, HE is Klang ... and he's mad as hell

I mentioned the film Sven Klang's Combo some time earlier, in a post about doo wop biopics. Three scenes have recently surfaced on a youtube clip, including the key moment when the group's new saxophonist plays a Charlie Parker-type solo during a torpid dancehall gig and finds that, instead of setting the woods on fire, it's politely tolerated by a puzzled audience, no more than that.

Unfortunately there are no subtitles for the clip but what I remember about seeing the film is that there was a lot of screen time devoted to the process of making music. This was not one of those films where music is really a backdrop: we see actually see them working things out. Benny Green, the broadcaster, jazz writer and a saxophonist himself, praised it in the highest possible terms in Punch.

Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts (review of Stan Laurel play on BBC Radio 4)

Have just listened for the second time to Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts, the Afternoon Drama about the early life of Stan Laurel. It will be available on BBC iplayer, here, until next Friday and it's well worth a listen.

[Update 16th June 2019: it is not currently available on iplayer but can be found on archive.org here.]

Without looking at the various books about Laurel and Hardy I can't say offhand where available facts end and the writer Colin Hough's imagination begins. I daresay there will be others ready to do so, though you will have to seek them out for yourself.

What I can declare, however, is that it's a well crafted play which has precisely the right narrowness of focus to fit that forty five minute slot, and doesn't force in clunky references to Stan's future pairing: there are no later catchphrases casually dropped into the dialogue. True, here are delicate foreshadowings for afficionados in such matters as choice of music, or Stan's complaint to his father that the crude early films he is showing in his theatres don't have stories, but you don't really need to know anything about Laurel and Hardy to enjoy it.

"Run away" hits

I vaguely remember a discussion about My Friends by the Strangers and These Golden Rings by the Jive Five, two songs which share the same bridge, on the Doo Wop Shop board - not, alas, among the posts archived on this blog - which suggested that the question of authorship was a sore subject.

But they are both great recordings.

Things to do with Denver while you're dying

John Walsh is what we call in the trade a good writer. Quite apart from anything else, he knows how to pitch comedy, making it part of the bigger picture, concealing the craft which some other hands make all too obvious. I've read too many personal columns (mostly in the Times Educational Supplement) and heard too many similar pieces spoken on the radio (mostly by professional writers on the late John Peel's Home Truths) possessed of a leaden facetiousness which makes you feel that the writer has his knee on your chest, forcing you to put out with at least the semblance of a grin if you want this ordeal to come to an end.

Not so Mr Walsh. I am fond of saying, and have probably said it here before, that when AA Milne became deputy editor of Punch, his writing style was an innovation: freer and fresher than his forebears. When someone complimented him that his latest piece seemed to be "funny without trying" Milne admitted "That's what it tried to be." Nevertheless, that's the best way to describe what I feel about Walsh's book The Falling Angels.

Having read and enjoyed Are You Talking to Me?, his memoir arranged around twelve key films in his life, I sought out this earlier account of his childhood and the pull between Ireland and England, the place where his parents settled.

Off-Kilter for Company (does that even make sense?)

I can't help it. I know it was only a couple of posts ago but I have to watch the video for Shirley and Company's Shame, Shame, Shame again. There is another clip on youtube which appears to have a different male sharing lead, but I find myself drawn to this particular pairing, this near-meeting of the hips, if not the hipsters. I think it's because, like Archie Bell and the Drells, they "dance just as good as we want" - which is to say, probably not that good, actually.

But who cares? They are so palpably enjoying themselves that it doesn't really matter. And even if they are miming on this occasion, the sound of the record is so great that it excuses everything else. And although dancing is often equated with sex, there is something sort of decorous about the dancing here: they are together, surrendering to those jazz-crazed rhythms, but in a kind of companionship rather than a suggestion that they will be getting it on shortly.

Beat-less is now more

If you listen to Spencer Leigh's On the Beat programme via BBC iplayer, you may have been puzzled to find that the show appeared to start mid-interview with Gerry Marsden and later gave way to a football match. The problem has now been sorted - hooray! - and you can hear the show in its entirety (two and a half hours) on iplayer until Saturday, so hurry.

If you haven't heard it before, and if you like the range of music described in this blog, I recommend On the Beat as a regular listen. Although there are references to local gigs you don't need to be in Liverpool to enjoy his interviews nor the wide knowledge underpinning them. At the end of his interview, Gerry Marsden even says that Spencer knows more about him than he does himself.

Floating Boaters or But wherefore could not I pronounce "Hooray" or "Boo"?

The BBC are currently rerunning 35 year old episodes of Top of the Pops, its now sunken flagship pop show, in sequence. I initially thought I'd store them all on my TV's hard drive but weekly exposure to the programme has hardened my heart a little.

Maybe the Beeb has picked up the story just a little too late. At some point around this time these editions first aired Top of the Tops stopped being watched religiously in our house. On occasions when I was watching on my own I began to change the channel when a boring song was on, preferring to watch James Bolam in When the Boat Comes In. Then one day, lost to history, I became engrossed in the unfolding story and didn't change back after the requisite three minutes. Not sure whether that meant I had grown up or that part of me died that day. Or both.

New radio play about Stan Laurel

A few weeks ago I was, for the first time, inside the Panopticon, otherwise the Britannia Music Hall, in Glasgow: the place where a young Stan Laurel made his first theatre appearance, without the knowledge of his father, Arthur Jefferson. I didn't have a guided tour, was just there by chance when their Penny Bazaar was taking place, and later went to watch some Laurel and Hardy films there.

Both the stage and the back of the theatre were blocked off, so a certain amount of imagination was needed in order to get the full effect from this place of pilgrimage, but I'm very glad I went. There is a group dedicated to preserving it, and you can find more details here.

There are also some remarkable panoramic pictures on a linked site here, allowing you to see rather more than I was able, though you still don't get to see the actual stage; the above is a screengrab from that site. Someone told me that there is a redundant toilet block in the stage area - built before someone twigged that there was no plumbing for it - and that at some point the original stage area will once again be revealed; indeed, I remember a lot of relish about the prospect of smashing through the accretions, restoring the space to something like itself. (Am I allowed to say "accretions"?)

There are regular events at the Panopticon and a shop nearby, so if you live in Glasgow, or even if you don't, please support it if you can. Judith Bowers, who was behind the discovery, has written a book about it.

But back to this new play, which is the Afternoon Play on BBC Radio 4 on Friday, 28th September - more details here. There has, in recent years, been a radio play about Stan Laurel and his relationship with Oliver Hardy by Neil Brand, but according to the Beeb's advance publicity this new script by Colin Hough, cannily entitled Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts, focuses on the relationship between Stan Laurel and his mother and is set in Glasgow in 1906. The proprietor of the Panopticon is featured so Laurel's debut may well be at the centre of the story. I've read most of the available material about the great pair over the years but can't, offhand, think how much imagination may be necessary to conjure up Laurel's early life, but the play should be an interesting listen.

I heard the radio version of Tom McGrath's stage play Mr Laurel and Mr Hardy a few years back, which I wasn't that keen on - maybe the stylised nature of it was less suitable for radio, though I have to admit that I saw the original stage production at the Citizens' Theatre in Glasgow and remember thinking that the delight of a carefully recreated dance from Way Out West at the end was a bit of a con, making the audience think they had had a better experience than what had actually unfolded over the last ninety minutes or whatever. Though there were moments when John Shedden, as Laurel, appeared uncannily like him. I had also seen him earlier in another play, at the King's Theatre, and one moment when he sat down to dine seemed to have all the characteristic, comic humility of Laurel. But I ought to read the script.

I remember Tom McGrath fondly, as there were occasions when he listened to my adolescent ramblings as though much wisdom, or at least much of interest, was contained therein. Once I was on the point of asking him about the play, and how much information there had been to draw on beyond John McCabe's two books (this was the early seventies). But I didn't - and now I can't.

There exists somewhere in the archives of the Glasgow Herald a photograph of Tom McGrath wearing half a dozen bowler hats, appealing for more as the original production involved smashing one of those at each performance. It made, as the Herald noted in a pleasing phrase, for "a hattish fetish." I hope I see that photo again some day.

I haven't yet listened to Stan, the Neil Brand radio play, though I did watch the TV adaptation. I know someone in the radio drama business who has a low opinion of the latter, and I can see that it does seem like it would be a perfect radio play, with Hardy's presence felt rather than seen. But before I knew it had been wrenched from a better setting what did discombobulate me about the TV version was that the actor playing Laurel had brown eyes. Brahn eyes! I ask yer! Brahn eyes! A small detail? Not when those piercing blue eyes stare out at you from every B&W still.

Lastly - as this post seems to have become a grab-bag of Laurel and Hardy-related memories - two more things.

One is that in my dominie incarnation I once took the chance to condense into fifteen minutes what I felt about the pair. It went well, partly because I put far more care and preparation into it than my normal lessons, shamelessly roadtesting it on numerous groups of students beforehand.

On the day itself, my colleague who'd kindly agreed to operate the slide projector didn't have an easy task because, despite the rehearsal, as I became more relaxed and felt the warmth of the audience's attention, safely distanced and indistinguishable in the semi-darkness, I added further thoughts as they occured, like the detail which has always touched me about Oliver Hardy, on tour in the UK in the fifties, going up a steep flight of stairs to get Ray Allan's autograph for his and Stan's collection. (I suppose you could say that Ray Alan returned the favour, as a photo of Stan provided the inspiration for the modelling of Lord Charles.)

After a student played a little bit of the sig tune to end proceedings and I had a strange feeling which transcended ego: while it was great to be showered with compliments - something which I never attracted, I may say, for my teaching - my overriding feeling while giving the assembly was that here was a chance to say, and to have others hear, how much these two people had meant to me, a chance to repay, at least a little, what they had given.

Which reminds me of the section which another colleague, head of Media Studies, said I should cut out of my draft of the talk, and so I did. He was probably right for such a setting but I remember the passage, which was extracted from Philip Oakes' novel about a film critic, called A Cast of Thousands, or something like that.

I recommend Oakes' novels - there's another called Exactly What We Want, which draws on his early days as a reporter - and his three volumes of autobiography, not to mention his memoir of Tony Hancock.

But I digress. The point is that the excessive piece of writing came from A Cast of Thousands (or however many it was) and concerned the film critic's then girlfriend or partner who was clearly not, after all, The One. And it all came down to Laurel and Hardy. She would watch in annoyed disbelief as he practically fell off his chair watching shorts like The Music Box and the critic realises that he can never explain the magic of those long-vanished days in the Californian sunshine nor the enduring appeal of Laurel and Hardy:

Like love, they were not part of her world.

Review of Hard Boiled Eggs and Nuts here. 


Postscript:

Another Stan Laurel play which ought to have been mentioned in this post is Stan Laurel: Please Stand Up!,  a one man show by Bob Kingdom. 

Having missed the chance to see it in an intimate theatre on my doorstep I was obliged to watch it in a less sympathetic space. But even if the laughs weren’t loud on that occasion, they were there, and the conversations in the bar at the interval showed that people were engaging with the play, which wasn't a straightforward biographical piece, nor an excuse to recreate film routines. The first act showed us a Stan who didn’t know who he was, followed by the mature Laurel in the second half and the two personae meeting at the end, giving the whole thing a satisfying and clear shape.

Kingdom also wrote the piece, which made me think about what Tim Fountain has said about writing monologues based on real characters – I don’t have his book to hand but the gist is: do all the research then forget it and make an instinctive leap towards what connects you and the character.

Mr Kingdom is currently touring with another one man show, An Audience with the Duke of Windsor - details here - but if Stan Laurel: Please Stand Up! gets another outing it is worth investigating.

The passing of Cheapo

A wonderful, painterly image of Cheapo Cheapo Records, late of  Soho, found online; another photograph provided the basis for the various images to be found at the top of this blog.

If you haven't already done so, you can click the relevant page above to read a series of posts about the demise of Cheapo, my favourite record shop, and how I found closure (of a sort).

All I need to add here is that the above photograph has the look of an Andrew Wyeth image and makes me marvel that I never realised just how steep Rupert Street is.