B̶e̶a̶c̶h̶ B̶o̶y̶s̶ Cheapo Cheapo: Very Complete

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.

Novel by Angela Milne republished

Every so often over the years, more in hope than expectation, I've trawled the internet in search of a copy of One Year's Time, a rare novel by Angela Milne, niece of A.A. Milne. I first came across it in the National Library of Scotland in the mid-eighties when researching the plays of her uncle; like him, she had worked for Punch and had a light and appealing prose style. 

I contacted her directly around then and complimented her on the book; I received a charming reply in which she shared some of her memories of her famous relative. Sadly, my filing system means it may take a few aeons to locate that reply - though I recall its spidery writing and think I'm representing her correctly in saying that he was keen on Dickens, particularly David Copperfield, but that his plays were "a little fluffy", at least when she looked back on them nowadays. 

Jeffrey Holland as Stan Laurel back at the Edinburgh Fringe (2023)

 

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:

New book by Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers (review to follow)

 

Jimmy Merchant of the Teenagers has just published the first part of a two-volume autobiography. As  the first memoir written by a member of this pioneering group, this is a significant publication; I will add a review here shortly. You can buy an autographed copy direct from Pearly Gates Publishing here, although the cheaper option in the UK seems to be to buy from a certain well-known online shop. On its facebook page the company states that "Pearly Gates publishes and promotes Christian literature by authors who empower, inspire, and educate".

In the meantime, you can read or listen to an interview which Merchant recorded at Fordham University in 2006 for the Bronx African American History Project. The book idea was already being discussed by then, and potential mainstream publishers seemingly come and gone, though it's not clear how much writing had been done: he says at one point that "the difficult part about writing the book isn’t so much putting it into a form, but reliving it".

Like Lymon, Merchant had longterm problems with addiction after his time in the Teenagers, and also had a long and frustrating struggle, along with fellow Teenager Herman Santiago, to claim his share of the songwriting credits for Why Do Fools Fall in Love. The situation as he describes it in the interview, which I presume hasn't changed since 2006, is that even though his co-authorship was acknowledged in court Morris Levy's son was ultimately able to reclaim the rights to the song after a period when Merchant had finally been receiving royalties. Merchant and Santiago then took it to the Supreme Court, only to meet ultimate defeat:

And they gave us their final statement, which said something like – we do know that Jimmy Merchant and [fellow Teenager] Herman Santiago are the legitimate writers, co-writers, of this song Why Do Fools Fall In Love? because they brought it into the office when they auditioned [for George Goldner of Gee Records], and everyone else before that said they saw them singing Why Do Fools Fall In Love? in the neighborhood, in Washington Heights. But because they can’t come up with a reason why the law of the Statue of Limitations need to be rewritten or changed, we have to continue to allow the Levy estate to have the rights to the songs – the very persons that they claim have ripped them off all these years. That’s the law .... the comfort is this, and only this: I had my day in court.

Here's a link to the page on Fordham University's website which has an abstract of the interview, and you can also download an mp3 from there.

This is the direct link to the transcribed interview.

I'd recommend going for the latter because the audio version is intermittently punctuated by loud buzzing sounds which become rather wearing. That form is also easier to navigate if you are only interested in the doo wop stuff; it's quite some time, for example, before the subject of Why Do Fools Fall in Love comes around for discussion. But there is also considerable interest in being taken into the fine detail of someone's life, discovering how Merchant slips almost accidentally into singing and is delighted by the discovery, so it's worth reading the whole thing.

 I'll report on the book itself soon.

 

Sound It Out (BBC 4 record shop documentary)

 

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.

It was a film made up of great moments, so kudos to editor Barbara Zosel as well as film maker Jeanie Finlay. The bit that really hit home with me, for reasons which I needn't go into here, was the slight hint of tension between the owner and one of the assistants, formerly employed by the defunct Zavvi. He was creating order outfront and you could tell the owner wasn't entirely sure this was an unmixed blessing, much as he might have needed the help.

There were also appearances by a couple in their sixties, of a type familiar to me from two years of working weekends in an off license in the Parkhead area of Glasgow, who gave a pleasing and tender performance - by which I mean they were enjoying the camera's attention, and why not?  A sample exchange:

She: Is it forty six year?
He: Thereabouts.
She: I could've done a life sentence and been free.

But he treated her to three Meat Loaf albums anyway. If that isn't love ... And there was also a hint of black humour as he talked of buying a burial plot and preparing for his Endless Sleep, which balanced his flirtatious banter with the off-camera Ms Finlay.

Otherwise it was males in their twenties or thirties, I would guess, all finding escape - as was spelt out at the end - both through the experience of being in the record shop, browsing and being guided by the advice of the trustworthy and knowledgeable owner, and in going home and listening to the goodies they had bought.

At one point the owner was referred to as a guide, and then as a pusher - but you were left in no doubt that this sort of obsessive, addictive occupation was at least less harmful than some other routes to oblivion. One younger interviewee said that everyone around the poverty-ridden area - charity shops and pound shops abound - drank, and it was easy to get into trouble. At one time, the owner told us, it used to be boasted that the area had the widest high street in Europe "but they don't play on that anymore."

 When we saw selected punters at home, singing along to their music, it would have been easy to present those moments with a dash of mockery, but by that time you had been taken into their lives deeply enough to understand: the heavy metal fan for whom music really was a lifeline; the Quo fan with various medical conditions quietly singing along to Caroline - and, in both cases, the unconscious air guitar, not held aloft but played, it seemed, for themselves, the externalisation of their pleasure in listening and reliving memories.

There were some vaguely arty shots which justified their presence: an image of wires emanating from a telegraph pole gave way to a shot of the grooves on a LP as it rotated, which was enough to make the point that music reaches out and touches, and indirectly connects, individuals.

The focus was as much on the punters as the owner, but there is no doubt that the latter was, quietly, the star: again and again the customers praised his knowledge and the atmosphere of the shop. There was something paternal in his attitude to the customers: when the oldster left the shop after some new witticism or another bout of flirtation with the film maker - "Love ya, Baby," he said at one point, blowing a kiss then shutting the door with immense care, rather undoing the playboy image - there may have been a hint of amusement, but it seemed fond.

And when, on Record Store Day, they had bands in the tiny space and one lead singer, in lieu of a cherrypicker, stomped up and down on the counter, the owner's reaction remained good-humoured: whatever he felt about the quality of the music assailing his ears at that moment, he must have known he was observing a right and fitting way for an aspiring rock star to behave.

I just hope the owner manages to keep that assistant with the zeal for tidiness in check: when the latter's efforts spread behind the counter, it throws the owner's self-confessedly idiosyncratic ordering system into confusion. But as far as I'm concerned he has his priorities right: for me the key detail in the film was the owner's saying that he had listened to everything in his shop at least once,in order to provide the customers with the service they so clearly valued: the Quo fan said he "would literally, physically cry" if the shop were to go the way of so many other record shops, a point reinforced when another punter (below) talked wistfully of the days when there were five places you could buy records in the area. Now only this documentary's subject remains. And remark towards the end of the documentary suggests the owner is fully aware of the significance of maintaining this oasis:

I think the shop's an escape for a lot of people. It's somewhere for them to go and escape their lives for an hour. And that's important. You put on your record and you're totally taken away for however long the record lasts. And I think there's always going to be a market for that.

But maybe the last word should go to two of the customers - the heavy metal fans. One of them describes the shop as "a safe home for everyone really," the other elaborating: "It's just everyone kind of swallows their differences once they get inside. The last bastion of sensibleness."

"In the world?" his friend asks.

"No - in Stockton, certainly."



Related posts and links:

 A series of posts about the closing of Soho's Cheapo Cheapo Records here. 

A review of Graham Jones' book Last Shop Standing here. 
 
More about the documentary, including a link for buying the full version on DVD, here.

Interview with film maker Jeannie Finlay here. 

If you're not based in Teesside the shop has its own website here.  

That'll Be the Day - fifty years on

 

 

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.

I was about fifteen when I saw the film, and at the same time the songs featured were being played on the radio: I still can the remember the moment I became aware of the beauty and the yearning in Frankie Lymon's voice when he hit a certain note during Why Do Fools Fall in Love? Around the same time there was a Chuck Berry concert on TV; I bought a Little Richard album a few days later, no Berry being in stock, and I've been listening to that kind of thing, or developments thereof, ever since. 

Ray Connolly, who wrote the screenplay, has written a piece in today's Daily Mail which provides some interesting background about the film and its sequel, Stardust, which can be read here, saying that "to be honest, of the two, I've always preferred the simple realism of That'll Be The Day, which was about ordinary people in ordinary situations."

That'll Be The Day, if you're not familiar with it, is a modest but very satisfying British rites-of-passage movie with 70s pop star David Essex (who'd already scored in the stage musical Godspell) playing a 1950s teenager with a string of conquests but no sense of direction until music starts to give his life a purpose.

I Say a Little Prayer

 

 

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 don't know whether this particular bit of footage is already well known - it seems to have come from a documentary - but either way it makes for fascinating watching and listening. An enthused, immersed Bacharach (at the piano) and Hal David are present, along with a trio of backing vocalists, and even though the performance isn't quite fixed yet, it's essentially already there. This tantalising glimpse into the creative process is followed by what appears to have been the very first time the song got a public airing in live performance, before the record was released.

Nolly (review of new drama about Noele Gordon)

 
 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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.

Nolly acknowledges the limitations of the longrunning soap in which Noele Gordon spent the greater part of her career but also makes abundantly clear what it meant to its viewers: small wonder that Dorothy Hobson, writer of an excellent book about Crossroads, appeared to give it her approval in a piece in the Daily Telegraph today.

John Lennon

 

 

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.
 

One incident remembered from childhood bears out the "semi-religious" tag being applied to pop music for myself and my brothers. My father was advising a priest who was staying overnight, and we, the children, had a lot of opportunity to talk to him. I think (and this sounds like a lousy joke but isn't) he may have needed time off to reflect on his calling, as a later article in the Daily Express - evidently a class act even then - dignified his dark night of the soul with the heading:

VOCATION? NO - VACATION!

Anyway, the wide-ranging conversation came round to the subject of pop music, and this man of God shocked us by claiming that the Beatles regularly laughed themselves silly at the "cripples and hunchbacks" who would be waiting to greet them at airports; it was all there in the biography, he said, if we didn't believe it.

I can barely remember the incident, let alone the timescale; all I recall is at some point later my eldest brother proclaiming: "It doesn't matter - JL still is King."

Whether that meant he did or didn't believe it, I'm not sure; but I think on some level he'd worked out that that the priest's words were a salvo in a religious war, firing from the same side as our father. Our collective faith did not waiver - and later, reading Hunter Davies' biography, I could see that the claim was , at best, a mischievously distorted one.

Jerry Lee Lewis

 

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.

These I Have Loved (and Learnt off of)

 

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. 

"Broadcaster" seems more a appropriate term than DJ in this context, as I'm not including representatives of Radio 1 in this happy band, even though the station was regular listening for me in the early seventies. This is because John Peel and others were, in effect, building on enthusiasms already learnt from my brothers or through music papers or watching Top of the Pops or The Old Grey Whistle Test. My siblings were immune, however, to the delights of doo wop and rock'n'roll, which were largely my own discoveries, made by a process of trial and error whenever a likely-looking LP in a record shop or newsagent's seemed cheap enough to take a chance on. 

In the late seventies and early eighties, however, I became keenly aware that alternatives were available, that another style of music was available and had, in fact, been around for quite a while.

Emmerdale

 

  "Amos is a character." 

That was my entree.

Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull now available

 

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.

25 Glorious Years of Pizza

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.

Jake Thackray biography

 

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.

Paul Thompson, cowriter with John "Fake Thackray" Watterson, recently posted the above image of its cover design on social media advance orders are already being taken - the Scratching Shed website is here. Publication date is August 11th. The hardback book, running to 464 pages, is £20 and post-free in the UK, which sounds like a pretty good deal to me. I read a short sample in draft form and can't wait for the whole thing.

Here's part of the description on the Scratching Shed website:

The book reveals a life as extraordinary his writing: the hard childhood in the terraces of Leeds, remarkable Catholic education and formative years in France and war-torn Algeria; the first career as an inspirational, unorthodox, highly creative teacher; the meteoric development as a writer and performer, and discovery by the BBC; the Abbey Road recordings and impact on The Beatles; the fame and fortune brought by a remarkable television career... and Jake’s rejection of it all.  It is the story of a charismatic, complex, self-effacing man who remained an enigma even to his friends.

 

 Other posts about Jake Thackray:

 On Again! On Again! or Strangers on a Train

 Ralph, William and Jake (and Davey) or Act As Known

14 Karat Soul's first TV appearance

 

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.

I saw this line-up around a year or two later in the UK, and for me this will forever be the group. They appeared in the original modest workshop-type production of The Gospel at Colonus and Sister Suzie Cinema at the Edinburgh Fringe, and I saw their normal stage act quite a few times over the next few years in Scotland and England. 

I've written about this experience several times, so I won't rehash it - links below if you care to explore - but the most important point, which I never tire of repeating, is that their subsequent studio recordings were but a pale shadow of the excitement of seeing the group, propelled by the bass voice of Reginald "Briz" Bisbon, performing in theatres. Even now I can't find the words to describe adequately how I felt over the nights of seeing them during a week's residency at the Mitchell Theatre in Glasgow in the early eighties: there was a moment of what I can only term rough magic during their opening number, Boogie Woogie Bugle Boy, when the blending of their voices produced ... well, I don't know what. Their acapella single of that song doesn't have the studio effects of later recordings, so ought to be close to that experience, but isn't, at least according to my memory.

Repeat of Juke in the Back show about the Flamingos

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);

Outside Soap: the sad case of the "Eden-ender"

 

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.

Monkey Bar Business: three Depression-era songs

 

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.

No Place Like Home now being repeated on Forces TV

 

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.

Bakeries I Have Loved ... and Lost

 [Barney Farmer]

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.

Cumbrae-Potter Karaoke or A Memory of Christmas Past

 

 

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!"?

Just One Hissing Thing After Another

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. 

In Which Tape Hisstory Repeats Itself

 

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.

He ruined the ending, one of the loveliest parts in the whole piece ...

 

 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 ...

Return to Cheapo or Is That All There Is, Sonically Speaking?

 

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. 

Last Call for Elevenses

A final selection of eleven posts from the archive to mark eleven years of this blog. Click directly on the image beside each description, rather than the title, to read the piece.

1: Gnome Thoughts from a Foreign Country is the first in a series about David Bowie's musical inspirations. It was prompted by the purchase of the pictured songbook from Bowie's early years but one thought soon led to another, taking in Anthony Newley, Alan Klein, and much else. The thread leading back to Bowie was put under a bit of strain during these labyrinthine wanderings but I'd like to think it didn't actually snap.

  

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.

Another eleven: comedy

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.

Second XI

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

Like the Flamingos, the Orchids recorded for Al Benson's Parrot Records in the early fifties. They are best known for the disjointed narrative of Newly Wed, beloved of Frank Zappa and others, but You Have Two (I Have None), aka Happiness, which only saw the light of day in the nineties, is equally good. It seems they weren't treated well by Benson, and as a result didn't remain in the business, but they left the world eight sides of the very highest quality. Some discussion of Newly Wed cropped up during my dialogue with Clarke Davis but this piece was the first examination of a doo wop record written especially for the blog. (The image above, taken from the Vocal Group Harmony website, is not of the Orchids but the Five Thrills, the previous group of the Orchids' Gilbert Warren.)

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.

Blogs Eleven

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.)

In which JL still is king

Every Thursday night, from the late 1960s until some date lost to memory, my brothers and I would gather around the television to watch Top of the Pops, praying that my father would not interrupt the programme (in those one-TV-set-per-household days) and that my mother would be able to arrange the making of his tea in a way that would overlap with our time attending this semi-religious broadcast. 

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.

Lennon: The New York Years (aka LENNONYC) now available on BBC iplayer

 

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.

It is required you do awake your Dono-faith one more once

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.

All being well, I hope to attend the earlier show, but I suspect I won't be the only person wending his way to Sloane Square with mixed feelings on that Monday. Restrictions mean Donovan will no longer be playing with a band, and because of this it seems there will be fewer numbers from his new/old album Eco-Song, which features some lesser-known recordings from his extensive back catalogue with an ecological link.

In other words, probably not much different from a typical Donovan concert - and I'd stopped going to those, for reasons outlined in earlier posts.

But maybe, in these times, a typical Donovan concert is what we need. And I'm aware, as with going to see Ben E King, that there's a ceremonial aspect: we come to give thanks, to acknowledge what our hero has been to us, not to complain that time hasn't stood still.

Tony Randall

I was sorry to learn yesterday of the death of Tony Randall. I had emailed him a couple of days ago to let him know about the Billy Shelton piece (previous post), which I thought might be of interest; the email bounced back then I saw today on the Louie Report website that he had died in June of last year.

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: Spaniel Forever

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 originals, 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.

About a year after the first broadcast of that programme I was contacted by Billy, who had read a piece in this blog about the Spaniels' personnel. He felt that he had never received the credit for his part in the group's history and was keen to talk “before I'm gone”.

The story which follows is not restricted to the Spaniels. Some key events in the decades between schooldays with Pookie and Billy's finally becoming a member of the group have also been sketched in. That's because there is no real dividing line: one way or another, music has always been central to the life of Billy Shelton, right from the start.