When the late Eric Midwinter submitted a review of the Jake Thackray biography Beware of the Bull on spec to The Call Boy, the magazine of the British Music Hall Society, it wasn't accepted for publication, so far as I know - because Thackray's songs are more aligned with music hall as the French understand the term, perhaps?
It may be a name which springs less readily to mind these days, but in the 1960s Harry Worth was a major TV comic with a genial, bumbling persona, forever confounding petty officialdom.
For those not already aware of the sad news, Terry Johnson, the last surviving member of the Flamingos, died yesterday in Las Vegas at the age of 86 - "performing to the end", Marv Goldberg says.
When I wrote about this play's imminent revival at the Finborough Theatre a few weeks ago I hoped for the best but wasn't sure what to expect.
If you are able to get to London's Royal Festival Hall there will be two performances of a new musical about R&B/rock'n'roll pioneer Lloyd Price on Saturday 11th October.
As with A.A. Milne's first novel (of sorts), Lovers in London, the mere fact of this play, Sarah Simple, being available again is welcome news.
If, like me, you've been tantalised by the many clips on youtube of a TV show entitled Rock & Roll Graffiti, the good news is that most of that show, hitherto available only as an expensive DVD box set, can now be obtained on two reasonably priced 3 disc sets.
Today marks the centenary of the pioneering doo wop/R&B singer Sonny Til, lead singer of the Orioles.
The poet who features in A.A. Milne's play The Truth About Blayds, soon to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London, may have been Milne's own creation - but he did pinch the name.
A.A. Milne's 1921 play The Truth About Blayds is about to be revived at the Finborough Theatre in London.
When I think of the Hoagy Carmichael-Johnny Mercer song Skylark it's an unlikely recording which first springs to mind.
For those who don't own a copy of the original edition - and even for those who do - the first volume of Chris O'Leary's excellent song-by-song Bowie study is about to be published in a considerably revised and expanded version, as depicted above.
I freely admit that I haven't researched this meticulously but it seems to me that, more and more, any new TV documentaries which revisit the familiar tale of some much-loved comedian or double act seek to entice viewers by incorporating the words "The Lost Tapes" or "The Unseen Tapes" into the programme's title.
Hearing of Brian Wilson's death yesterday my immediate thought was of the duophonic cassette of Pet Sounds which had been my regular companion on late-night walks in the early eighties, slotted into one of the bulky Walkmans of the day.
I have just watched AKA Doc Pomus, a documentary about the songwriter best known for his partnership with Mort Shuman in the late 50s and early 60s.
I have just learnt that the 1966 episode of The Blackpool Show featuring Freddie "Parrotface" Davies at the height of his fame can be found on a newly released Blu-ray edition of The Punch and Judy Man; Tony Hancock is hosting the show, hence its inclusion.
For those who might be interested in a book about doo wop which is more than just a history of the changing personnel of a group or groups, let me draw your attention to John Michael Runowicz's Forever Doo-wop, published in 2010.
Scott Walker died five years ago today, the 22nd of March. I first heard about it on Radio 4's Today Programme on the morning of the 25th and immediately sat down to write the following.
For those who might be interested, Richard Moore, who has already put together two comprehensive collections of Peter Skellern's recordings, thus rescuing Skellernites or Skellernatics like me from the frustration of earlier random collections, is doing it once more for Happy Endings, the album of the TV series for which Skellern wrote the songs and in which he appeared.
Kliph Nesteroff is the author of the book The Comedians, a gossipy, scandalous, irresistibly written history of the underside of the development of American stand-up comedy.
I must have been eight years old when I first heard Waterloo Sunset, in
the year of its release, and - like just about everyone else in the
world - realised it was something special.
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.
