I was a member of the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in the late 1960s and 70s and was lucky enough to have taken part in two recording sessions for Argo in 1970. The sessions were produced by Fred Woods with Kevin Daly as the sound engineer. I remember both Fred and Kevin with great affection. We were only teenagers at the time but the Argo team treated us as they would any ...read more »]]> by John Whitmore

I was a member of the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra in the late 1960s and 70s and was lucky enough to have taken part in two recording sessions for Argo in 1970. The sessions were produced by Fred Woods with Kevin Daly as the sound engineer. I remember both Fred and Kevin with great affection. We were only teenagers at the time but the Argo team treated us as they would any adult professional group.

The children’s television programme Sounds Exciting, broadcast in 1968, was a musical education series culminating in a final “whodunit” called Dead in Tune with Robin Ray’s original story set to music by Herbert Chappell and performed by a chamber group of players from the Leicestershire Schools Symphony Orchestra. Two years later Argo recorded the piece using an ensemble of 47 players drawn from the LSSO conducted by Herbert Chappell. This LP also included a new commission, George and the Dragonfly, with a script by John Kershaw, music by Herbert Chappell and narrated by Robin Ray, John Kershaw and Susan Stranks (Robin Ray’s wife and star of the TV programme Magpie).

First rehearsals for the Dead in Tune and George and the Dragonfly sessions took place over a two-day period on January 1st and 2nd 1970, at Longslade Grammar School in Birstall near Leicester. Herbert Chappell, Robin Ray, Susan Stranks and John Kershaw were all present at these rehearsals. Looking back at this project, it probably wasn’t a really a good idea to book 47 members of the LSSO into a London hotel for the weekend, allow them to team up with friends from the Royal Academy of Music and give them the freedom of the West End. We set off from Leicester immediately after the Friday rehearsal and booked into the Royal Hotel in Russell Square late on Friday night. That night was something of a party (some of the older players were all of 17 and 18 years of age) and the hotel bar was still being propped up at 2am by around 20 members of the band. The sessions took place on January 3rd and 4th at Decca Studio No.3 in West Hampstead.

Day one could have gone better in all honesty. There were a few hangovers and the standard of playing was, quite frankly, quite poor. Kevin didn’t get a decent take all morning and lunch was taken early. The afternoon improved and most of Dead in Tune was completed, albeit somewhat behind schedule. On Saturday night we were all confined to barracks, but a few of us managed to escape by 9pm and we headed for a Beer Keller in Piccadilly. Several litres of Lowenbrau later, reality started to take a grip and we headed back to Russell Square before midnight.

Sunday commenced with George and the Dragonfly and the playing was much improved. Into the control room we went and the Dead in Tune take from Saturday was played back to us. Kevin Daly started the tape running and it sounded so poor that we were shamed into another complete performance. The majority of this take actually made it onto the final edit. Robin and Susan proved to be great fun and came to hear us play later on in the year at the Cheltenham Festival. Robin chain smoked Dunhill International Cigarettes all through the two days but only smoked the first half an inch and then stubbed them out. At the time, this struck us all as being just a bit strange, I remember. The third narrator, John Kershaw, was rather quiet and very much the poet.

On April 28th the new record was premiered at a press luncheon in the Royal Lancaster Hotel, London. Half a dozen of us attended this event and the LP actually received some very positive reviews in the national music press.

Following the success of Dead in Tune, there were soon plans afoot to record the full orchestra – around 110 players – in a programme of purely orchestral music. Just to put this into context, the LSSO was second only to the National Youth Orchestra at the time and was widely acknowledged as being the best school orchestra in the country. Having worked with many illustrious conductors over the years the orchestra was privileged to have Sir Michael Tippett as its patron and regular guest conductor. One evening, during an interview on the Simon Dee show, the newly appointed principal conductor of the London Symphony Orchestra, André Previn, threw into the conversation that he would like to work with the LSSO. André was a friend of Herbert Chappell and Bert had told André that he would be ideal for the LSSO. To hear this confirmed live on national TV was tremendous news. Our regular conductor, the great Eric Pinkett, contacted Previn the following morning and the outcome was that he agreed to take part in the new Argo recording, personally choosing three pieces to direct.

Previn and Tippett were signed up but that left another 20 minutes of an LP to fill. The repertoire in 1970 included Introduction and Allegro by Sir Arthur Bliss and this was a big favourite with the orchestra. When approached, Sir Arthur was very enthusiastic and he agreed to conduct this on the record. The contents of the new record were now finalised. Bliss arrived in the studio on the first day of the session (Saturday, August 29th), and his tempi were faster than Eric Pinkett’s. After this rather unsettling start, one complete take followed by some small repairs got the job done. Sir Arthur was very professional and easy to work with. By the end of day one Bryan Kelly’s Cuban Suite had also been recorded. Eric Pinkett conducted the work and the session was attended by the composer, who we had worked with on previous occasions. Day one was complete and we then had the task of tidying the studio for the London Philharmonic Orchestra who had a session on Sunday. We then headed back to the Royal Hotel in Russell Square and took the next day off.

Our second day in the studio was on Monday, August 31st and this was potentially a challenge. Bliss and Kelly were known quantities. Not so André Previn. We hadn’t even met him before but were scheduled to record three works in one day. It sounded like a difficult proposition but it didn’t turn out that way at all. He breezed into the back of the studio while we were playing Russlan and Ludmilla. Having just returned from honeymoon with his wife, Mia Farrow, he apologised for his unshaven appearance, sight read Herbert Chappell’s Panache, sharpened up some of the rhythms and then set down a complete take. This overture was written for the LSSO and Herbert Chappell was in the control room listening to the performance. Previn’s Overture to a Comedy was nigh on impossible to play with its high level of virtuosity but the final result is really quite exciting. Previn’s third chosen work was Ireland’s Elegy for Strings. André Previn was at the height of his fame in the 1970s and he was a real pleasure to work with – dynamic but very demanding, especially of the string players.

Finally we came to Sir Michael and his Shires Suite, another work written for the orchestra and premiered at the 1970 Cheltenham Festival. Two movements were recorded: Interlude II and Epilogue. In the Interlude II he just couldn’t get the right percussion sound. Cellist Martin Walker accidentally hit one of the huge aluminium ash trays, which were scattered around the studio floor, with his bow. “That’s it!” shouted Michael and an ash tray was passed through the ranks to the percussion section.

The final LP was released in April 1971 and received excellent reviews in The Gramophone, Records & Recording and HiFi news.

John Whitmore

In October 1969 I’d given up the day-job building Concordes at Filton to strum guitar with the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra – a comedy quartet selling primitive jazz and jug-band music on the folk club circuit. The name of Kevin Daly kept cropping up. He had produced Argo LPs for other folk artistes, similarly equipped with stringed instruments and too much hair. Several were suggesting we should approach him. These were, in ...read more »]]> by Andy Leggett

In October 1969 I’d given up the day-job building Concordes at Filton to strum guitar with the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra – a comedy quartet selling primitive jazz and jug-band music on the folk club circuit. The name of Kevin Daly kept cropping up. He had produced Argo LPs for other folk artistes, similarly equipped with stringed instruments and too much hair. Several were suggesting we should approach him. These were, in particular, the eccentric Devonian Trevor Crozier who used to let us doss in his flat in Archway, the Yetties from Dorset, and psaltery player extraordinaire, Bob Stewart, a Scottish exile who from 1966 had been a resident performer in Bristol’s Troubadour club.

So it was that late in 1969 or early in 1970, Barry Back, Dave Creech, John Turner and I were seated on the western side of Kevin’s desk at 115 Fulham Road, getting acquainted with his big booming voice and those eyebrows. Discussions went well and from his big chair on the eastern side he offered us a recording contract. I wanted to accept, but was eventually outvoted. It later turned out that John Turner our bass player already had ambitions to help set up Bristol’s independent Village Thing record label.

That’s how it was that the Pigsty Hill Light Orchestra came to record the first and eighth LPs to appear under the aegis of Village Thing Records. Kevin and I exchanged regretful letters. He was kind enough to say that he’d wanted to record the Piggies because of the songs I was writing and perhaps I should contact him again if I was ever doing anything of interest.

By 1975 a lot had changed. I had by then teamed up to work the folk clubs with Pete Finch, another aspiring song-writer, and was also playing clarinet and sax with a couple of Bristolian jazz bands. The aforesaid Bob Stewart had the job of writing and performing music for the Avon Touring Theatre Company. He invited Pete and me to make up a trio with him, giving their shows a stronger backing. The relatively unknown Tony Robinson was one of the actors. The equally unknown Mel Smith directed one of our shows – a musical called “The Godmother”.

While all this was going on, I met and married my future ex-wife, Teri. She too had been singing folk songs and could belt out a mean Danny Boy. I suggested it would be fun to team her up with two other girl singers I knew from the folk clubs – Angie Masterson and Eiri Thrasher – and recreate some of the Boswell Sisters’ repertoire. (Angie had already been in ‘Pussy’, a folk-based girl trio, whose repertoire included a couple of Boswell Sisters’ tunes.) We recruited local jazzers and set up a fortnightly Sunday lunchtime session in Fanny’s Bar, Weston-Super-Mare. At the first of these the girls sang two songs. At the second, another two were in the repertoire and the first two were more polished. After a couple of months eight songs were up and running, the news was spreading and Radio Bristol’s Roger Bennett fixed for the fledgling Sweet Substitute to make a live half-hour broadcast on the 15th January 1976. For this the backing was just two guitars and bass, and I was careful to have a recording made.

Remembering Kevin’s suggestion from four years back, I sent him two cassette tapes – one being the material I’d been performing with Pete Finch, and the other the Sweet Substitute broadcast. Of course, it was the latter that he picked up on. In May 1976 The Yetties were about to record a live album in Yetminster, Dorset. At Kevin’s invitation the girls and backing band drove down from Bristol one sunny day to record a demo tape while Argo had their equipment set up in the village hall. The upshot was that the vocal trio passed this audition, but the under-rehearsed backing band didn’t.

A contract was offered – to our surprise, not with Argo, but with the parent company Decca. I was included as ‘musical director’ along with the three girls. Dates were set for the recording sessions at Decca’s no 4 Studio, and I provided chord charts and cassettes of our rehearsals for the preparation of more complete backings. These were passed on to Keith Nichols and Alan Cohen. Kevin gave us a copy of the LP on which they’d recently backed Bing Crosby, so we knew we were in capable hands. I was also aware of their earlier work, having enjoyed the TV broadcast of the ‘New Paul Whiteman Orchestra‘.

A crisis ensued when Eiri’s husband Frank – a geologist – was moved by his employers to a better job up north. We had to find a replacement in a hurry as the recording date was already fixed. Our spirits sank as several possible candidates proved unsuitable. There was a brief but illusory moment of relief when it appeared that Eiri might not be leaving after all. Eventually somebody suggested Chris Staples (née Christine Price). She had recorded with the Avon Cities Jazz Band in 1962 under the name of Chris Marlowe, and also used the stage name Sammi Browne. She turned out to have the ideal voice, personality and head for harmonies. I mention all this as, throughout the crisis, Kevin remained calm and supportive, seeming to have no doubt that we’d be able to surmount the problem.

On the day of the first recording session at 106 Tollington Park, Finsbury, we were astonished to find no fewer than twenty-six session musicians (big band plus strings) setting up to play the six arrangements contributed by Alan Cohen, many of whom were quite famous. The control room was thick with cigarette smoke, of course. Angie Masterson in particular could keep up with Kevin, cloud for cloud. He generously made sure that there was also a crate of lager at the back of the control room to keep everybody happy.

During the playback, as we listened to the string section sawing away, Kevin was rocking to and fro in his seat with a beatific grin, rubbing his his hands together. “This is costing money!” he crowed.

The next sessions were less lavish but still exciting. Keith Nichols’s arrangements were played by a sixteen-piece band, followed by some numbers with a swing quintet and one track (Heebie Jeebies) with just Keith’s solo piano. For the record sleeve, Kevin made up names for the various line-ups – in reverse order: ‘the Quintet of the Hot Club of Tollington Park’, ‘Keith Nichols and his Paramount Broadcasters’ and ‘Alan Cohen & his Midnite Follies Orchestra’. As far as I know the latter was the first instance where that famous band worked under its now familiar name. Incidentally, when they subsequently needed smart music desks for stage work, Kevin’s silk-screening skills came in handy. Some rock music tracks were also recorded and included on a test pressing, later to be rejected as out of keeping with the mainly vintage material. My only reservation about the finished LP concerned the incongruous theatre organ chorus which Kevin dubbed into the opening track. We found out after the event that Ronald Curtis the organist (whom we never met) was Kevin’s cousin.

After the sessions, the pads of band parts were loaded into my arms and I became de-facto Sweet Substitute’s band librarian as well as the roadie. Kevin’s continuing faith in the project was reflected by the title he chose for our album – Something Special, and then further vindicated by its immediate selection on release as a Radio 2 ‘Album of the Week’. This ensured plenty of airplay. For a tour with the Syd Lawrence Orchestra, Syd himself augmented some of our studio arrangements. The extra trumpet, trombone and sax parts were prepared in his distinctive writing – all in red ink with the crotchets back to front.

The Decca management were insisting we should have proper management. I had assumed I might continue in this role, but those in charge were probably right in having grander ideas. Kevin patiently travelled around with us in my band transit meeting possible candidates. These included Dave Forester and Jack Higgins, but in the end an agreement was struck with David Curtis, already manager of the Pasadena Roof Orchestra. An immediate benefit was a trip to Hamburg in July ’77 to record three tracks for the PRO’s LP The Show Must Go On.

We were impressed by Kevin’s patience and perfectionism at the recording desk. In addition, aware that an LP could be ruined at the stage where the signal from the master tapes was transferred to disc, Kevin routinely made a point of taking his tapes to the cutting/pressing plant in person, armed with a bottle of scotch as a reward for extra attentive service from the technician in charge.

Following the earlier success of Feels Good, Feels Right – Decca’s Bing Crosby LP which Kevin had produced in the summer of 1976, a second was planned. It was to feature songs by Noel Coward and the idea of having Crosby accompanied on a track or two by Sweet Substitute had been given the green light. We were given a date and Kevin went ahead and booked the musicians. However, it then emerged that Geoff Milne had omitted to book the studio. The session was rescheduled. On the 14th October 1977 I was working out a vocal arrangement of A Room with a View when the news came through that Crosby had died on that golf course in Spain. I tore up the paper and found something else to do. Nearly!

In the wake of the release of Something Special, Sweet Substitute were offered regular Radio 2 sessions with the Midnite Follies Orchestra and BBC Radio orchestras. The latter included a live broadcast from the Royal Festival Hall, the Radio 2 Festival of Light Entertainment on Saturday the 25th March 1978. Geoff Love conducted, Terry Wogan compered and the other guests were Rolf Harris and Rosemary Clooney (“Can I come in and get nervous with you girls?”) Kevin and I sat in the audience with my wife’s maiden aunts feeling that things were going well.

The trio was in demand for TV work in the UK, Belgium and Sweden. A tour with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra took us to the Berlin Philharmonic Hall, an Amsterdam hotel and UK venues. Decca’s marketing department fixed for Sweet Substitute to tour as second-on-the-bill to organist Klaus Wunderlich who had sold millions of records for them. They trusted me to fix and lead a seven-piece backing band for these gigs. The halls (including the Albert Hall on the 17th April ‘78) were packed, but it became apparent that the populace were turning out to hear the mighty electronically generated tones of Klaus W’s box of tricks. The three voices and our instruments with normal levels of amplification were not generating the excitement we’d become accustomed to in the normal run of concerts and clubs.

For the jobs with BBC Radio orchestras, more of our arrangements needed to be augmented. We were desperately short of cash, so paying for this to be done was out of the question. I decided that with my knowledge of guitar chords and those hours I had spent fighting with the oboe in two school orchestras, I ought to be able to meet this challenge. I bought a couple of books on the subject, a stack of paper and a music pen. Using those pages meticulously written by Keith Nichols, Alan Cohen and Syd Lawrence as a guide, I set about writing more extra parts. The first time I put them in front of real live musicians in a London studio (probably Maida Vale) I was scared stiff. However, it all sounded fine, nobody fell about laughing, and no criticism was offered. I was relieved and elated. Growing into the job invented for me by Kevin I resolved to start writing full arrangements from scratch in future.

There was a growing realisation that Sweet Substitute’s collaboration with the Pasadena Roof Orchestra, while enjoyable and initially profitable was ultimately proving to be more beneficial to them than to us. We amicably agreed with Dave Curtis that Kevin Daly himself should take over the management of Sweet Substitute. This arrangement seemed trouble-free for a while. Our main difficulty at the time was with cash flow, and this was apparently due to more deeply seated difficulties with the Decca management. Our contract required us to record an LP each year for five years. This we duly did. However, there was no clause requiring the company actually to press and release the albums. A few singles were released, initially produced by Kevin, but we waited in vain for the release of our second Decca album. The lack of a current LP caused the radio and TV work to dry up. Much good material presumably remains in Decca’s vaults.

Towards the latter end of our time with Decca, we were required to work with other producers, notably Tony Sadler and Ray Singer. Although Kevin ultimately left the company, once again we agreed to stay in touch. Ironically it was Tony Sadler that gave me my next song-writing opportunity. Suggestions for inappropriate songs to record had been filtering down from the management, notably Marcel Stellman – (Remember the Smurfs?). The need to feed the family prompted me to respond by writing a Christmas song. Tony Sadler added a suitably schmaltzy arrangement and the 45rpm single was pressed. I profited from lots of airplay thanks to Messrs Terry Wogan, Jimmy Young and Pete Murray. Copies of the single eventually dribbled into the shops in February. A couple of years on, the Nolan Sisters covered my song on the Val Doonican Christmas TV show, so in other circumstances it might have had a chance.

With Kevin heading for Australia, our time with Decca expired. With new management we recorded an LP which was issued on Black Lion in the UK and Aves in Germany. (I’d written three of the songs and a few more of the arrangements). I sent a copy to Kevin and he was gracious enough to say it was “bloody marvellous”. He backed up this opinion by including one of those songs Dear Mr Berkeley on an LP he produced for ABC in Australia – the Ritz Company’s Go Into Your Dance.

While with ABC he was producing a Goons-inspired radio show called Slightly Out To Lunch. Top Sydney musicians were brought together as the ‘Bondi Broadcasters‘, and Kevin’s alter-ego Eli Bickerstaffe starred on ukulele. I’d been writing topical comedy songs in collaboration with Fred Wedlock who’d just had a hit with The Oldest Swinger in Town. After Fred had aired them on Radio 1 in the UK, some of them were recycled by Kevin for Australian consumption. Kevin sent me cassettes of some of the shows, and other tasty offerings such as Kevin Bloody Wilson. We swapped a few band arrangements too, but that, regrettably, was the end of our fruitful collaboration. I miss him and remain grateful for his encouragement, which took my life in some surprising directions. Thanks Kevin!

Andy Leggett

Peter van Biene in 1963

Of all the singing stars of the 1920s, the one who has been most neglected in the current upsurge of interest in the period must be Cliff Edwards, or as he was universally known, ‘Ukulele Ike‘. Yet there was a time – and quite a long time – when he was a recording artist who had million-sellers, a film actor of accomplishment and a top-line draw in vaudeville. Almost single-handed, his records and broadcasts ...read more »]]>

Of all the singing stars of the 1920s, the one who has been most neglected in the current upsurge of interest in the period must be Cliff Edwards, or as he was universally known, ‘Ukulele Ike‘. Yet there was a time – and quite a long time – when he was a recording artist who had million-sellers, a film actor of accomplishment and a top-line draw in vaudeville. Almost single-handed, his records and broadcasts made the ukulele the most popular musical instrument in America, and his virtuoso playing sold thousands of ukes to aspiring young players. His relaxed, laid-back singing style, with its attractive catch on vowels influenced a whole generation of later vocalists. There were certain ironies in his professional life though; having introduced Singin’ In The Rain in 1929 and made it a worldwide hit, Gene Kelly’s version superseded it and the original version was forgotten; his biggest selling song (over ten million records) ‘When You Wish Upon A Star’ was released under neither of his own names but as ‘Jiminy Cricket’ whose voice Edwards supplied in Walt Disney’s 1939 ‘Pinocchio’ and, finally, George Formby replaced him in the public consciousness as the ukulele-playing singing comedian.

But not all of his problems came from the outside; in a sense, Edwards was a jazz-age Peter Pan who never grew up. More than most of the popular entertainers of the Twenties, Cliff Edwards was a living example of the wilder excesses depicted in Warner Fabian’s notorious book ‘Flaming Youth’. He made a considerable fortune and lost all of it, he went through a succession of wives, experimented with heroin and cocaine and liberally drank bathtub gin. Eventually, with hefty gambling debts, the taxman, alimony payments, booze and drug-taking, Cliff Edwards ended up as an obscure alcoholic living in an actors’ charity home in Hollywood. But before any of this, he was one of the busiest and best-loved performers around.

Cliff Edwards was born on 14 June 1895 in Hannibal, Missouri, and by the time he was sixteen already had a reputation as a singer, performing in bars and saloons around St. Louis. It was while playing in these seedy surroundings that he adopted the ukulele as a simple accompaniment to his songs and acquired the nickname ‘Ukulele Ike’, given to him by a waiter who could not remember his name. After a variety of strange jobs, including a stint selling joke noses at fairs and carnivals, and a period as a counterhand at the restaurant in New York’s Central Railway Station, he teamed up with the dancer Pierce Keegan and toured the mid-west on the Keith-Albee vaudeville circuit. His part of their act not only featured his ukulele, but also his own lunatic kazoo playing and scat singing, like a one-man Mills Brothers. His phrasing and zany humour had much more in common with his black contemporaries or older black entertainers that he had seen in vaudeville as a child, such as Billy Golden and Bert Williams, than with the more restrained art of his fellow white performers. He and jazz grew up with each other, and his first published records, made for Gennett in 1922, were as a kazoo player on sides cut by Bailey’s Lucky Seven and Ladd’s Black Aces.

The recordings featured on this album give a generous cross-section of Edwards’s styles. The earliest were made for the old Pathé Company at their studios at 20 Grand Avenue, Brooklyn, and released on their ‘Perfect’ label. Despite the name, the recording quality was anything but perfect; Pathé still persisted in making their master recordings on giant cylinders which were then transferred to disc via a complicated pantograph arrangement which not only carried any music that could force its way through, but also brought a peculiar bass rumble and a good deal of distortion. In spite of these technical drawbacks, the five examples of Ukulele Ike’s work taken from Pathé stand among his best, and we have tried to improve the sound quality to an acceptable standard. The remaining recordings are a joyful contrast. With one exception they were made by Columbia between 1928 and 1930, using the new Western Electric system and are taken from ‘new process’ pressings virtually devoid of surface noise. The remaining track was recorded privately by Edwards in the spring of 1942. It is dubbed from a glass-based acetate and has never previously been released.

The rarest track heard here is Cliff Edwards’s version of the Gershwin brothers’ Fascinatin’ Rhythm from their 1924 production ‘Lady Be Good’. Together with Fred and Adèle Astaire, Edwards was in the original New York cast, and was the first artist to sing this classic. It is interesting to compare this with later recordings made by Fred Astaire; most of the phrasing and timing which we assume to be Astaire’s turn out to be copied from Cliff Edwards. Just filtering through the background we can hear Adrian Rollini’s chunky bass saxophone playing an ornamented bass line. Rhythm and women are linked in quite a number of Ukulele Ike’s songs: That’s My Weakness Now and My Red Hot Gal (a girl so hot that I ain’t jokin’ – she’s smokin’) are similar in approach to the cynical serenades to Flappers and Vamps of the ‘love them and leave them’ variety shown in a song of moonlight seduction, If You Can’t Land Her On The Old Veranda, (one box of candy and she’ll think you’re dandy); seduction afloat in Harry Woods’s Paddlin’ Madelin’ Home, and wholesale seduction in Who Takes Care Of The Caretaker’s Daughter?

A more romantic school of song writing is also well represented, where the young hero offers his sweetheart bliss of a more domestic variety. Cottages, bluebells, gardens, butterflies, kitchen curtains, daisies in the dell and prospective motherhood abound in what are never coy or precious ballads. The melodies are excellent, and Reaching For Someone and Singing A Song To The Stars are well worth reviving. Many have already become standards, It Had To Be You and I’ll See You In My Dreams both by Gus Kahn and Isham Jones, and Walter Donaldson’s Just Like A Melody From Out Of The Sky have been performed by countless artists since their original publication.

As the decade wore on, references to current affairs begin to creep into the lyrics and there are quiet asides about Jack Demspey, Babe Ruth and other Twenties notables. In It Goes Like This, a verse is devoted to the forthcoming 1928 presidential election battle between Al Smith and Herbert Hoover which includes the memorable line, ‘Will this land be wrecked, if the wrong one I elect?’ As the Wall Street crash followed less than eighteen months later, it could be argued that the answer was ‘yes’. Even before the Depression started in earnest, times were hard enough. The verse of I Can’t Give You Anything But Love is as starkly realistic as Brecht. ‘Gee, but it’s tough to be broke, kid, it’s not a joke kid, it’s a curse, seems my luck has gotten from rotten to something worse…’ Few other songs are as down to earth as this, most belong to the ‘cheer up and it will go away’ type exemplified in Sing A Happy Little Thing. Even Cliff Edwards’s most popular song Singin’ In The Rain has its roots in the general slump.

‘The Hollywood Revue of 1929′, where Singin’ In The Rain was introduced, was MGM’s first major talkie, and in addition to Cliff Edwards featured Buster Keaton, Laurel and Hardy, Joan Crawford, Norma Shearer and dozens of other Hollywood stars. Edwards’s film career had started somewhat dismally in 1924 when he starred in ‘Sunflower Sue’, a silent romantic drama. He had little choice to show his talent in silent films, but with the coming of Vitaphone in 1927, he was signed by MGM and from then until 1953 made well over one hundred films. Most were instantly forgettable, the principal exceptions being ‘George White’s Scandals of 1935′, ‘Saratoga’, Jean Harlow’s last picture, made in 1937; and ‘Gone With The Wind’ in 1939. But of course it is as the voice of Jiminy Cricket that he is best remembered by three generations of cinema-goers. Following this success, together with the vaudeville act Buck and Bubbles, he provided the voices for the black crows in ‘Dumbo’. From the early forties he worked on and off for Disney and as late as the mid-fifties was making records for the studio’s Disneyland label, but eventually his drinking made him unreliable. He forgot to turn up for record sessions, and was dropped.

It would be easy to make Cliff Edwards out to be a figure of tragedy, but he led a pleasant enough life with his cronies almost to the end. Sitting up late in dives, merrily drinking the night away. He became seriously ill in 1969 and was taken into a Hollywood nursing home as a charity patient with his fees paid for by the Actors’ Fund. Following a heart attack, he died there on 18 July 1972. Ukulele Ike gave a great deal of pleasure to millions of people when there was little enough fun to be had, and the lyric of his slow blues He’s The Hottest Man In Town sums up his essential philosophy…’He drinks hot water just to keep cool, he’s incandescent – a scorching, syncopating fool…’ Perhaps Cliff Edwards was a fool, but I think he was a happy one.

© 1981 KEVIN DALY

The mass conscription of the First World War led to women replacing men in many factories and offices, where they were industrious, and for the first time liberated from what was often a tedious and boring home life. After the war, many stayed on, finding that a career of their own was a welcome alternative to becoming a household drudge or a fading spinster. They had considerable spending power from their own earnings which ...read more »]]>

The mass conscription of the First World War led to women replacing men in many factories and offices, where they were industrious, and for the first time liberated from what was often a tedious and boring home life. After the war, many stayed on, finding that a career of their own was a welcome alternative to becoming a household drudge or a fading spinster. They had considerable spending power from their own earnings which they could use without any embargo applied by husbands or fathers. Make-up, cigarettes, drinks and bright clothes were bought in quantities that would have been unthinkable even ten years earlier. Together with their male contemporaries they were ‘The Bright Young Things’, deplored by their elders as debauched, if not seriously depraved; seekers of ever new experiences and the arbiters of popular taste in art, fashion and music.

Flappers, Vamps and Sweet Young Things were by no means the only young women about during the 1920s, but these particular classifications are ones that readily spring to mind when describing the world of the jazz age. Flappers were the young, pretty good-time girls; barely into their twenties, but already with experiences that their mothers had never known (nor in most cases, would wish to). They went out alone with men at night, danced with them until dawn, drinking ‘White Ladies’, ‘Bronxes’ and other inventively named cocktails, cut their hair as short as men and wore the absolute minimum of clothes. By 1925, skirts had shortened dramatically and now stopped above the knee, showing acres of bare thigh sheathed in sheer silk stockings enticingly topped with gaudy suspenders. The effect was frankly sexual, and startled parents, already horrified by the spread of easy contraception, now feared that casual sex at pajama parties would lead their young daughters into prostitution.

The Sweet Young Things were barely distinguishable from the Flappers, except that they tended to have posher accents, better fingernails and looked down demurely when talking to men. They were just as slim, just as pretty but did not giggle quite so much, and usually did not work, having a doting father somewhere in the background to pick up the bills. The Vamps, on the other hand, were quite different. They were usually slightly older, very curvy (if not plump) and often already married. Men were in awe of their predatory reputations and Flappers suspicious of the comfortable and easy techniques they were supposed to have evolved to ensnare their prey.

On this album, twenty of the most popular girl singers of the period reflect in music the interests, aspirations and affections of the new modern woman of the 1920s. Marion Harris sums up the Flappers appreciation of jazz… “Classics don’t mean a thing at all, give me a hot band in a hall. A wicked saxophone has me on the go and when a cornet goes ‘oo-wa’, I’m in for the night. I like my music hot! I’m off my nut about the strut – The Blues Have Got Me now…” Jane Green’s adenoidal I’m Gonna Meet My Sweetie Now gives a spirited insight into the Flapper’s everyday preoccupations – new hats, manicures, shampoos and boyfriends… “Oh what kisses and petting I’ll soon be getting – I can hardly wait!” If she shared Zelma O’Neal’s beau, she would probably have to, as he is painfully shy… “I look for your petting, but what am I getting? What are we waiting for? Oh Do Something to me…” Margaret Young’s Red Hot Henry Brown could scarcely be more different, a toe-tapping extravert who dances the Charleston all night long and who would make the ideal companion for Helen Kane’s Dangerous Nan McGrew. The song has a classic opening line… “I’ve been a bad girl all my life, I pick my teeth with a carving knife…” Kane was the archetypal Flapper with her thin and squeaky voice and her records and films were extremely popular. The most popular singer of all was Ruth Etting, heard here in Irving Berlin’s It All Belongs To Me, a slightly ambiguous song, as the verse suggests that it should be performed by a man. However, Ruth’s clever phrasing soon makes it clear that she is really singing about herself… “100 pounds of what is mighty neat, a million dollars of flying hips, I’ll let you look but you mustn’t touch…”

Lilian Roth was a Flapper in real life as well as imitating them on the screen. She got involved with drink and drugs and her own tragic life story was turned into the 1950s film ‘I’ll Cry Tomorrow’ starring Susan Hayward as Lilian. This rare soundtrack recording of Why Am I So Romantic? shows a girl newly in love and enthralled by it… “All the boys used to say I was made of stone, colder than Frigidaire – till you came along…” For a Flapper’s manual of love-making, listen to Esther Walker’s Ya Gotta Know How To Love… “Nobody’s hard to get, all they need is a shove – gaze into his eyes, sigh little sighs and tell little lies…” The boisterous performance makes the lyric very believable.

The Vamps had some difficulty in transferring their cushiony delights to wax. Singers who indicated this ideal usually did so with langorous songs of unrequited love delivered in a throaty and husky purr, although there were also the Red Hot Mamas, who gave direct and straightforward advice. Sophie Tucker was an absolute mistress of this, and If Your Kisses Can’t Hold The Man You Love is a charter for the wives of adulterous husbands… “Laugh and the world laughs with you, weep and you sleep alone…” Blossom Seeley was another cheerful and outgoing personality. She is heard in a musical catalogue of her man’s attributes and talents… “With a new kind of bliss that couldn’t miss, he’s A New Kind Of Man, With A New Kind Of Love For Me…”

In the 1940s, Kate Smith was to become the voice of America in song (rather like Gracie Fields in Britain and Gladys Moncrieff in Australia), but in the late 20s she was a young up and coming singer, and among her best work was Maybe, Who Knows? a song of imminent separation part-written by Ruth Etting. I’ll Get By is now a standard, but when it was recorded by Aileen Stanley in 1929, it was simply another ‘love will conquer all’ song. She has put her man on a pedestal, and despite rain, darkness and poverty, hopes he will stay around. Naturally enough, he does not, and Moanin’ Low describes the time later in the day, when he has finally gone. This classic recording by Lee Morse (complete with Mae West groans) has a rather self-pitying lyric, as do so many songs in this genre, but the superb playing of her Blue Grass Boys raises it far above bathos. The song was orginally sung by Libby Holman, who specialised in these ‘doom along with me’ numbers, and her other great hit, Am I Blue, is in the same vein of rejected love. Continental singers were adept in this type of work, and Greta Keller’s Blue In My Heart brings back a sense of perspective… “What can I do, now that we’re through – I go on…” Mildred Hunt, having finally split up from her lover makes the civilised request, Please Don’t Talk About Me When I’m Gone.

The Sweet Young Things are in shorter supply on record, much as they were in reality. Annette Hanshaw really was sweet though, with a fresh style of eager innocence. You Wouldn’t Fool Me, Would You? finds her worried about the long-term intentions of her boyfriend, but she sings the second chorus as a glorious impersonation of her close friend, Helen Kane, who coached her for the role. Gertrude Lawrence may sound sweet, but the Gershwin brothers wrote a very knowing song for her in … “Do Do Do what I do do do adore, baby, you know what a beau should do baby…”

Helen Morgan’s You Remind Me Of A Naughty Springtime Cuckoo, with Hutch’s delicate piano, is all about adultery, but disguised as maidenly innocence genteely decribed as… “Investigating someone else’s nest…” Finally, three very Sweet Young Things in the Brox Sisters, in a salutation to Red Hot Mama, the sweetest girl in town who is so hot she melted all the snow at the North Pole and should be in the Ziegfeld Follies.

Many of the singers heard on this record were in the Ziegfeld Follies, or in vaudeville or musical comedy. Some had reputations which have lasted to the present, sadly many have been almost forgotten in the fifty-odd years since the original recordings were made. Yet all of them, in their various ways, celebrate the exuberance of the Twenties. All of the songs are in one way or another about sex. Sometimes overt, more often direct and to the point, and all with an immense amount of charm. The real Flappers, Vamps and Sweet Young Things of the 20s eventually grew up and became respectable citizens, ready in their turn to be outraged by the antics of their own daughters. I suppose that if any one thing is a constant in life, it is the older generation’s perennial certainty of the wickedness of youth. So if any young punks should happen upon this record – don’t worry, you too will have your turn to be Mrs. Grundy.

© 1982 KEVIN DALY

I was a recording engineer at Decca from 1976-1989 and knew Kevin, in fact I worked with him and Iain Churches recording Ron Curtis and one of his organs at Ron’s Paramount Organ Works in Bolton. We had to make two trips as the first trip ended in a drunken stupor at lunch time, with Ron being unable to play! As we couldn’t stay an extra day we had to re-schedule for ...read more »]]> by Martin Atkinson

I was a recording engineer at Decca from 1976-1989 and knew Kevin, in fact I worked with him and Iain Churches recording Ron Curtis and one of his organs at Ron’s Paramount Organ Works in Bolton. We had to make two trips as the first trip ended in a drunken stupor at lunch time, with Ron being unable to play! As we couldn’t stay an extra day we had to re-schedule for a later date. At that final session we finished early, so we decided to go to Blackpool instead of returning straight back to London. We had a nice time there, which ended with me and Kevin in a nightclub. I have great capacity for drink but Kevin was remarkable! Nevertheless he managed to get us back to the hotel in one piece and summoned the night porter to get us even more drink!

I also remember being at a party at Kevin and Lesley’s in Crouch End which I think was in 1976, as I was living at the YMCA in Hornsey at the time, having moved from Shropshire, and was amazed as his house seemed to be full of records and books. I had previously coerced Kevin into seeing an Irish folk band at a Hornsey pub who I thought were very good, but like most introductions in the record business it came to nothing, but we had a good night out!

It’s very strange to see Kevin’s life story written down like a slice of history when he is someone you shared, albeit, a small piece of your life with. I remember feeling sad when he died, and that sadness has been revived reading this website. It all seems such a long time ago… and yet not. Kevin contributed more than most in his lifetime, a remarkable and lovely man. Your website is a fine tribute to a fine and talented man and has reminded me of some nice times, thanks.

Martin Atkinson

Kevin always seemed relaxed at recording sessions, as I remember. Even when we once turned up for a recording at ‘The Paramount Organ Works’ in Bolton which felt like someone’s house with an organ sunk into the lounge floor if I remember correctly! It was actually the home of cinema organist Ron Curtis’s three organs, one of which did actually rise up on its original cinema mechanism! Unfortunately, for our recording ...read more »]]> by Norma Winstone, MBE

Kevin always seemed relaxed at recording sessions, as I remember. Even when we once turned up for a recording at ‘The Paramount Organ Works’ in Bolton which felt like someone’s house with an organ sunk into the lounge floor if I remember correctly! It was actually the home of cinema organist Ron Curtis’s three organs, one of which did actually rise up on its original cinema mechanism! Unfortunately, for our recording we were all put into different rooms where we couldn’t see each other – we had to abandon the project!

I also remember discussing my album Edge of Time with him. This came out on Decca as a result of my winning the 1971 Melody Maker vocalist award, when they suddenly realised that I was actually featured on some Argo recordings with jazz musician and composer Michael Garrick. The album (along with many others of that era) was fairly quickly deleted, and I said to Kevin that I guessed it was a bit too “far out”. He said that he didn’t think it was far out enough! I think I know what he meant – he was quite perceptive.

The Otto Rap

From London to Coolgardie, The people hardly knew me, But I’m still still that monumental man, An Oxford, Cambridge gentleman With music knowledge up to date, All learned in the Sudetenland, Where my tutor’s lectures never missed The work of Chopin, Brahms and liszt.

I’ve always loved the trumpet, so To Jeremiah Clarke I go, Soaring to a high B-flat, ...read more »]]> Listen to The Otto Rap on the Music & Video page »

The Otto Rap

From London to Coolgardie,
The people hardly knew me,
But I’m still still that monumental man,
An Oxford, Cambridge gentleman
With music knowledge up to date,
All learned in the Sudetenland,
Where my tutor’s lectures never missed
The work of Chopin, Brahms and liszt.

I’ve always loved the trumpet, so
To Jeremiah Clarke I go,
Soaring to a high B-flat,
Who could ever think or guess that
Purcell used to be the one
Whose name was, sadly, yes – abused
For fanfares rushing to combustion
In Christopher Hogwood’s reconstruction!

CHORUS:
Otto von Bismuth is his name,
Old-time music is his game,
Nothing seems to be the same
Since he came along.

Now George Frederick’s heart was bubblin’
When he took that boat to Dublin
Just three weeks to write Messiah,
Words and music – even I am
Not that speedy or prolific.
But he had help, to be specific:
He arranged the choir, he arranged the band
With a pint of Guinness in each hand!

Hallelujah! Hallelujah!

Young Wolfgang Amadeus
Wrote the kind of things that slay us
Serenades and dances came soon
Like a melodic Mickey Rooney, you know,
Child composer when he’s ten,
But MGM weren’t filming then.
From the cradle to the grave,
Life was one continuous stave.

CHORUS

Beethoven’s Fifth is very fiery,
Sometimes people wonder why he
Wrote every movement molto forte,
It wasn’t he was odd, or naughty -
Just stone deaf, even with his trumpet,
Listeners had to like or lump it.
That was his style, he was quite unique,
But no-one suggests he was pathétique.

Robert Schumann was despondent,
Forced to be a co-respondent,
He presided – oh la la!
Over a bizarre ménage à trois.
His wife Clara and young Brahms
Always in each other’s arms,
Ripping their clothes off, one by one,
Very bourgeois – but lots of fun.

CHORUS

Richard Wagner’s main enjoyment
Was giving musicians full employment.
Two hundred singers stretched before us,
Thundering out the Niebelung’s Chorus.
Soloists both blond and beefy
Bellowed Wagner’s letmotifs.
He’s very good if you stay awake
But if you can’t – try Swan Lake.

Igor Stravinsky’s works are sparser,
Written writhing on the grass or
Posing in some sheltered bower
While Vera photographed him – however
Despite all this attention
Not a smile could cure his woes;
Poor old Igor’s only happy
When divested of his clothes.

CHORUS

Spoken:
Well from London, this is Otto von Bismuth, bidding you goodbye from this marvellous, marvellous recording studio on top of the Post Office Tower in London. And I would very much like to thank the members of the London Symphony Orchestra, the London Philharmonic Orchestra, the Philharmonia Orchestra, the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields. And, of course, Neville Marriner for coming along and playing string bass. Very kind of you Nev – thank you, thank you, thank you. And of course overall I would like to thank Michael J. Daly for doing such a stupendous arrangement of this rather easy work in the first place, but made it absolutely marvellous. But also I must thank the Brotherhood of the Caribbean for coming along and singing rhythmic choruses. Well lovely people, I will be back among you soon with another wonderful episode of my Monumental History of Music, which will deal with the Bach family. You will notice there was no Bach on this song today – see, so many Bachs, not enough verses. So you must wait, but it will be worth it. Auf Wiedersehen, from Otto von Bismuth.

© 1986 KEVIN DALY