What Kind of Music Makes You?

There's a pivotal scene in Woody Allen's Manhattan where he reels off the things he couldn't live without into a tape recorder. Although you might argue with some of them, it's difficult to defend anyone who says they could live without the voice of Frank Sinatra. 

I really only have two loves, reading and music. I tried to make a quick list. I realise how useless these lists are (and the longer, the more useless, I have found). Perhaps, however, such a list might help me find a core interest.

Musicians and composers Irving Berlin Johnny Mercer George Gershwin (especially Porgy & Bess) Bessie Smith Pink Floyd (with and without Syd Barrett, but not without Roger Waters) The Beatles Joe Meek Tom Waits Bob Dylan (any period) Louis Armstrong Music hall legends (Sam Mayo, Ronald Frankau, Talbot O'Farrell) Tchaikovsky Aaron Copland Mabel Mercer Noel Coward Stephen Sondheim	Poets Philip Larkin John Keats Wallace Stevens Ted Hughes Sylvia Plath Carol Ann Duffy W.H. Auden
Novelists Martin Amis Armistead Maupin Margaret Atwood Ian McEwan Milan Kundera Saul Bellow John Updike Henry Green Flann O'Brien Albert Camus	Assorted (Critics, humorists, non-fiction writers, short story writers) V.S. Pritchett Richard Rorty St. Augustine S.J. Perelman Martin Heidegger Whitney Balliett Thomas Nagel

If you are a regular reader of this site, has a similar list of interests brought you here? Are there things I should be getting into that my Amazon recommendations have missed?

An Interview with June Honri about ‘Working the Halls’

(This post complements my post on Peter Honri’s book Working the Halls.

You might want to read that first!)

---

You may remember my post in October about Peter Honri’s book Working the Halls. I was so impressed by the book and the accompanying flexidisc that I felt that rare desire Holden Caulfield talks about in Catcher in the Rye to call up the author. To that end I contacted the Honris and managed to speak to June Honri, Peter’s wife, later that month to ask her about the circumstances under which the book was written.

At first when I realised it was Peter’s wife I was to speak to, I must admit I feared the worst, but June soon explained that she was speaking on Peter’s behalf because he sadly now has Alzheimer’s disease. However, I found June to be quite the raconteur, with a disarmingly youthful voice – indeed, very soon into our conversation she explained that people who assumed she is younger than she is were sometimes a bit ‘offhand’ with her!

MUSIC MAKES ME: Hello June! I really wanted to ask about Working the Halls. The book is unusual in coming with a ‘gift record’ – I think they call them flexidiscs. [You can listen to it here.]

JUNE: Oh, you’re lucky. You’ve got the original one. It was just done for the book. You’re very lucky to get one with the record intact. Where did you get it?

MMM: I think in a second-hand bookshop in Whitby.

J: In Whitby! Oh, well done!

MMM: I don’t think I realised it had the record in it until I’d finished reading it! And it seems to me an invaluable part of the book. Was it always a part of the book?

J: Yes. It was done through a Dutch publisher. Peter had ended up writing a show for Farnham Castle Theatre Music Hall. The next day after the opening night the phone rang about five o’clock in the evening – when you’ve got three children and you’re doing tea, not a very convenient time – and a Dutch voice, which I just about managed to understand, asked me could Peter write a book about music hall? So I said ‘Yes,’ straight away. And then he said, ‘Could he do it in eight weeks?’ and I said ‘Yes.’ So that book was written in eight weeks. It took over the entire house.

MMM: Really? Eight weeks?

J: He’d already done a lot of research in piecing it together, you see.

MMM: Yes. I can see that. To me, it’s like a brilliant scrapbook. Now, I have to confess I haven’t read any of Peter’s other books.

J: You’d like Music Hall Warriors [The full title is Music Hall Warriors: A History of the Variety Artistes Federation 1906-1967].

MMM: Thanks for the recommendation! Now, there is a passage later in the book where Peter speculates about the Arts Council officially recognising music hall as a part of the living arts. Did anything ever come of that?

J: I couldn’t tell you about that, but if you read Music Hall Warriors you’ll find the Variety Artistes Federation could be very awkward fellows! And Wilton’s Music Hall – which is a fictitious diary of its owner John Wilton. [Oddly enough, Wilton’s Music Hall was featured in a Michael Grade documentary which aired while we were speaking. It’s called The Story of Music Hall with Michael Grade]

MMM: How did the Spike Milligan preface, or ‘Overture’, come about?

J: I think through Wilton’s Music Hall. But Peter was a very well known performer in the West End, anyway, so possibly through Equity.

MMM: The book is very positive about the halls, with none of the doom and gloom about the death of a way of life. In fact, Peter appeared in a production of Beyond the Fringe in 1966, a show often said to be the death-knell of variety. Is it an age that we’ve lost?

J: No… Peter’s idea was that music hall is present-day. Today’s top-liners are today’s music hall. The likes of Elton John are the present-day music hall.

MMM: Some would argue that some modern talent shows, like Britain’s Got Talent, recapture the spirit of the halls. What do you think? Do you watch the show?

J: We have occasionally. But there are other programmes we happen to like! But again, we do see that as present-day music hall. They would be the Marie Lloyds of the present day.

MMM: Quite right. Peter was a Shakespearean too, which reminds me that the Music Hall was not just about sentiment and cheap gags. In particular, in the book, Percy’s show Concordia comes across as being a real spectacular.

J: Yes; full of innovations.

MMM: And did you meet Percy [Peter’s grandfather] yourself?

J: No. But I knew Grandma and his wife – and, also, I was approved of by the family up in Blackpool!

MMM: Of course! Now, the accordion – or the concertina – is quite a tough instrument, isn’t it?

J: It is, yes.

MMM: My granddad played the accordion up until very recently. Does Peter still play?

J: He does, yes. Unfortunately, because of the Alzheimer’s, he still thinks he should be doing a show. So I have to ration the concertina, because it can get a bit over the top – Peter standing at the front door wanting to go out with it!

MMM: I’m glad to hear he still plays, though! It’s been really nice to chat to you and I wish you and Peter well for the future.

J: Thanks. And don’t forget to keep your eye out for a copy of Music Hall Warriors! [Available from Greenwich Exchange]

---

I would also like to thank Whitchurch Arts for making this interview possible, as well as everything they have done to recognise the Honris’ achievements.

Finnegans Wake (James Joyce) - Siobhan McKenna and Cyril Cusack (1959)

I’m going to do something which betrays the philistine in me and post up two extracts from Joyce’s Finnegans Wake, recorded nearly thirty years after they were written. Philistine because I must admit I haven’t read the book, but these recordings are quite captivating in themselves, as is the link to Joyce reading from Anna Livia Plurabelle.

The cover of Nino Frank’s translation of Anna Livia Plurabelle (1938)

The Billy Eckstine Transition – Can Crooners Change?

A singer who made the transition from jazz crooner to funk-edged soul singer (on Stax records, no less) completely plausible.

Four tracks will illustrate his mastery of both musical forms:

An Evening With Alistair Cooke (1955)

The great broadcaster made only a few vinyl recordings, but they are all fabulous. I have featured one of his spoken word records previously: Talk About America.

This LP, however, features him at the piano, whistling, singing and telling stories. I realise that to the youngsters of today, that sounds almost insane. They let him do this? Why didn’t someone sedate him, send him to a nursing home or put him on a stairlift?

There is even a wonderful moment where he demonstrates, with impish glee, the results of an experiment in multi-tracking his own voice.

The album tells a coherent narrative, so is perhaps best listened right through, but once you’ve done that you’ll keep coming back to many of these tracks for more.

Nat Cole - Wild is Love (1960)

Cole experiments here in an LP of love songs by Ray Rasch and Dotty Wayne tied together by a narrative concerning the vicissitudes of love. I think it would have made a fantastic one-man show. There are some spoken word interludes helping to tie the tracks together, and these may well be my favourite parts.

Beggar for the Blues

Clearly the stand-out track. A stripped-down 6/8 pulses throughout while Cole squeezes everything out of those portamento notes (When love pulls me iiiiiiiiin...).

---

Pick-Up

I like this as an example of a jazz carpe diem. Cole’s pitch-perfect sleaziness is quite a contrast with the next track.

---

Hold Her Tight

This is an example of the spoken word interludes that punctuate the album. Cole has got such a trustworthy voice that what could be interminably cheesy sounds genuine.

The Magic Wood

A children’s story on 78rpm. Featuring story and music by Harry Phillips, narrated by Frank Phillips, a man possessed of a wonderful, warm voice with an old-RP accent.

The Magic Wood - (T.P.L.)

Evocations of The Dance - Part II - A Eudora Welty Playlist

If you’re wondering what the first Evocations of the Dance post was, click here to find out.

The opening of Eudora Welty’s Powerhouse (1941) is one of those masterful pieces of writing you come up with in your dreams but which on real paper seems to elude you:

“He’s here on tour from the city – “Powerhouse and His Keyboard” – “Powerhouse and His Tasmanians” – think of the things he calls himself! There’s no one in the world like him. You can’t tell what he is. [...] He’s not coal black – beverage colored – looks like a preacher when his mouth is going every minute: like a monkey’s when it looks for something. Improvising, coming on a light and childish melody – smooch – he loves it with his mouth.”

Whitney Balliett, eat your heart out!

Shortly after reading this we learn that hardly anybody is dancing. Why not?

“It’s a white dance, and nobody dances, except a few straggling jitterbugs and two elderly couples. Everybody just stands around the band and watches Powerhouse. Sometimes they steal glances at one another, as if to say, Of course, you know how it is with them–Negroes–band leaders–they would play the same way, giving all they've got, for an audience of one... When somebody, no matter who, gives everything, it makes people feel ashamed for him.”

Welty is said to have written the story after she had been to a dance in 1940 at which Fats Waller and his band had been playing. Call me avant garde if you like, but I really think there’s something to be gained from listening to the tracks I’m going to post alongside reading the story.

The story is like a jazz solo, riffing and quoting from the songs played that evening. The story explores the complicated relationship between the black performer Powerhouse (based on Waller) and his mixed-race audience. That said, the blend of sweet, trite love songs and ‘hot’ jazz tunes suggests Welty’s expecting the reader to have a familiarity with the subtle musical textures.

Really, I suggest you download these records below and make a playlist to put on while you read the story. You’ll come away astonished at how much the music is part of the texture of the story.

More Ronald Frankau - The M&W Show

Nicholas Frankau presents a programme about the remarkable double act his grandfather had with Liverpudlian Tommy Handley. I’ve just listened to it and really enjoyed it, especially the clips showing the pair’s incredible facility for fast patter. Listen to it here, NOW! (It expires in three days, so go now.)

If you liked our Ronald Frankau posts, you’ll love it.

Here are the links to those posts:

Frankau’s World War II propaganda verses (and a helping of smut)

Ronald Frankau film clips from the Pathe website

Monkhouse Meets Frankau: Freddie’s Got A Lot To Learn

English with a Dialect - English, Irish, Scottish and Welsh Accents (1971)

Despite this being called “English with a Dialect” it’s not a study of dialect words. Rather, it’s a load of archive recordings of speakers with regional accents, cobbled together here as a “pronunciation guide” for actors and a “study guide” for teachers.

Some of the accents have really changed in just 40 years – Liverpudlian being a case in point, and isn’t the Brummie accent on here very different to the accent we now expect – while some, like the Suffolk accent (my own: see this post if you’re not aware of it), are slowly vanishing through the onslaught of Estuary.

Also, I think it amusing (as someone who’s lived in the area for a while) that Yorkshire is covered in one all-encompassing accent.

Here’s something new to the site: an interactive map. Simply click on the area to listen to or download the recording. If you prefer traditional links, they're at the bottom of the page. 
Feel free to email/tweet/comment if you hear anything you like (or if you notice any great absences)!

The Suffolk Accent: A Guide to Phonetics

This has nothing to do with music. Rather, it's related to my post on the accents of the British Isles. This time I’m focusing on the one I grew up with (and am steadily losing while living up here in the North), the Suffolk accent.

To the annoyance of the Suffolkian, this is often conflated with the other East Anglian brogue, that of Norfolk. It's certainly more media-friendly. Perhaps a post on their differences should follow? (Or perhaps somebody might be able to point me towards one?)

A 78s Playlist (The Nine Best 78s on Music Makes Me)

*A CD comprised entirely of rare and unusual 78s is now available here!*

I've got a present for you. It's a 45-minute playlist to introduce you to the 78s available on the site.

Music Makes Me - A 78s Playlist

There's some comedy, melodrama, protest, classical, swing, popular song, folk and, some, well, bagpipes.

Think of it as a lovingly made mixtape, one that might encourage you to find more about the site and the artists presented (click here to see the tracklist).

01 Blue Danube - International Concert Orchestra, HMV
02 The Lost Chord - Webster Booth
03 The Perpetual Laugh - Charles Jolley
04 Beneath the White Texas Moon - G. H. Elliot
05 Ave Maria - J. H. Squire Celeste Octet
06 Strange Fruit - Aubrey Pankey
07 The Hills of Glenswilly, v. John McGettigan & His Irish Minstrels (Regal Zonophone)
08 Sandy's Honeymoon (Pts. I & II)- Sandy Powell
09 Mean to Me - Alfredo & his Orchestra
10 Au clair de lune - Benno Moiseiwitsch
11 This is Heaven - Talbot O'Farrell
12 Flowers of the Forest - Pipe-Major Forsythe
13 Bop Goes the Weasel - Tommy Reilly

And if you like that sort of thing - shellac, 78s, pre-vinyl scratchy records - if broadband noise is no obstacle to your aural enjoyment, then I present you with the best 78s posts Music Makes Me has to offer...

Ha ha! Olivier Reads from Job

An extract from the vinyl LP featuring Olivier reading from the Book of Job, used powerfully in Shaffer's Equus.

(Above: A relaxed shot of Olivier at his home in Steyning, West Sussex.)

The Zoo Story - Edward Albee

Click here for the full post with mp3 files and that...

The Zoo Story is Edward Albee's first play. Obviously its influence has spread further than its absurdist roots - there's something of the chemistry between Lemmon and Matthau in The Apartment about the central characters (although you could argue that Beckett's Waiting for Godot also mines the double-act formula). It's full of menace and machismo and... tickling.

A Portrait of William Shakespeare - John Gielgud and George Rylands (1969)

Gielgud reads from the sonnets and plays, while Rylands reads biographical and other writings to provide context.

01a - Shakespeare's England

01b - Five English Kings

02a - Shakespeare the Man (Self Confession - The Sonnets)

02b - Through Other's Eyes (Greene, Chettle, etc.)

02c - Shakespeare's Farewell

There's a responsive studio audience, which gives what are essentially a number of monologues (albeit with the variety of two speakers) some atmosphere.

I get the impression that Gielgud reads the royal parts and the sonnets with especial relish!

Listened to as a whole, it's a great night out at the theatre in the hands of two excellent actors.

The Sentimental Side of Music Hall - Orphans and Mining Disasters

Two rather calculated attempts at weepies, although the melody on Don't Go Down the Mine, Dad is wonderfully Victorian. The sound quality on Orphans in the Storm is a little scratchy.

Orphans in the Storm - Regal orchestra, with Organ & Voices (Anyone know the hymn they launch into?*)


Don't Go Down the Mine, Dad - Frank Emerson

This song was composed by Robert Donelly probably after the 1907 Welsh mine disaster and was published in 1910.

*Thanks to Ron Reed for pointing that one out (see comments). How embarrassing - I couldn't recognise 'Abide with Me'!

Quincy Jones's Michael Jackson Anecdotes

Go here for my tribute to the late legend.

He Stays Out Of The Box - Quincy Jones on Michael Jackson.

A bawdy cutup of Quincy Jones's interview about Michael Jackson's Bad.

Talk About America - Alistair Cooke

Alistair Cooke was, for those who have never heard any of the Letters from America broadcasts, a sort of Chekhov of the radio. These broadcasts here are fine examples: a passing observation or carefully observed detail often sends you back to listen again.

His genius - which was that he knew just about everything - was always worn lightly and he always smartly distanced himself from that patrician air that great commentators are liable to adopt.

As I read Dreams of My Father recently, I found myself wondering what he might have said about Obama. On the evidence below, there is no doubt he would have voiced the unexpected.

01 The U.S.A.

02 The South

03 Alcatraz

04 The New Californians

05 The Non-Assassination of John F. Kennedy

06 A Tiny Claim to Fame

07 A Ruined Woman

The Wonderful World of Man (1975)

Although it might sound like the blog has taken a homoerotic (or ungrammatical) turn, I must explain that this is an unfortunate misunderstanding. This (in every other way fruity) audio tour celebrates not the male sex but Man, the Isle of.

This is a fantastic album because, while every other (unwanted) album you flip over in a charity shop tells you to Come to Paris, or takes you on A Holiday in Spain, this one is just that little bit closer to home (for the Brit), and so its highlights are, in a way, its disappointments, its bathos.

Expect to hear some Manx folk songs, some original Manx speakers, and the usual guide to the flora, fauna and places of interest. Perhaps you could download it and pop it on your mp3 player to use as a real audio tour the next time you go.

If you are a Manxman (or woman), greetings to you! I hope to go to the Isle of Man one of these days and weasel out one of its few remaining Manx speakers.

The Wonderful World of Man - Side 1

The Wonderful World of Man - Side 2

If you enjoyed this detour to the Isle of Man, have a skeg at the post on accents: English With A Dialect

John Gielgud: Shakespeare’s The Ages of Man

The Ages of Man album was directly inspired by the success of Gielgud's Ages of Man tour, in which he - in the eyes of many of his contemporaries - showed how the language of Shakespeare should be spoken. (They were talking about meaning, not pronunciation.)

We listen now not so much for this or the putative journey (it's actually rather a rag-bag, a story Shakespeare would have told far better), but for the instrumental quality of Gielgud's voice, its recherché musicality.

01 - Youth
02 - Manhood
03 - Old Age