Musical Memories: Joy and Delight
In September 1984 I became head of department at Dorothy Stringer School in Brighton. The first few months were extremely difficult, and I even began applying for jobs outside teaching. The head was so angry that he said he would refuse to give me a reference as he saw my applications as an insult to his school. The main problem was I had moved from a progressive school to an exam factory. Students expected your lessons to be constructed in a way that would enable them to get good SAT scores or exam results. My progressive teaching methods frighted the students, especially the ones in the top groups (the school rigidly streamed the children).
In the November of 1984, I was teaching my top exam group the subject of the American Civil Rights movement. It was a subject I felt very strongly about. At the age of nineteen I had met a member of the African National Congress youth wing at a party in London. He had been forced to flee from South Africa because he feared arrest. After the long conversation we had at the party I made a pledge to myself that I would do as much as I could to promote racial equality. In fact, it was one of the reasons I became a teacher. I used to get emotional when I taught the subject, especially when I played videos of the speeches of Martin Luther King. This worked in my former school where I had taught for six years. However, these lessons did not have the same impact on the students in Brighton. Or more correctly, they were unwilling to openly to show their feelings about the subject.
After one lesson a group of young boys came up to me and said they had got together to buy me a record they thought I would like. At that time, I was so busy teaching and writing textbooks (and rearing a litter of racing greyhounds), I spent little time listening to modern music and I had never heard this song before. It was Aint No Stopping Us Now by Mcfadden and Whitehead. They were right, I loved the record, and it gives me a good feeling every time I hear it. The present also changed the way I saw the students and I no longer wanted to leave the school.
To me, the track represents the joy expressed by the singers but also the pleasure you get when you feel you have made some impact on your students. The song also indicates the optimism needed by any campaigners for change. It could be argued that it is a song of "false consciousness" because there were still a lot of factors that were holding back ethnic minorities in the US (and the UK). The careers of Mcfadden and Whitehead reflected this. It was the only record that they made that was successful (initially released in 1979 it reached number 5 in the UK and 13 in the US in 1984). Their careers went into rapid decline and on May 11, 2004, Whitehead was murdered on the street outside of his Philadelphia home studio. Whitehead was 55 years old. On January 27, 2006, McFadden died of liver and lung cancer. He was 56.
Mcfadden and Whitehead, Aint No Stopping Us Now (1979)
I've chosen Benny Goodman's 1937 arrangement of Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing): It was written in 1936 by Louis Prima (the man who sang ‘I Wan'na Be Like You' in Disney's ‘The Jungle Book'). The video starts with The Benny Goodman Orchestra performing the track in the film ‘Hollywood Hotel' in 1937; a film that is perhaps best remembered now for its opening track ‘Hooray for Hollywood'. It's then mashed-up with a dance by Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire. They weren't actually dancing to this song, but the video edit makes it look like they were! If you want to see Gene Krupa, the drummer, in all his glory without the dancing and in a slightly different arrangement, you can see the original film track here: Benny Goodman Orchestra - Sing, Sing, Sing. Hope it makes your heart sing!
Benny Goodman Orchestra, Sing, Sing, Sing (with a Swing) (1937)
Lettice Maltravers
Felix Mendelssohn, Octet in E-flat major, Op 20, played by the Jasper and Jupiter String Quartets and recorded at the Rockport Chamber Music Festival, 2017. This is a long-time favourite of mine, and is played here with great verve and fire. I hope everyone finds it as joyful as I do, so full of delight at life and excitement at the creation and sharing of great music. It is remarkable that Mendelssohn wrote it in 1825 when he was only 16, and very kindly presented it to his violin teacher as a birthday present. At that age Mendelssohn already had a good handful of symphonies and quartets under his belt. His wealthy intellectual family recognised Felix as a musical prodigy, although his sister Fanny was reckoned to be more musical and indeed some of her many compositions are also played and enjoyed today. The four Mendelssohn children benefited from the best teaching and the most supportive and stimulating society in Berlin. Lucky things! I used to imagine Felix rushing enthusiastically from the keyboard to a group of family and friends and giving them each a part carefully inscribed on manuscript paper so that they could settle into a circle and play the octet that he had just knocked out. But of course, his work is the delicious fruit of many hours of hard labour and serious imaginings. I love it!
Jasper and Jupiter String Quartets, Octet in E-flat major, Op 20 (2017)
I have chosen Sunny Afternoon by The Kinks as my selection because it brings back memories of an era in the mid-sixties when there was so much to look forward to and so much change taking place. The song has a real light sunny feel about it and brings great pleasure every time I hear it. It is rather frivolous but that is part of its great charm.
I have chosen the version of the song taken from the West End musical Sunny Afternoon which we saw at the Harold Pinter Theatre in 2015. Pamela and I were staying in London for a few days and decided to see as many shows as possible. We just turned up at the box office and managed to get the best seats for about a third of the price. It was a great show highlighting the history of the Kinks and reflecting those unique times.
The Kinks, Sunny Afternoon (1966)
I don't get to any like as much live music as I used to, but this always reminds me of encore time. The joy and delight of live music. Jackson Browne's Stay is from his 1977 Running on Empty album, this track was one of two top 40 singles. A very successful live album.
Some snippets from Wikipedia: "Very early in his musical career he played with The Nitty Gritty Dirt band. He recorded Rebel Jesus with The Chieftains on their The Bells of Dublin (great album to play at Christmas instead of traditional carols). At his induction into the rock and roll Hall of Fame, Springsteen said that he wrote the songs that the Eagles wished were theirs. Disappointingly I have not seen him live.
Jackson Browne, Stay (1977)
I found this selection very very difficult. I could think of many songs and pieces of music that bring me joy or delight, but would not necessarily do the same for others. Also, the title or subject matter was not a good fit with the premise. I came close to choosing Louis Jordan's "Ain't Nobody Here But Us Chickens" (for its natural exuberance), "Good Vibrations" by the Beach Boys or "Texas 1947" by Guy Clark.
Finally, after discussion with my principal musicial adviser, I decided on Country Life performed by Eliza Carthy and Saul Rose. This is a very old song, it is not clear how old, but it is thought to predate the 18th agricultural revolution and, in my view, it paints an idealized portrait of the life of a 'Country Boy'. It is a popular English folk song and you can find a number of different versions on Youtube including one of the most famous by the Watersons. I have chosen this version because it highlights Eliza's musicial skills and it is nice to hear a melodeon. Saul Rose is comparatively new to me, but he has played (and sung) with many leading lights in the folk music. If you like folk music Eliza Carthy, the daughter of Martin Carthy and Norma Waterson, is a well-known figure and there numerous performances available. I hope you enjoy this live performance as much as I did.
Eliza Carthy and Saul Rose, Country Life (2004)
Trying to decide what track to choose this month I realised that "joy and delight" is not a category that I easily relate to. Not because I deliberately seek out depressing songs - as members of the MM group will know, I have never been a great Leonard Cohen fan – it's just that joy and delight aren't necessarily the first things I look for when choosing music.
My immediate thoughts went to "Reason to be Cheerful, Pt. 3" by Ian Drury, Monty Python's "Always look on the Bright Side" or anything by Abba. But after that I drew a blank. One question that occurred to me was whether uplifting songs have to be about happy things. "Go Your Own Way" by Fleetwood Mac is an upbeat, uplifting song but the lyrics were written by Lindsey Buckingham in response to his breakup with Stevie Nicks. I bet it was an awkward band practice when he unveiled that one!
Eventually I came up with a list of "uplifting" songs that included tracks ranging from Billy Bragg's Great Leap Forward to ELO's Mr Blue Sky and Primal Scream's Movin' On Up , but I finally decided on End of the Line by Traveling Wilburys
Generally speaking so-called super groups are a disappointment. Either the bands are composed of "super" artists you've never heard of, or their members are talented performers in their own right that fail to gel as a band. However, there are a few exceptions and, to my mind, Traveling Wilburys was one of them, perhaps because they didn't try to present a "super" image to the world. Rather than being full of their own self-importance, the members of the band gave the impression that they were just a bunch of mates having a good time together. They didn't take themselves too seriously and humour was a large part of what they did.
The members of the band are all artists I admire: Bob Dylan, George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison. How could you beat that line-up? Although I really liked Dylan's early albums, he is not a brilliant singer in the conventional sense and I haven't really followed him in recent years. The one criticism I have of the Wilburys is that Dylan sings too many of their songs. However George Harrison, Jeff Lynne, Tom Petty and Roy Orbison are all favourite singers of mine in their own right.
They came together as the Traveling Wilburys in April 1988 but the band only existed for a short while. They released two albums: Traveling Wilburys Volumes I and III but, despite their name, they never did travel anywhere and there was never a live tour. Their last release was in February 1991. Very sadly- and far too early – Roy Orbison died in December 1988.
Described by Rolling Stone as "the antithesis of a super group", the band members tried to hide their identities (they didn't try very hard and weren't at all successful) by inventing a back story and adopting pseudonyms as half-brothers. Supposedly they were sons of a fictional Charles Truscott Wilbury, Sr – from a family of travelling musicians. To add to the confusion, exactly which member of the Wilbury family each artist was impersonating changed between albums. George Harrison was Nelson Wilbury (Spike Wilbury on Travelling Wilburys Vol III); Jeff Lynne was Otis Wilbury (Clayton Wilbury); Roy Orbison was Lefty Wilbury. Tom Petty was Charlie T Wilbury Jr (Muddy Wilbury) and Bob Dylan was Lucky Wilbury (Boo Wilbury)
Jim Keltner – another artist with an amazing career in the music business – played drums with the band. He wasn't officially listed as a Wilbury but performed with the pseudonym Buster Sidebury.
Arguably the two best known Wilbury tracks are "Handle With Care" and "End of the Line" I have chosen the latter as I think it fits this month's MM theme very well. Whilst it may not be an outstanding piece of music I do find it a delight and I certainly think it is joyful. The lyrics aren't exactly profound – a couple of the verses look as if they might have been written on the back of the proverbial cigarette packet, using a rhyming dictionary. But they are optimistic and uplifting: – life is good; no matter what happens in life, it'll be alright; don't worry about what other people think or what tomorrow may bring; just live the life you please and enjoy it.
I also think the video is a joyful one. Apparently set in a train carriage, it reinforces the "travelling" idea of the Wilburys and extends the journey/railroad/end of the line metaphor. George, Jeff and Roy sing the "choruses" in turn while Tom Petty sings the verses. Bob Dylan is the only member of the band not to take a lead part on the song. Sadly Roy Orbison died before the video was made and so, to honour his loss, the video features a shot of a guitar sitting in a rocking chair next to a photo of Orbison when his vocals are heard.
This was the final track on the Wilburys' debut album, Traveling Wilburys Vol.1. The album defied the synthesised musical trends of the time, which was probably what George Harrison intended, but it achieved both a surprise commercial success and critical acclaim. (It didn't do any harm to the flagging careers of a couple of the band members at the time either.) The author and music journalist Alan Clayson likened the release of the album to "a Viking longship docking in a hovercraft terminal"
End of the Line isn't a musical masterpiece but I certainly find it joyful and uplifting and, in that respect ,I think it fits this month's bill very well.
Traveling Wilburys, End of the Line (1988)
For my piece of "joyful music" I have chosen ‘Boum!', written and performed by the French singer-songwriter Charles Trenet.
Charles Trenet (1913 – 2001) was a French singer and songwriter, most famous for the recordings he made during the twenty-year period 1937 to 1957. During his career he wrote both the lyrics and composed the music for nearly a thousand songs and, unusually for the period, for his performances and recordings he drew almost exclusively from his own self-penned material. Trenet began his solo singing career in 1937, recording his debut album in the same year. His hit songs from the 1930s and 1940s combine his inventive French lyrics with American swing music. In addition to his love of jazz, Trenet was also influenced by surrealist poetry. His exuberant live performances were distinctively eccentric and consequently he was given the nickname "The Singing Madman".
"Boum!" (equivalent to "Boom!" in English) was recorded in 1938 and became an extremely popular song, eventually winning the Grand Prix du Disque, the premier award in France for musical recordings. According to Wikipedia, the light, irreverent lyrics express the joie de vivre typical in French popular music produced during the late 1930s. A French historian has argued that Trenet's songs of the late 1930s "represented escapism at a time dominated by political unrest and economic uncertainty."
The version of Trenet's song ‘Boum!' which I would like Musical Memories members to experience is on YouTube. The song accompanies scenes from a favourite film of mine – the 1991 Belgian film ‘Toto the Hero', directed by Jaco Van Dormael.
Scenes from the film Toto the Hero (1991) with the music soundtrack provided by the French song ‘Boum!' recorded in 1938 by Charles Trenet: The film ‘Toto the Hero' tells the life story of an elderly man looking back on his ordinary, apparently uneventful life and depicts his obsessive jealousy of the man whom he believes has "stolen his life" by being swapped with him when he was a new-born baby. Boum!' appears on the soundtrack of the film in a flashback sequence when the hero of the film remembers his childhood and the young girl who apparently was in love with him. Boum!' is also the music that is played over the final scene in the film.
I had heard Charles Trenet performing ‘Boum!' on the radio many years before the release of the film ‘Toto the Hero' but these extracts from the film help to convey the joy I feel every time I hear Trenet sing the song. I must confess that my musical taste is more commonly in the realm of melancholy and reflection. The music I respond to is more likely to be sad and mournful rather than joyful and full of delight. However, when I am feeling down, I only have to listen to Charles Trenet's ‘Boum!' to lift my spirits.
The song ‘Boum!' is essentially about the feelings we have when we are in love.
Boum!, Boom!,
Quand notre coeur fait Boum ! When our heart goes "Boom!"
Tout avec lui dit Boum ! Everything goes "Boom!" with it,
Et c'est l'amour And it is love
Qui s'éveille. Which awakes.
The lyrics of the song include imitations of familiar sounds such as the ticking of a clock (tic tac tic), the tweeting of birds (pic pic pic) the sound made by turkeys (glou glou glou), the ringing of a bell (ding din don) and a variety of other onomatopoeia.
Other versions of Charles Trenet's song ‘Boum!' :
Charles Trenet's original 1938 recording of Boum!:
Boom! – a 1940 version of "Boum!" sung by Trenet but with English lyrics supplied by the American songwriter Ray Gaetz (1886-1954).
And if you are not keen of Trenet's voice, a recent version of Boum! performed by The Susie Parr Trio (2019)
Charles Trenet, Boum! (1938)
For my "Joy & Delight" selection I would probably have chosen Beethoven's Ode to Joy. However, that enjoyment is spoilt by Brexit; more tears than joy. So on to other options. A more recent piece: Pharrell Williams Happy which the grandchildren enjoy? I then thought way back to Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, one of the first operas that I saw and a delight. Or perhaps Chopin's Minute Waltz which is a reminder of the joy of Kenneth Williams in Radio 4's Just a Minute. Thinking about waltzes takes me to Johann Strauss II. A waltz can be joyful and delightful and the rhythm is so hard to resist. Here is his Frühlingsstimmen (Voices of Spring) with Slovakian soprano Patricia Janecková aged 17 years! Listen to the end for the joy and delight of her voice (if you like that kind of thing!)
Patricia Janecková, Frühlingsstimmen (2016)
I spent a delightful few hours listening to this song which was written by Harold Arlen and Johnny Mercer in 1944. It was nominated for an Academy Award for the film Here Come The Waves, starring Bing Crosby who has since duetted with several people with this song. Johnny Mercer's version, recorded in 1944, has been inducted into the Library of Congress's National Recording Registry for the song's "cultural, artistic, and/or historical significance to American Society and the nation's audio legacy".
It was Bing Crosby and the Andrews sisters who took the tune into the charts in 1945. Four more versions were recorded that year by different singers, but Bing Crosby seems to be the person most associated with it.
Over the last 75 years at least 25 other artists have recorded this song which has been used in many films and TV programmes both here and in the US.
Jools Holland has four appearances on youtube with this song that I can find, two of which have Rumer singing with him. Two of these are on chat shows and I've avoided using them due to the fact that Andrew Marr and Philip Schofield don't need any more self promotion. I was very tempted to choose Jools but found, quite by chance, this children's choir; and loved their joy, giggles and gestures. It seemed to me to be how the song should be sung. Kathryn Burgum is North Dakota's First Lady, married to the Governor and very influential in promoting a "tolerance to addiction' programme having overcome this herself many years before. She supports many causes including family and children's projects and has a self help website called "Reinventing Recovery.
The only downside to this song is that it is very catchy and I now have an ear worm. I was singing it all the way to Tesco and back this morning but it did lighten my mood, so maybe it works.
Kathryn Burgum's Dakota Valley Kids' Choir, Ac-Cent-Tchu-Ate The Positive (2018)
Ever since I learned about Halley's Comet at school light years ago, I have always been fascinated by the phenomenon. In April 1986 we had a holiday in Corfu at the very time the comet was visible. Seeing it in a cloudless night was quite magical and an almost spiritual experience. It made me aware how insignificant we are on our tiny blue ball.
The track I've chosen, brings it all back every time I hear it.
Mary Chapin Carpenter, When Halley came to Jackson (1991)
This was an easy choice, explaining why may be more difficult. When I was a teenager the emphatic, rhythmically driven symphonies of Beethoven offered some of the qualities that others might have got out of rock music. The odd numbers , particularly 5, 7 and 9, were the head-banging ones, the even numbers the more relaxed ones. André Cluytens was a Belgian-French conductor who recorded a Beethoven cycle in the 1950s. By the 60s they had been reissued on a mid-priced label and his performance of Beethoven's 8 th was a regular mood lifter in my teens and twenties. The cycle seems to have been periodically re-issued ever since. A few years ago I came across a cycle at a ridiculously low price in a charity shop. Then came the downer; I discovered that the set was incomplete. A malediction on whoever lost it the odd CD or bought it before me. But now there it is, on line.
Beethoven's ‘little symphony' came after soon the driven 7th: ‘the apotheosis of the dance' although I would not like to dance to it- after that it was a good 12 years before the ground-breaking 9 th . ( I grew up with Cluytens' performance of that as well.) It is a decidedly quirky work. It combines some of the rhythmic drive, though lighter handed, of its immediate predecessor with the good humour - though here it is a boisterous, not always a relaxed, good humour - of the Pastoral ( No.6).
To say that the symphony is in four movements would raise no expectations in some of us, and false expectations in the rest, for nothing is quite what might be expected.
The very opening phrase sounds as if it might, in other contexts, be a closing phrase and so it proves. At the very end of the movement, after Beethoven has squeezed all of the juice out of it that he can there is no great climax- that has already happened in a huge crescendo in the middle - the opening phrase just steals in as quietly as it began to bring things to an end. There is no slow movement. Instead there is an movement dominated by a clock-like ticking .It is not an entirely reliable mechanism, as it finally judders to an unexpected halt. There has been no slow movement and there will be no scherzo either (or perhaps the mechanical movement was the scherzo- the word means ‘joke'). Anyway we get instead an old fashioned minuet, though it is not very courtly, instead it is heavy footed, as if the peasants from the sixth symphony are imitating their betters. In the central trio Beethoven for once gives his music the operatic feel of Mozart's instrumental music, the masculine horns in dialogue with the feminine clarinet, sounding to me like an allusion to the pastoral tradition of the lovelorn shepherd and his beloved , but that is just me being fanciful. The last movement again breaks the usual patterns by have two developments, just as it appears to have been wrapped up Beethoven decides he has unfinished business and, effectively starts again. As it rattles along it has to cope with the repeated raspberry of loud wrong note, which it first ignores and finally comes to terms with. Along the way the music repeated seems to get lost and has to be pulled back in line, before ending up exactly where the composer always intended. Part of the paradox of this work is that despite the planning that has clearly gone on it often give the impression of being improvised.
A lot of what goes on can be described in terms of formal processes and key relationships, which I would mostly not understand myself if I reproduced them. But these things can actually be felt and heard, as well a pondered . I suppose that is why music of this kind has always done more for me than any other, physical stimulus, emotional arousal and at least a dim awareness of a long term patterns evolving all come together. A third hearing will not be the same as the first. Some people perhaps feel the same about film).
For those who want more enlightened comment I offer the following. The Tom Service series in The Guardian as a whole is worth exploring:
Here is the thing itself. It lasts about half and hour. Listen to as much or as little. Although Cluytens didn't make the cut as far as Service was concerned this is my musical memory and I will stick with him.
André Cluytens, Beethoven Symphony 8 (1958)