This makes me smile so much I could burst. Soul Train is like Top of The Pops in an alternate universe, one where the kids in the audience can actually dance.
What the hell, have two!
I had hoped to post some more this week but I’ve had a miserable bloody week at work which left me too tired and stressed for that. As they say in the movies “I’m getting too old for this shit.”
This makes me feel a whole lot better though.
*It’s the 4th of July holiday here on Saturday so the weekend is starting on Thursday this week. Not a day too soon if you ask me.
Reading this feature about the gorgeous but short-lived 1960s magazine London Life I came across this marvelous bit of pop trivia about a promotional idea cooked up by managing editor David Puttnam (yes, that David Puttnam):
One of his more extravagant (though certainly forward-thinking) ideas was to ask Burt Bacharach to write a song for the magazine. “He was very big at the time and it struck me that if he could write a song with London Life as the title it could help us,” says Puttnam. The idea was that the song would garner huge, free publicity for the magazine through radio play. So Puttnam headed up to the Edinburgh Festival, where Bacharach was performing, to suggest the idea. Luckily, he took Jean Shrimpton with him. “Bacharach was much more interested in meeting her than me,” says Puttnam, and he agreed to the plan. Lulu was to have recorded it: she was unavailable, so Anita Harris did it instead.
It’s extra marvelous to me because I work in the magazine business and this is like my dream of what the job should be like. Sadly, my chances of jetting off to meet a pop star with a supermodel on my arm are slim to none. While I’m sure they gave him a large pile of money to do it, I’m still amazed that Bacharach agreed to write a promo song for a magazine, but I guess the presence of Jean Shrimpton will persuade a man to do anything. Hell, I’d write a song for a church newsletter if she asked me to.
I think the story is a bit better than the actual record though. The song is fine but Anita Harris isn’t exactly Dusty, let alone Lulu.
Download: London Life – Anita Harris (mp3)
PS: The illustration on the cover above was by a young man whose name you might know: Ian Dury
Lots to enjoy in this TOTP clip. Not just the lovely face and voice of Polly Brown but some really unfortunate hair choices (you’ll know who I mean) and dancing dollies shaking their thing. The drummer looks a bit bored though.
The British aren’t exactly renowned for their jazz chops, we’ve produced a fair bit of talent in that area but, compared to the American giants, the ranks of Great British Jazzmen is a small club on a par with Important French Rock Bands or Great German Comedians. But Tubby Hayes was one of the few who could blow with the best of them anywhere in the world as he shows on this storming big band number which, pardon the expression, swings more than a Doberman’s balls.
Yes, I am aware that is the second reference to canine scrotum I’ve made this week. Just a strange coincidence I assure you.
Download: The Killers of W1 – Tubby Hayes Orchestra (mp3)
Buy: “Tubbs’ Tours” (album)
Photo from the Soho Nights exhibition.
As a little early Something For The Weekend extra, here’s a great clip of him doing it live. For a bunch of guys who look like librarians and school teachers they’re really cooking.
When I was about 14 my best mate at school told me that he thought my mother was good-looking. I don’t know if I should have thumped him for eyeing up my mum in that way (and maybe having secret Mrs. Robinson-style fantasies about her) but the truth is I was more chuffed than anything. I was rather proud that I had an attractive mother who got compliments — even from chubby schoolboys — and was wolf-whistled at when she walked past a building site, even though she had reached the shockingly ancient age of 40 that year. So while she might not have been able to afford to buy me the new Gola trainers with the lime green stripe that all my mates had at least I didn’t mind being seen in public with her.
Not that she was a Bond girl or anything but because she was a single woman with long blond hair who still dated men she seemed younger and more glamourous than my friend’s mothers who were more Woman’s Realm than Cosmopolitan if you know what I mean — “proper” mums like the ones you saw in Daz commercials on the telly. That’s how I remember them anyway, but when you’re that age most grown-ups seem old and boring. My mate Paul had parents called Stan and Winnie which not only sounds like two characters out of Andy Capp they looked like them too, the sort of people the 1960s seemed to have completely passed by and you can’t imagine ever being young or having sex — though Paul was proof that they must have done it at least once. Lovely people, mind.
As you can imagine, being a divorcee raising two kids on her own my mum had a thing for songs about strong, independent women battling against the odds (men, usually) so she loved the Country record “Harper Valley PTA” by Jeannie C. Riley. This 1968 hit was about a single parent (though widowed in this case) who scandalizes the other parents at her daughter’s school by wearing short skirts and being seen out on the town with men. The best part about it is she stands up for herself and gives them all a good verbal knee in the balls for their small-minded hypocrisy. When one-parent families were portrayed in the media back then it was usually as a “problem” — latchkey kids, “broken” homes and all that crap — so it was nice to hear a loud and proud single mum in a pop song. Not only that, but it also stands up for a mother’s right to look sexy which must have made mine pump her fist in the air and shout “right on sister!”
Download: Harper Valley PTA – Jeannie C. Riley (mp3)
The lovely Paris Sisters, whose lead singer sounds spookily like Sarah Cracknell.
I’ve finally emerged from Deadline Hell so there will be some actual proper posts next week. Huzzah!
