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What lingers?
Often musicians, musical critics and music lovers ascribe their deep love for music and the kinds of music they play, sing or write about with such passion, to the ‘music I heard as a child’. They’ll talk about their dad’s extensive jazz library or their aunty’s collection of Detroit soul records. They might reminisce about family gatherings around the piano, or describe an upbringing with the classics always being played. Obviously, for many musicians, their formative experiences were about being in a household or community environment where music wasn’t just listened to, but played by all and sundry.
Music writer, Alex Ross in his brilliant book, Listen To This, writes about his own particular version of this: “I am a white American male who listened to nothing but classical music until the age of twenty. In retrospect; perhaps ‘freakish’ is not too strong a word”. He goes on: “Early on I delved into my parents’ record collection, which was well-stocked with the artefacts of the golden age… The look and feel of the records were inseparable from the sound they made”
It might have been freakish, but it led him pretty directly to a successful career writing about music, and such a statement seems pretty par for the course for those for whom intergenerational influence in these matters seems important. For others, however, the muse is much less direct and tangible. My experience of a musical experience at home was much more like Tracy Thorn’s, described in her memoir, Bedsit Disco Queen.1 Her parents’ musical tastes “were rooted in the pre-rock cool of Frank Sinatra and Glenn Miller, and extended into the present only as far as the unarguable musicality of someone like Stevie Wonder”. I’d say, yup, pretty much, to that!
All rock and most soul – literally anything with a beat, it seemed – would evoke the same response from my Dad (and bear in mind he would be a young man in his early thirties when he would say this), something like: “What a noise! You can’t hear the words. They’re just shouting.” Punk, when its arrived was, as you can imagine, beyond the pale: another world of noise entirely!
My parents’ record collection was a small selection of popular classics and opera compilations, some ‘Best of’ albums by Sinatra-like crooners, Abba and some CDs and records by the Osmonds – including Little Jimmy. My Mum, a nursery teacher, also had a small collection of CDs of children’s songs which she loved playing to her eight grandchildren over the years (they loved them, too). The Wheels on the Bus was one of the songs played at her funeral, alongside the Eva Cassidy version of Over the Rainbow from the posthumous compilation, Songbird, which was an album Mum loved.
Later in their life, they discovered opera and would take in a live open-air performance on their regular summer trips to Lake Como in Italy. And they also discovered, on TV, the flamboyant, frankly over-extravagant joys of André Rieu and his Johann Strauss Orchestra. These are wildly successful, usually open-air concerts, a ‘musical phenomenon’ for the middle-class Europeans of a certain age (mine) who predominantly attend. Personally, I’m not overly fond of a Viennese waltz, but Dad was. One day after Mum had died, he told me that he wished he’d been able to take her to one of these concerts - just once.
So, his musical soul was in there, and for a few years before his memory and mobility declined too much, we would take him to see the English National Opera or a musical theatre production at the Theatre Royal in Newcastle or Sage2 in Gateshead. The last one, the summer before lockdown, was Les Miserables at the Theatre Royal, which on reflection, seems apt. As was his wont, he’d spent the weeks before the trip re-reading the Victor Hugo novel, and letting everyone know how the musical didn’t really do justice to the 1462 pages of the original book.
He’s 90 now and lives in a care home on the sea front, but I know there’s still a musical life there for him, if he want it. On a recent trip to visit him, on Mothers Day (UK version) last year, a singer was entertaining the residents with an impressive array of show and soul classics, all originally sung by women. We both enjoyed it, and joined in a bit, though Geordie male reserve was also definitely in play. And only yesterday, my brother relates, the Elvis impersonator was giving it everything at Eastbourne House.
Unforgettable
When Dad had to move out of his house at the back end of 2019, my sister and I took on the job of sorting his possessions. A few bits would go with him, but there wouldn’t be space for much. There was all his furniture, books and display collections of ornamental mugs, teaspoons and toy cars. Some went to family members, and the aforementioned CDs and LPs went the way of the furniture and books, most going to be recycled or redistributed by a local social enterprise.
All his crooner records went, including two Val Doonican LPs (one of them the awesomely titled, Val Doonican Rocks But Gently). Doonican was an Irish singer who was on telly in the 60s and 70s, and sang MOR, faux country and comedy songs. And when I was a kid, I loved Val Doonican. That wasn’t cool, obviously, especially when I went to secondary school at 11 and when asked, blithely told my new classmates (with all the social awareness I’ve now come to fondly recognise as my own!) that he was my favourite singer. I did, in fact, like the Beatles and other bands and these might indeed have been more diplomatic answers to that testing question, but, no, I said Val Doonican. Needless to say, there were consequences. Needless to say, even half a century later, I was pleased to see the back of those particular albums.
There was one record, however, that I wanted to retrieve: a single piece of vinyl I remembered from back in my childhood. It was this one (see below), an album tribute to Nat King Cole, with edits of eighteen of his songs, compiled and with a commentary by Alan Dell, who had worked with Cole, and was also a DJ and broadcaster on the BBC (who apparently counted John Peel as a fan!). The album, on Capitol Records, was an extended vinyl version of a radionreview of Nat Cole’s musical career, that was broadcast on Sunday February 21st, 1965.
Note: in researching this piece I was astonished - in a good way - to find that even this ancient, pretty niche piece of music is on YouTube… Not everything has got worse… and the original vinyl is still available for sale on Discogs, which is also pretty amazing… The correct date of release is 1964 not 1954 as it says on the video.
I’d recommend listening to the album as a whole piece – it’s deeply moving and wonderfully curated. Dell’s tribute plainly showed his love for Nat King Cole’s music – and that love, I realise now, transferred to me all those years ago. These songs are embedded in my memory. Playing the record again – and the vinyl still has a deep and pristine sound 60 years on – I could remember nearly all the words. Even the musical transitions have lingered; the places where Alan Dell edited the songs, the ways in which one song slides so easily into the next (I guess we call it mixing, these days!).
What was evoked for me was surprising, unexpected and complex. I didn’t just remember the songs, arrangements and that voice, but the place where the album lived (a wooden cabinet in my parents’ living room), and the feelings I had when I listened to it back then. Even then, I think I knew it was something different. It wasn't just an uncool record owned by my uncool dad, but carried the seeds and templates for a lifetime of music discovery.
That might sound like an overstatement, but all the influences in those songs on the album are in the music I still listen to. Great songwriting. Great arrangements. Great and often deeply moving lyrics. Jazz inflections, effortless rhythm, great musicianship. Nat King Cole’s voice is what set him apart from all the vocalists of his day, and he carries the inherent musical intelligence of an artist who was a brilliant jazz pianist as well as the classic singer of his age. Even when he croons, he doesn’t sound like a crooner. He has a style and timing that came from his jazz background, I guess, and a way of holding himself – through his voice – that says something of the man he was reputed to be.
On the sleeve notes, Glenn Wallichs, the then chairman of Capitol Records wrote: “He won the admiration of people throughout the world with his unique voice, his matchless demeanour, his natural grace. We must lament his sudden departure from life, but we must also revel in how well that life was lived.”
Much of his music was down the ‘middle of the road’ – but none the worse for it. The songs he sang and worked with were simply great songs and, some of the more uptempo numbers are surprisingly danceable (and I can be pretty choosy about what I dance to!). The ballads are beautiful, emotive and simply delivered, there’s little of the corny ‘showmanship’ on display from some of the other crooners of his day. It always feel like the song is the thing…
Nature boy
There’s one more dimension to this – another layer to my love of this album and the songs on it that I’ve known for nigh on sixty years. The songs I love most are those that tell me who I am going to be. There’s almost a James Hillman ‘living my life backwards’ vibe to this.3 In this perspective, we look back, not to see how we became the person we are today, but to see the person that we always were, in essence, right from the start.
There are a number of songs on the album that do this for me. However, foremost among them is Nature Boy, a candidate for one of my favourite songs of all time. There are many versions of this song, but none quite come close to Nat Cole’s original. There are only thirteen lines to the lyric – two verses and no chorus – and Cole doesn’t embellish any of it. The song speaks of a mysterious, magical encounter, and leaves us with one simple wisdom:
And then one day
A magic day he passed my way
And while we spoke of many things
Fools and kings
This he said to me:
"The greatest thing you'll ever learn
Is just to love and be loved in return"
Those final two lines kill me every time. And, looking back, I realise that they encapsulate what has been important in my life. I could get philosophical and think about what ‘loving and being loved in return’ might mean in the wider world, but just to know what they say to me, and the learning implicit in this deceptively simplistic phrase, is enough.4
There are other bittersweet ballads, like Somewhere Along the Way and When I Fall in Love, that evoke similar emotion (though not the shivering mystery of Nature Boy). The lyrics are important, of course, but it is the way in which the voice, arrangements, memories – and, of course, the changing contexts of my life – combine and interlay that makes them seem so relevant in a restless world we live in still. Nature Boy, however, stands out – it reminds me a little of William Butler Yeat’s The Song of Wandering Aengus, as a piece of poetic, artistic magic.5
Other tracks on this special album are those that make me dance and made my Mum dance too. She so loved to dance! Straighten Up and Fly Right, It’s Only a Paper Moon, Orange Coloured Sky, Route 66 – there’s something almost funky about them, before ‘funk’ even emerged in the form we understand it right now.
There is great joy in these memories as I write. I know that though there was never a wall of classical CDs, or jazz LP’s at home to sift through, nor a community of musicians to sit at the heart of, there was this record. Eighteen tracks carved onto a piece of plastic and, also there in the grooves, pieces of my life.
Mum and Dad buying that record all those years ago was all that was needed.
I remember listening to Nat King Cole and wanting to be a jazz pianist. I did the piano lessons (like Tracey Thorn); later joined a band; later still dabbled at DJ-ing, but then went on to other paths. Yet, as this record returns to me after sixty years, I realise that its job is done – even though I wasn’t often aware of what it was doing for me under the surface of life. And I know this because I find myself now with a new venture, writing about music – this wonderful human thing that has been my lifelong passion – and that is kind of amazing, isn’t it?
Next time: the beginning of a new series entitled Twelve" This is going to a dip into my 12 inch ‘crate’. It’ll almost be a lucky dip (almost) and I hope there’ll be some finds that you’d like to follow up!
Notes
Tracy Thorn’s Bedsit Disco Queen is one of the best books by a musician about the musical life. And I will almost certainly be writing about Everything But The Girl at some stage on this journey!
The Sage is now called the Glasshouse International Centre for Music. Very fancy!
In James Hillman’s book, The Soul’s Code, he writes about this perspective as the ‘acorn theory’ in which everything is contained, in potential, in the daemon or soul’s code of each person. The book is not about music (though there are lots of musicians and singers in there: Mozart, John Lennon, Judy Garland, Yehudi Menuhin, Tina Turner and others), but it is an essential read: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/970831.The_Soul_s_Code
I was looking around to see whether some of the other Nature Boy covers stand up to NKC’s. David Bowie’s version in Moulin Rouge unsurprisingly takes a good crack at it, you can find it HERE. The other one I really like is Aurora’s live version Live at Nidarosdomen. Her performance is as strange and wonderful as the song itself.
There’s something about the feel of Nature Boy and the The Song of Wandering Aengus that seems akin to one another. It’s in the magic and the perilous uncertainty that both pieces leave us with. Nothing is decided. Nothing is even enacted, just a kind of fantasy on the one hand, and magical sleight of hand on the other. We are changed, and the Nature Boy and the Glimmering Girl just go on.
Another fantastic post dad! I am so enjoying reading and listening and following all the music links along the way. What an incredible song Nature Boy is too. I remember many happy hours singing along in my bedroom to my highly treasured Moulin Rouge CD when I was a kid - one of my favourite films and such a stunning soundtrack. Reading this, maybe the reason I felt such a connection to the track was having listened to the gorgeous Nat King Cole record at Gran and Grandad's? Who knows, but either way, it's wonderful how music seeps into us from all different directions and connections of love! I know that Gran and Grandad instilled a deep love of musicals in me. They had quite the collection of classic musical CD's (kept in the classic wooden cabinet) and videos (in the ice-box study) which we devoured and danced to when we visited and they took us to so many live shows which was the most magical experience! Thanks for sparking some lovely memories with this!
I’d like to go back in time and meet your Val-Doonican-loving self and cheer loudly. I think of all the music I have enjoyed privately but did not have the courage to reveal to others, for fear of their reaction.
Although I didn't listen to VD when I was young, his name was familiar to me. I think I might have picked up his name from reading MAD magazines, absorbing the accompanying satirical tone that let me know he "was uncool". There were other smooth singers of that time though that I was more familiar with: Roger Whittaker comes to mind. In solidarity with your shamed young self, I just looked on YouTube and watched Val and Roger serving up some hits together; Val tapping on a drum, Roger whistling. And remembered a cosy time of enjoying music with my family before I grew up and had to negotiate exploration of my personal tastes with my peer group.