You ain't been blue

As we're all in mourning for Her Majesty the Queen, I thought it somewhat inappropriate to whoop up a party atmosphere in my traditional way to mark the end of a week. Everything's cancelled anyway, including the Last Night of the Proms, so I foresee a quiet weekend afoot.

However, among the acres of coverage across our media, I did discover a surprising fact - that HMQ was a great fan of Mr Duke Ellington [and the feeling was mutual; he even wrote a whole suite for her]!

So here's something appropriate for our national mood:

Duke Ellington - Mood Indigo

And here's Ella's vocal version:

Ella Fitzgerald - Mood Indigo

You ain't been blue; no, no, no
You ain't been blue
Till you've had that mood indigo
That feelin' goes stealin' down to my shoes
While I sit and sigh, "Go 'long blues"

RIP, Queen and Duke...

Swinging the axe

On the weekend came the news that Graham Norton is leaving his long-running Saturday morning Radio 2 magazine show - to be replaced by that professional irritant, Claudia Winkleman. 

Last night (as I listened to her show on catch-up) came even worse news - the BBC has cancelled one of our favourite hours on radio, Clare Teal's Swing and Big Band Show!!

From The Telegraph (via Yahoo):

Radio 2 has axed its shows dedicated to swing music and early rock’n’roll as the station concentrates its attention on “the next era of pop”.

The Swing and Big Band Show with Clare Teal, and Bill Kenwright’s Golden Years, have been fixtures of the Sunday night schedules for a decade.

But the programmes will have no place in a “refresh” by the station’s new controller, Helen Thomas.

Kenwright hosted his last show on Sunday and bade his listeners an emotional farewell. Teal will leave the station in January, and told the Daily Telegraph that she was sad to leave.

“The swing and big band community in this country is really strong. It saddens me that the show is going. We’ve built up this audience and it’s a real sharing experience,” she said.

They are the latest specialist shows to disappear from Radio 2. The cull began in 2018 with the end of programmes devoted to brass and military band music and organ music.

Last year the BBC announced the new role of Controller of Pop, appointing Lorna Clarke to oversee the musical direction of Radio 1, Radio 2, Radio 1Xtra, the BBC Asian Network and 6 Music.

When she advertised the Radio 2 head of station job in March, Clarke said that she was looking for someone to “help me shape the next era of pop from the BBC”.

However, Teal said swing and big band music do constitute “pop” for her listeners, particularly older listeners who grew up with it.

She said: “This music is popular music of a different era - a soundtrack to people’s lives. It is so memory-linked. I hope older audiences will still be served. Older people don’t all like classical music and they’re not all going to head off to Radio 3.”

Teal hopes to produce a version of her show on the Anchor podcast platform in the New Year.

A Radio 2 spokesperson said: “We would like to thank Clare Teal and Bill Kenwright for bringing such passion and commitment to their shows.

"We are always exploring new ways of reflecting a broad range of genres across Radio 2 and the music they featured will continue to be heard, whether in forthcoming series Top Brass with James Morrison and Barry Humphries’ Forgotten Musical Masterpieces, and within our regular shows, weekly strands such as Sound of the 60s and Jamie Cullum, plus specials. We very much hope to work with both Clare and Bill on future projects."

"Reflecting a broad range of genres" - what utter bollocks. When the genial Don Black retired this year, himself a replacement for the late David Jacobs, what did Radio 2 think was a suitable replacement for their style of laid-back, easy listening music, the "comfort zone" that traditionally ended Sunday nights? Why, a show of generic pop pap, of course, presented by Anneka Rice (of all people), generally best known for her cheesy grin and for wobbling her arse at the camera while seeking the prizes in 1980s adventure game show Treasure Hunt. Of course. A natural fit, NOT. A whole "genre" of music, lost.

The above-mentioned Miss Winkleman's first appearance in the Radio 2 schedules was itself during a previous reshuffle after the retirement due to ill health (he died soon after) of the station's longest-serving and beloved DJ, purveyor of classic showtunes, standards and gentle music Desmond Carrington. Her brash style of presenting and banal playlist-pop content sat uncomfortably as his ostensible "replacement", and disrupted the flow of Sunday evenings with a jolt.

The world's longest running music radio show Friday Night is Music Night has also been treated shoddily by the once-proud BBC. Ostensibly in a "temporary move" when radio schedules were being "simplified" in response to the coronavirus pandemic earlier in 2020, the show was shifted to Sunday evenings and "temporarily" re-titled Sunday Night is Music Night. Long before any hint of COVID existed, there had been little in the way of new programming in its normal tradition, however - one of the great "perks" of this publicly-funded network was that audiences could attend recordings of these generally Light Music (and Big Band) concerts for free; and over the years we successfully got tickets (in their draw) for several of these - and its output began to rely heavily upon repeats of old shows, unless there was a concert for which the Beeb could charge, of course, which would then be broadcast in its place.

Lately, and perhaps understandably in a pandemic, repeats are all that occupies its Sunday slot, but the entire programme is unceremoniously dumped altogether if another music-themed event comes along such as BBC Live Sessions, the Olivier Awards or, shamefully for a nation which has no such music in its national canon, America's Country Music Awards. This is the British Broadcasting Corporation, in case anyone in charge of scheduling has forgotten.

Miss Teal, in her statement above, makes a very good point that Swing and Big band music is a genuine part of older people's memories and lives - it was their "pop music", as she says - and fears that generation is being sidelined by the decision. I would argue further that there are millions of people - ourselves included - for whom this type of music is not a personal memory-jog, but a matter of musical taste. We love not only the eternal back-catalogue of British dance bands, US swing bands, jazzy singers and Latin orchestras that were at their height in the early to mid 20th century (before "our time"), but also the modern inheritors, conservationists and innovators of this style - not least the likes of Max Raabe, Joe Stilgoe, Matt Dusk, Michael Feinstein, Claire Martin, Puppini Sisters, Michael Buble, Tricity Vogue or Kansas Smitty's House Band (and even Nina Hagen, Robbie Williams, Brian Setzer of the Stray Cats and Matt Goss of Bros have embraced it). Let us also not forget our own "house bands" here at Dolores Delargo Towers, Pink Martini and Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox...

So who is this embarassingly-titled "Controller of Pop" Lorna Clarke, anyway? On investigation, it seems her main pre-BBC experience was at Kiss 100, the former urban pirate radio station specialising in Hip-Hop, R&B and dance music, from where she progressed to BBC Radio 1Xtra, the digital urban contemporary and Black music radio station. No "swing" there, methinks. As for her appointee as Head of BBC Radio 2/Axeman, Helen Thomas appears to have experience producing mainstream output such as that channel's shouty Drivetime and Breakfast shows, and is on the committee of something called the Young Audio Awards. Both started their careers in radio news rather than music. I feel my life flashing before my eyes at the thought of what this pair have in mind next for the UK's biggest radio station.

Very sad.

Let's have some of "our kind of Swing" to cheer ourselves up, shall we?

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn - Take the "A" Train

Artie Shaw - Class in Swing

Dutch Swing College Band - At the Jazzband Ball

Harry James & His Orchestra - Two O'Clock Jump

And finally, proving that it's not just for oldies...

Lindy Hop Boys

That's what we want!

I'll live a lush life, in some small dive

We have a centenary to celebrate today - that of one of the greatest of all composers from the Swing era, Mr Billy Strayhorn!



Described by Duke Ellington as "my right arm, my left arm, all the eyes in the back of my head", Billy composed many of the Duke's standards, including Isfahan, Passion Flower, Chelsea Bridge and Satin Doll:

Duke Ellington - Satin Doll

And he also composed the Duke Ellington Orchestra's "theme tune", Take the "A" Train:

Duke Ellington and Billy Strayhorn - Take the "A" Train

Mr Strayhorn (whose nickname was "Sweet Pea") was not merely significant for being the linchpin of a three decade professional partnership with Ellington. He was proudly and openly gay during a highly homophobic era (and an early supporter of the civil rights movement in America, to boot). Cultured, intelligent and well-travelled, a friend described him as “a miniature, black Noel Coward.”

As his biographer David Hajdu writes: “In Pittsburgh, who he was had inhibited Billy Strayhorn from doing what he could do; in New York, what he could do enabled him to be who he was.” And what he was was a young gay man who loved the finer things in life, and was able to set up home with his boyfriend secure in the knowledge that - unlike many employers back then - his sexuality, and his openness about it, would not be an issue with Ellington, who treated him as one of the family.

Indeed, it was through the Duke that Billy met his first partner (and fellow musician) Aaron Bridgers, with whom he lived until Bridgers moved to Paris in 1947.



Billy's absolute masterpiece (often considered a "gay standard") - and eternal favourite here at Dolores Delargo Towers - is, of course, the magnificent Lush Life. I have documented my personal favourite version of this song - surprisingly the rendition by Queen Latifah - before. [See my previous blog about Mr Strayhorn for that.]

Today, however, it is to the very first documented recording of this absolute classic that we turn by way of tribute - showcasing the lovely vocals of Kay Davis (and with Billy himself at the piano):

Billy Strayhorn and Kay Davis - Lush Life

I used to visit all the very gay places,
Those come-what-may places,
Where one relaxes on the axis,
Of the wheel of life,
To get the feel of life,
From jazz and cocktails.

The gals I knew had sad and sullen grey faces,
With distingué traces,
That used to be there.
You could see where,
They'd been washed away,
By too many through the day
Twelve o'clock tales.

Then you came along,
With your siren song,
To tempt me to madness.
I thought for a while,
That your poignant smile,
Was tinged with the sadness,
Of a great love for me.
I guess I was wrong.
Again, I was wrong.

Life is lonely again,
And only last year everything seemed so sure.
Now life is awful again.
A trough-full of hearts could only be a bore.

A week in Paris will ease the bite of it.
All I care is to smile in spite of it.

I'll forget you I will,
While yet you are still
Burning inside my brain.

Romance is mush,
Stifling those who strive.
I'll live a lush life,
In some small dive.

And there I'll be,
While I rot with the rest
Of those whose lives are lonely, too.

Utterly remarkable when you consider that Mr Strayhorn was just nineteen years old when he wrote that.

A documentary about Billy Strayhorn, also titled Lush Life was made in 2008. From it are these two clips:

[2019 UPDATE: Clip #1 gone from YouTube, but available via the Internet Archive]

Billy Strayhorn - Duke Ellington's Right Hand

We unfortunately missed a centennial tribute to Mr Strayhorn that featured the divine David McAlmont at the Cadogan Hall in Mayfair last weekend. Just today New York's Jazz at Lincoln Center marked Billy's centenary with a series of performances - including a surprise pop-up concert on the subway!

He deserves every tribute going.

William Thomas "Billy" Strayhorn (29th November 1915 – 31st May 1967)