Smoke - And Other Things - Gets In Your Eyes!

Jim enjoys his choices!

We’ve been away for the weekend. Down to the Thames Valley to stay with our son and his family in Twyford, near Maidenhead. Apart from the opportunity to visit them and see the grandchildren there was another reason. Our daughter in law’s father, Jim, is celebrating his 80th birthday this week and was having a meal to celebrate the event – and we were invited. So on Saturday evening we all went off to the home of one of his other daughters for a lovely evening, good company, a wonderful meal.........and something a little different - a short CD with eight records that Jim had chosen as a sort of record of his life. Pieces he had enjoyed over his 80 years and which meant something to him. And, as an added bonus for Jim the CD had been put together and a splendid commentary added by his eleven year old grandson - Daniel - a very personal touch.

A pensive Jim! Too much red wine?

I don’t know if the pieces that Jim chose were his all time favourites but, for whatever reason, they all meant something to him. I like that. Jim’s eight pieces perhaps reflected his age and the times through which he has lived – as they would with us all. Amongst the pieces we enjoyed one was by the chart topping 1950’s trumpeter Eddie Calvert “Oh Mein Papa”; we listened to the wonderful “Master of the House” from “Les Mis”; Jim remembered his time as a young man playing in a brass band when we listened to the “Punchinello March” and we listened to the glorious “Radetsky March” by Strauss. Apart from passing a pleasant half hour between meal courses the idea generated much comment and discussion – and it got me thinking: what would I choose?

Daughter 1 - Hilary with husband Ian

Of course, it is all reminiscent of the long running radio programme “Desert Island Discs” which for seventy years or so has been doing the same thing with famous people – asking them to name the eight pieces of music they would have with them if stranded on a desert island. And in between each piece the subject of the programme explains their significance and talks a little about their life.

Daughter 2 - Ruth
(our daughter  in law) and husband John

But what would I choose? My wife often says that it would be no good me appearing on “Desert Island Discs” because I would be boring and choose a selection completely of the music of Bach. Well that may be true, but I don’t think so. Certainly if I was choosing my favourite music it might well be all Bach. But I could equally choose eight pieces of popular music rather than eight classical pieces. And, in any case I’m not sure that the issue is about favourite music – it’s about pieces that have some significance for you. Additionally, although classical music is my love, I’m sure that for me (and, I might argue, for most other people) the sort of music that defines a life and its experiences and events is inevitably coloured by the society in which someone has grown and lived – and this often means the world of popular, everyday music – for that is what most people experience on a daily basis. But what would I choose? It’s certainly difficult to get it down to eight! For every one included there are many left out. But here goes!

Daughter 3 - Angela with husband Martin

First off would be Charles Penrose’s 1922 recording of “The Laughing Policeman”! It brings back so many memories of childhood. I didn’t have a particularly happy childhood - there were too many rows between my mother and dad - but one of the few bright spots was my Auntie Edna – “Nenny” as I called her and continued to do so till the day she died just a few years ago.

Nenny always enjoyed a laugh!

Nenny was a no-nonsense Lancashire Lass - a cotton weaver – always ready to enjoy a glass of beer and a good time. Anyone who has read my blogs before will recognise her from my blog “A night in with Klever Kaff” and how Nenny, quite without intention, was a major formative influence in my love of classical music – although she never knew it. She often told me stories as a child and a teenager of her escapades during the war when she was a young woman – sneaking out at night and putting on make up to go to the dance, drawing lines down the back of her legs with gravy powder to make it look as if she was wearing seamed stockings! It all seemed exciting and slightly rebellious. Her love then and for the rest of her life was unconditional. What you saw was what you got with Nenny and for her part she saw good in everyone. When I was a child she had an old wind up gramophone with a huge great horn on it – I played with the thing for hours.Putting on old 78 records, changing the needle to get a better sound. And amongst her records was “The Laughing Policeman”.

Charles Penrose - the laughing policeman

“I know a fat ole policeman, he’s always on our street
A fat old, jolly red-faced man, he really is a treat
He’s too fine for a policeman, he’s never known to frown
And everybody says he is the happiest man in town
Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho,..............................
He laughs upon his duty, he laughs upon his beat
He laughs at everybody when he’s walking in the street
He never can stop laughing, he says he'd never tried
But once he did arrest a man and laughed until he died
Ho, Ho, Ho, Ho,..............................”


Whenever it came on and Penrose began his uncontrollable manic laughter Nenny too would be reduced to fits of unstoppable laughter, tears would run down her cheek – and even as an old woman – if ever it came on the radio she would cry with laughter again. Wonderful. To me it brings back all my happy memories of my favourite Auntie.
And my second choice? A strange one – but again very evocative for me and very much one of my life’s markers. The street on which I lived had, at the top, a very large Roman Catholic Church – St Joseph’s. The church had a huge garden with lawn large enough for a small football match. Most of my friends were Roman Catholic and would, in the summer holidays, go to play football on the Church lawn. The young priests who lived and worked at the Church often joined in. On days when my mother was at work (I was about 10 or 11 at the time) I would join my friends. I was terrified lest my mother found out – she was very anti-Roman Catholic so I felt almost that I was committing a cardinal sin by venturing into the garden! It sounds stupid now, but I can remember at the time having a very real fear that some thunderbolt from heaven would strike me as punishment for entering this mysterious world, which as far as my mother was concerned was akin to Satanism! I never told my mother – the repercussions would have been too painful, there would have been rows and tears! In the Church garden were some old brick outbuildings – places for garden tools, old disused church impedimenta and the like. If the weather was bad we would often play in these buildings – hide and seek, look for treasure, talk football and the like. And we found an old wind up gramophone and a single record! We played that record over and over again! Looking back the song was dreadful – but it became ingrained on my mind and the whole experience part of my growing up. Even today it speaks of my mother’s intolerance, of the fear of my getting caught by her and equally of the exciting things we did on those long summer afternoons. And the record? - I can still remember every single word of “The Hand That Wore the Velvet Glove”:

Jimmy "Schnozzle" Durante

“Last night as I was strolling by,
There on the ground I found a velvet glove,
Whose can it be, and where is she,
Oh where is she,
The hand that wore the velvet glove........”

At this point my memory has perhaps played tricks. I have always firmly believed (and still do) that it was sung by Jimmy Durante  but on researching this blog I can find no record of a recording by “Schnozzle”. It was certainly recorded by many singers of that generation but which one I may never know.

My all time favourite

Number three. Easy. The one song that would probably be included if I was compiling a list of my eight favourite pieces. Perhaps the one piece of popular music that might take precedence over Bach. The Platters singing “Smoke gets In Your Eyes”. The 1958 recording by the Platters of this 1933 song which has been recorded by so many artists over the years is still the definitive version. I first heard it when I was becoming a teenager – Bill Haley had toured Britain, Elvis was the new teenage heart throb – pop music was here! Buddy Holly, the Everley Brothers and Eddie Cochran would become my favourites – but the Platters seemed to be the key to it all for me. In 1955 "The Great Pretender" was  the act's biggest R&B hit, with an 11-week run at the top. In 1956, The Platters appeared in the first major film based around rock and roll, "Rock Around The Clock", and performed both "Only You" and "The Great Pretender". And in 1958 came "Smoke Gets In Your Eyes" - I need only listen to the first few bars and I am transported back to those days – girls who looked like real girls in proper frocks and with bouffant hair styles, me and my friends with brylcreamed hair, drainpipe trousers and slim jim ties, a world of coffee bars and teddy boys; rock and roll was here and the world seemed new and exciting. The notion of as “teenager” with it's own music, styles, fashions and language was becoming part of the culture and I was a teenager - I was growing up.

Definitive musicians and iconic LP cover

And the next one? Almost the exact opposite of the Platters – this one would very definitely not feature in my favourites but it is so evocative of a time and place. What is it? The Beatles' - “Norwegian Wood”. Not by any means one of the greatest of the Beatles' repertoire and certainly a long way down my list of Beatles' favourites. By the time I went to teacher training college in the mid sixties the Beatles, the Stones, the Liverpool sound and the Swinging Sixties were at full throttle - it was my generation's "time". “Norwegian Wood” with John Lennon’s nasal, plaintive voice and George Harrison’s sitar backing was so often the background music as we played the Beatles’ “Rubber Soul” LP on my little Dansette record player in my room at college. Ask me to name one track on the LP and I know that “Norwegian Wood” is there – the rest I would have to guess. As I say, not even a favourite but seemed to be the background  for my college life, the sixties and for Pat and I as we became “an item” (what an awful phrase!).Within two or three years we would be married and "Norwegian Wood" seems to me to speak of the confidence that we had  at the time - everything seemed possible, the Beatle generation were, it seemed, rulers of the world, and we were part of it!

Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel - the voices of a generation

Number five? - Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Waters”. I’m a huge fan of Simon and Garfunkel and in the great scheme of things this is not one of my favourites – they did much better stuff than this: Wednesday Morning 3 a.m., Bleaker Street, The Boxer, America -  but it is a marker. When Pat and I married we seemed to spend every holiday decorating our new house. We had little money and whenever I listen to “Bridge Over Troubled Waters” I’m immediately back up a step ladder in our hall in the early 70s putting rolls of orange striped wallpaper onto our walls. The little stereo system we had at the time blaring out in the background and Pat and I singing along as we slapped on the paint and the wallpaper glue! We were establishing ourselves and our young family!

Pat (in 1970's mini skirt!) and the orange striped wallpaper!

Three quarters of the way there now. Number six is, like one of Jim’s selections, a piece from “Les Mis” . Not “Master of the House” (although a personal favourite) but “Do You Hear The People Sing”. Two reasons, two memories for this. For several years we joined with Pat’s family at New Year and each New Year’s Eve went up to London to see a show – “Cats”, “Phantom of the Opera”, “Les Mis”, “Miss Saigon”.............and many more. For me “Do You Hear The People Sing” is the essence of “Les Mis” and brings back memories of those New Year trips to London – going up to London at tea time, walking back through the centre at midnight, getting back to Pat’s parents’ house in Kent for a very late supper and welcoming the New Year in. The kids were teenagers and loved the excitement of the crowded West End – I found it all a bit noisy and threatening but enjoyable for all that. And the second reason for choosing this? At about the same time as we were making these New Year trips to the theatre we began to go abroad for our holidays – more specifically, we began to take the car abroad. I loved driving on the continent and especially in France. Whenever we drove through France it would not be long before “Les Mis” was put into the cassette player. I can still feel the wind on my face as we drove through the idyllic Loire countryside one hot Saturday afternoon with “Do You Hear The people Sing” filling the car. Alsace, Brittany, Beaune, Normandy ...... wherever we went “Les Mis” seemed to go with us! “Les Mis” still appears on my i-pod with regularity!

"Do you hear the people sing,
It is the song of angry men,
It's the music of a people
Who will not be slaves again..."

Number seven is easy – very much a favourite and one which I often find myself putting on when I’m driving. What is it? Dire Straits singing “Telegraph Road”. Listening to the words of Mark Knopfler’s darkly prophetic lyrics it seems today in 2011 even more pertinent than when it was written in the early 80’s at the height of Margaret Thatcher’s “slash and burn” policy with the British economy and industry. But it’s not for that reason that it is on my list – although that is good enough reason. No, it’s in because of Friday tea times. In the late 80’s Kate our daughter was doing her A levels – one of which was music and on Friday nights I would pick her up from college together with her cello. We had a little Ford Fiesta and the cello took up most of the space but at the height of the rush hour we would hurtle round Nottingham ring road looking forward to getting home to the fish and chip tea that Pat would cook for us. And as we hurtled through the traffic or sat in the traffic jam Dire Straits – and especially “Telegraph Road” would blast out of the little speakers. At over 14 minutes long the song would take up much of the journey home – but so evocative:

“.........And my radio says tonight it's gonna freeze
People driving home from the factories
Six lanes of traffic
Three lanes moving slow ......
I used to like to go to work but they shut it down
I got a right to go to work but there's no work here to be found
Yes and they say we're gonna have to pay what's owed
We're gonna have to reap from some seed that's been sowed
And the birds up on the wires and the telegraph poles
They can always fly away from this rain and this cold
You can hear them singing out their telegraph code
All the way down the telegraph road........”

And for me, my family were growing up – Kate would soon go off to University never to return home as she set up her own life and family in Manchester – but Dire Straits were so much part of that time and I know that if she reads this blog she will remember those drives too.

Mark Knopfler in his Dire Straits days

And to show what a creature of habit I am – when Kate and I got home each Friday evening having had a blast of Dire Straits I would put on the stereo and for the next half hour or so we would enjoy tea whilst listening to the glorious sound of one of the greatest exponents of Mozart’s piano music, Vladimir Ashkenazy, playing the greatest of Mozart’s Piano concerti - “Piano Concerto number 23 (K488)”. This would undoubtedly be in my list of eight classical favourites – even at the expense of Bach. As too would a piece of Telemann – the “Trumpet Concerto in D major” the first movement (the adagio) of which Kate and I walked down the aisle to when she got married – but that’s for another blog and another list!

And so to the last! Again there are two reasons for choosing it. The song? – Eric Clapton’s “My Father’s Eyes” The song is inspired by the fact that Clapton never met his father and refers also to the brief life of Clapton's son Conor, who died at age four after falling from an apartment window. "In it I tried to describe the parallel between looking through the eyes of my son, and the eyes of the father that I never met,” said Clapton in his autobiography. "My Father's Eyes" describes how Clapton wishes he knew his father. When I read Clapton’s autobiography a few years ago I was impressed and could relate to a lot of what he said about his father. For me, I felt a little the same way about my own father. Although he only died a few years ago, for a variety of reasons I wish we had known each other better. He was a long distance lorry driver and as a child I saw relatively little of him and when I did, the house was too often filled with angry rows always sparked off by my mother who was a very unbending person. Dad just took it, did what he was told, cleaned the house, cooked the weekend meals, never retaliated, took my mother's anger  and brought home the weekly pay packet - he was Mr Reliable. I always felt so sorry for him but dare not take his side. Had I done so my mother’s fury would have known no bounds and as he was on the road for much of each week it was mother who I lived with for most of the time. Sadly, I never really built up the father son relationship which I so much craved – there was always a barrier, the all pervading presence of my mother. By the time I did – once my mother died – he was an  old, ill man, and one of my life’s great regrets is that we had so little time to develop that relationship. But, on the brighter side and as I get older I have absolutely no doubt that I am becoming my father and seeing the world more and more through his eyes. Each day when I look into the shaving mirror my father peers back at me, I find myself saying the same things he did, I am increasingly using his mannerisms and believing what he believed!  Clapton touched a nerve here and was absolutely right. Eric Clapton has recorded many more famous songs than this – but for me it is very evocative and personal – and reflecting his lyrics, I can’t listen to it without thinking of my relationship with my father and the sort of relationship I have tried to have with my own son - and to my embarrassment what I am increasingly becoming!

Eric Clapton - rock star,world class guitarist
and  now musical elder statesman

“.....And I hear those ancient lullabies.
And as I watch this seedling grow,
Feel my heart start to overflow.
Where do I find the words to say?
How do I teach him?
What do we play?
Bit by bit, I've realized
That's when I need them,
That's when I need my father's eyes.......”

And, to add to all this, when I read in Clapton’s autobiography that he lives very close to where my son now lives, I have to say that when we travel down to the Thames Valley to visit (as we did this weekend) it’s not uncommon for Eric Clapton to float out of the car’s CD player as we drive down the A404 towards Marlow!

So that’s it – my eight pieces. Personal, not necessarily my favourites but simply pieces that have a meaning for me and reflect, I feel, my 60 odd years on the planet! On the radio show “Desert Island Discs” the guest has to choose just one out of the eight as the one they would take with them if forced to. I would find that amazingly difficult – Dire Straits and Clapton would be neck and neck and probably because I couldn’t choose between them I would instead go for The Platters’ “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes” – one of the songs that heralded the music of my generation and of early rock and roll. It took me from childhood to young adult.  And, might I add, when it comes to my eightieth birthday and I decide to follow Jim’s example, I know that my children’s eyes will glaze over (not with admiration!) when I force them to listen politely to my eight choices – and especially the wonderful vocals of the Platters – but then again, I just think it’s another example of me (like Jim) wanting to ensure that my children enjoy, understand and appreciate the finer things of life – as surely my eight records (and Jim's) are!