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Delta Lady – RIP

I make no excuses for dedicating this entry to one of the best British rock and blues singers who, sadly, passed away yesterday.

John Robert "Joe" Cocker OBE was born on 20 May 1944 in Sheffield.

On leaving school he became become an apprentice gasfitter while simultaneously pursuing a career in music.

Under the name of Vance Arnold and the Avengers he began his singing career in the pubs and clubs of Sheffield in the 1960s performing mainly covers of Chuck Berry and Ray Charles songs.

He was propelled to fame when his version of With A Little Help From My Friends reached number one in 1968.

The musician performed the song at the famous Woodstock Festival in New York state a year later and was also well-known for his Mad Dogs and Englishmen Tour of 1970, which visited 48 cities across the US.

In 1982 Cocker recorded the duet "Up Where We Belong" with Jennifer Warnes for the soundtrack of the 1982 film An Officer and a Gentleman. The song was an international hit, reaching number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, and winning a Grammy Award for Best Pop Performance by a Duo. The duet also won an Academy Award for Best Original Song, and Cocker and Warnes performed the song at the awards ceremony.

In 1992, Joe Cocker teamed with Canadian rocker Sass Jordan to sing "Trust in Me", which was featured on The Bodyguard soundtrack.

On 3 June 2002, Cocker performed "With A Little Help from My Friends" accompanied by Phil Collins on drums and Queen guitarist Brian May at the Party at the Palace concert in the grounds of Buckingham Palace.

Cocker was awarded an OBE in the Queen's 2007 Birthday Honours list for services to music.

Last year, his arena tour across Europe saw him achieve a number one album in Germany and give what was to be his final concert in Hammersmith, London, in June.

Cocker, who recorded 23 studio albums and some 90 or so singles, lived on The Mad Dog Ranch in Colorado, in the US.

With his unique voice and style, whether in the studio or live,  he was consistently able to produce cover versions of classic hits, including those written and performed by Lennon & McCartney, John Sebastian and Bob Dylan, that were equally as good as, if not better than the original recording.

Unfortunately I never had the pleasure to see him live in concert but will leave you with a selection of my favourite Joe Cocker songs.







Finally, if any of you are as big a fan as me and have 2 hours to spare, do yourself a favour and connect your laptop to your big screen TV and surround sound system and “get some of this” from Cologne in 2013:



Absolutely wonderful Joe - you will be sorely missed but your music will live on.

She Was Like A Bearded Rainbow – Buona Sera Moody Guy

November has been an eventful month!

Our three weeks in Cyprus was most enjoyable, as always. We spent two weeks in the Helios Apartment Hotel in Chlorakas and had some fun nights in Bar Costa Rica.

It’s also been an expensive month!

Firstly I had to buy a new mobile phone as my trusty Blackberry stopped working while in Cyprus. Then, on my return, my laptop gave up the ghost so I had to buy a replacement. Finally whilst walking across the garden of The Fox last week my glasses frame snapped forcing me to crawl around the wet grass in the dark and pouring rain to try and retrieve the lens.

Sadly, for three stalwarts of the UK popular music scene, the month of November 2014 was there last.

John Symon Asher "Jack" Bruce was born in 1943 in Bishopbriggs, Lanarkshire. He began playing the jazz bass in his teens and won a scholarship to study cello and musical composition at the Royal Scottish Academy of Music and Drama and in order to support himself he played in Jim McHarg's Scotsville Jazzband. The academy disapproved of its students playing jazz and Bruce was given an ultimatum – stop playing in the band or leave the Academy. He left to seek his fortune in the world of jazz and blues.

In 1962 Bruce became a member of the London-based band Blues Incorporated, led by Alexis Korner, in which he played the upright bass. The band also included organist Graham Bond, saxophonist Dick Heckstall-Smith and drummer Ginger Baker. In 1963 the group broke up and Bruce went on to form the Graham Bond Quartet with Bond, Baker and guitarist John McLaughlin. Soon Bruce switched to electric bass and McLaughlin was replaced by Heckstall-Smith on saxophone and the band became The Graham Bond Organisation.

During the time that Bruce and Baker played with the Graham Bond Organisation, they were known for their hostility towards each other. Relations grew so bad between the two that Bruce left the group in August 1965.

For a brief time Bruce played with John Mayall and the Bluesbreakers, which featured guitarist Eric Clapton.

After the Bluesbreakers, Bruce had his first commercial success as a member of Manfred Mann in 1966, including "Pretty Flamingo" which reached number one in the UK singles chart (one of two number one records of his career - the other being an un-credited bass part on The Scaffold's "Lily the Pink").

In July 1966 Bruce reunited with Eric Clapton and drummer Ginger Baker and founded the rock trio Cream, which gained international recognition playing blues-rock and jazz-inflected rock music. Bruce sang most of the lead vocals, with Clapton backing him up and eventually assuming some leads himself.

With his Gibson EB-3 electric bass, Bruce became one of the most famous and influential bassists in rock, winning musicians' polls and influencing the next generation of bassists. Bruce co-wrote most of Cream's single releases with lyricist Pete Brown, including the hits "Sunshine of Your Love", "White Room", "I Feel Free" and this track from the album Disraeli Gears :

Cream broke up in 1968 and Bruce continued playing until shortly before his death.

Bernard William Jewry was born in 1942 in Muswell Hill, North London.  In the early 60’s an unknown teenage band called Shane Fenton and the Fentones recorded a demo tape and mailed it in to the BBC with the hope of being selected to appear on television. While awaiting a reply from the BBC, the band's 17-year-old singer Shane Fenton (whose real name was Johnny Theakston) died from rheumatic fever.

The band decided to break up, but after receiving a letter from the BBC inviting them to come to London to audition in person for the programme they were persuaded to stay together and keep their name by Theakston’s mother, in honour of her son's memory.

Bernard William Jewry, who was a roadie with the group at the time, was asked to join the band and take over the mantle Shane Fenton. The band went on to have a few minor hits during the 1960’s including this one in the style of Cliff Richard and the Shadows:

The band subsequently broke up and Jewry disappeared from the spotlight for a decade. With the onset of the Glam Rock in the early 70’s Jewry took over the mantle of Alvin Stardust from singer songwriter Peter Shelley and went to number two in the charts with with “My Coo Ca Choo”.

Jewry was married three times. He met his second wife, actress Liza Goddard, when both were involved in a This Is Your Life for Michael Aspel and they married in 1981.

They divorced six years later with Goddard blaming religion after “Bern”, as she always called him, discovered God on a train to London Waterloo.

The Jewrys, Alvin, Shane and Bern,

Collectively, were quite a turn:

They never hit the dizzy heights,

But saw their various names in lights.

One married Liza, lucky sod,

Then, on a train, discovered God…

Now Bernard, Alvin, Bern and Shane

Are set to be reborn again!

                                                                        (Evans 2014|)

In total, “Bern” amassed seven Top Ten entries, in a chart span lasting almost 25 years and had just finished a new album weeks before he died.

Another Bernard, Bernard Stanley "Acker" Bilk MBE was born in Pensford, Somerset, in 1929. He earned the nickname "Acker" from the Somerset slang for "friend" or "mate". His parents tried to teach him the piano, but, as a boy, Bilk found it restricted his love of outdoor activities, including football. He lost two front teeth in a school fight and half a finger in a sledging accident, both of which he claimed affected his eventual clarinet style.

While serving national service with the Royal Engineers in the Suez Canal Zone, his sapper friend, John A. Britten, gave him a clarinet he had bought at a bazaar for which he had no use. The clarinet had no reed, so Britten fashioned a makeshift one for the instrument out of some scrap wood. Bilk later borrowed a better instrument from the British Army and kept it after he was demobbed.

Bilk played with friends on the Bristol jazz circuit and in 1951 moved to London to play with Ken Colyer's jazz band. Bilk disliked London, so returned west and formed his own band in Pensford called the Chew Valley Jazzmen, which was renamed the Bristol Paramount Jazz Band when he moved back to London. Their agent then booked them for a six-month gig in Düsseldorf, Germany, playing in a beer bar seven hours a night, seven nights a week. It was during this time that Bilk and the band developed their distinctive style and appearance, complete with striped-waistcoats and bowler hats.

After returning from Germany, Bilk became based in Plaistow, London, and his band became part of the boom in traditional jazz in the United Kingdom in the late 1950s. In 1960, their single "Summer Set" reached number five on the UK Singles Chart, and began a run of 11 chart hit singles. In 1961 "Acker Bilk and His Paramount Jazz Band" appeared at the Royal Variety Performance.

Bilk was not an internationally known musician until 1962, when the experimental use of a string ensemble on one of his albums and the inclusion of a composition of his own as its keynote piece won him an audience outside the UK. He had composed a melody, entitled "Jenny" after his daughter, but was asked to change the title to "Stranger on the Shore" for use in a British television series. He went on to record it as the title track of a new album in which his deep and quavering clarinet was backed by the Leon Young String Chorale.

The single was not only a big hit in the United Kingdom, where it reached no 2 and stayed in the charts for 55 weeks, but also topped the American charts.  As a result, Bilk was only the second British artist to have a single in the number-one position on the Billboard Hot 100 singles chart - Vera Lynn being the first, with "Auf Wiedersein Sweetheart" in 1952. "Stranger on the Shore" sold over one million copies and was awarded a gold disc. It was later used in the soundtrack to Sweet Dreams, the film biography of country music singer Patsy Cline.

Bilk continued to tour with his Paramount Jazz Band, as well as performing concerts with his two contemporaries, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball as the 3Bs.

In 2005 he was awarded the BBC Jazz Awards' "Gold Award".

RIP Jack, Alvin and Acker – thank you for the music.