Lazy, Hazy, Crazy Days
Stanley Black (piano), Bernard Hermann (flute), Alan Randall (vibraphone), Angela Christian, Betty Smith, June Marlow (vocals)
BBC Midland Radio Orchestra
rec. 1976-1988, Studio 2, BBC Studios Pebble Mill, Birmingham, UK
NDO PROJECT CD201/2 [2 CDs: 157:22]
Hansard, the verbatim record of proceedings within
the British Houses of Parliament, records a debate which took place
on 27th June 1980 following the government’s decision
to raise the BBC licence fee. Those unacquainted with the way the BBC
was funded then (and largely still is), should know that everyone in
the UK with a television set was obliged by law to pay an annual licence,
which funded not just the BBC television broadcasts, but all the radio
stations and, most relevantly here, the BBC house orchestras. The rise
(for a colour television licence) was from £21 to £25, and it caused
a huge public outcry, not least because the BBC regarded the rise as
inadequate to meet their costs, so decided to dispense with a number
of their regional house orchestras. Hansard records the impassioned
contribution to the debate from Andrew Faulds, the Labour party Member
of Parliament for Warley East (in the English midlands) and a former
actor who had, notably, appeared in the Ken Russell films based on the
lives of Mahler, Liszt (Lisztomania) and Tchaikovsky (the
Music Lovers); so he certainly had something of a professional
interest. He said; “What do the music cuts entail, in detail?
In England, the Midland Radio Orchestra will be disbanded, with a loss
of 32 jobs. That, of course, is in Birmingham. The Northern Radio Orchestra
will be disbanded, with 22 jobs lost in Manchester. The London Studio
Players will also be disbanded, with a loss of 19 part-time posts of
musicians on first call. The Northern Ireland Orchestra will go, with
a loss of 30 jobs, and with the hope that those musicians may get employment
in a new orchestral alignment to be set up over the next year or so
in a merger with the Ulster Orchestra. What those musicians do for a
living in the meantime is somewhat unresolved. Finally, the Scottish
Symphony Orchestra will be—if I may use the phrase—scotched,
with 69 jobs gone…In toto, 172 orchestral posts disappear. I have
been given the figures for the cost of running each of these orchestras
by the BBC. They are, per annum, as follows: the Northern Radio Orchestra,
£180,000; the Midland Radio Orchestra, £220,000 the Northern Ireland
Symphony Orchestra, £700,000; and the Scottish Symphony Orchestra, £620,000.”
Today it is perhaps difficult to understand why the BBC ever felt the
need to have so many orchestras it its disposal; today, with six “house”
orchestras (half the number of full-time orchestras it ran in the 1960s)
the BBC remains a major employer of orchestral musicians and certainly
has enough orchestras at its beck and call not only to meet the demands
of music broadcasting, but also to get out and about at home and abroad
giving live concerts as well as spending time in the commercial recording
studios. However, while we now live in an age when music has become
omnipresent in our lives, too many (although none, I suspect, who read
the reviews on MusicWeb International) take it for granted,
care nothing about its provenance or quality, and fail to differentiate
between computerised imitations of musical instruments concocted by
a handful of computer geeks, and a live orchestra of several dozen highly-trained
players. When you no longer really listen, you no longer really care.
The function of those BBC regional orchestras was largely to provide
the kind of innocuous, middle-of-the-road music which is so smooth and
well-oiled as to slip all too easily into the background and become
an accompaniment to life rather than something which causes us to stop
and listen. So, it seems, in retrospect, a natural consequence that
such music should no longer be the preserve of live musicians but fodder
for those who like to create musical sounds digitally. But the computer
geeks have changed the nature of background music, and as a result we
have lost an entire genre of music; the music which, described as “light”,
ploughed a middle furrow between serious classical works and frivolous
pop pieces. That loss is only really felt when you can go back to those
heady pre-1980s days and hear one of those now-defunct orchestras strutting
its stuff in fabulously re-engineered sound.
Faulds referred in his speech to the demise of the Northern Radio Orchestra
which itself had only been formed five years earlier following a huge
outcry over the disbanding of the BBC Northern Dance Orchestra (NDO).
Four decades after the demise of these orchestras, the NDO Project was
set up with the aim of ensuring “that these superb musicians cannot
be forgotten”, and it has broadened its reach to preserve the
memory not only of the Manchester orchestras but also of the Midland
Radio Orchestra which, itself, was formed in 1973 following the disbanding
of the Midland Light Orchestra. Comprising 25 players on strings and
woodwind and with a seven-member rhythm section, the Midland Radio Orchestra
worked for the first six years of its existence under the legendary
Norrie Paramor. It spent virtually its entire performing life in the
BBC studios in Birmingham, although as the booklet notes tell us, it
occasionally “emerged from the studio to give public concerts
which were also broadcast”. This double-CD set comprises some
46 tracks (along with three “bonus” tracks featuring small
groups from the band) which gives a classic sample of the kind of thing
they produced day in and day out mostly for BBC Radio 2 in the days
when heavy limitations on commercial recordings played over the air
(“needle-time”) made it necessary to fill most of the schedules
with live and specially-recorded music. The ending of needle-time restrictions
in the 1980s helped sound the death-knell for the BBC light music orchestras.
The over-riding impression from these enchanting (and there is really
no other word for it) tracks is of extremely polished, effortlessly
fluent, and wonderfully balanced and manicured playing. It does make
for easy listening, certainly, but taking the trouble to focus the ears
and listen seriously, reaps huge rewards; there is not only some truly
outstanding playing here, but a consummate level of musicianship which
today we only find when musicians get “serious”; if only
we could get back to an age when such supreme quality was the benchmark
even in music which places no demands on the listener.
Some of the arrangements, too, are quite remarkable and worthy of more
attention than they would have got in their day. I love the way Johnny
Gregory has turned Anton Rubinstein’s Melody in F into
a busy, bustling toccata, and how Neil Richardson has so cleverly woven
together so much authentic Gershwin to create a version of Summertime
which, amazingly, does not sound like Gershwin at all. Bernard Hermann’s
version of Fly me to the moon is to die for, as is John Fox’s
arrangement of Misty, Gordon Franks evokes Scottishness without
it sounding in any way cliched in his version of the Skye Boat Song,
and there is real pathos in his arrangement of Love Walked In.
Colin Campbell’s arrangement of Mancini’s ubiquitous Pink
Panther is a work of pure genius in the way it manages to replace
the brass (there was no brass section in the Midland Radio Orchestra)
with violins to extraordinarily convincing effect.
A trio of vocalists pops up in various numbers – June Marlow (A
Fine Romance), Betty Smith (I feel pretty) and Angela
Christian (Masquerade and Chelsea Morning) –
evoking through their voices a style of singing long since lost, while
it is good to see arrangers Stanley Black and Bernard Hermann appearing
as soloists in their own arrangements - Black on piano for Laura,
and Hermann on the flute in his somewhat unsuccessful attempt to condense
Danse Macabre into the obligatory three-minute time slot.
While this pair of CDs might present music and musicians from a bygone
era, there is something intensely relevant about it to our own time;
perhaps a timely warning that if you take it for granted, you risk losing
it. It is amazing to read that many of the recordings were originally
destroyed by the BBC so that these outstanding new digital transfers,
the work of Paul Arden-Taylor (who joined the orchestra’s woodwind
section in 1979), have been assembled from studio backup copies and
off-air recordings. All power to the NDO Project for not just preserving
this important part of British musical history, but for reviving it
so effectively.
Marc Rochester
Contents
CD1
Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days Of Summer [2:51]
Felicidade [3:49]
Summertime (arr. Neil Richardson) [3:38]
Melody In F (arr. Johnny Gregory) [2:31]
In The Still Of The Night [3:05]
Laura (arr. Stanley Black) [4:06]
Chelsea Morning [2:40]
Macarthur Park [3:15]
Poor Butterfly (arr. Gordon Franks) [2:36]
Song To The Moon [2:22]
Girls Girls Girls (arr. Nick Ingman) [2:58]
Fly Me To The Moon (arr. Bernard Hermann) [3:54]
Midnight Sun [3:25]
Portuguese Party (arr. Harold Rich) [2:08]
On A Little Street In Singapore [2:23]
The Nearness Of You [3:05]
Paddy’s Milestone [2:25]
Twilight In Turkey [2:56]
The Onedin Line Theme [3:23]
Cherokee (arr. Gordon Franks) [3:50]
In A Persian Market [3:22]
Love Walked In (arr. Gordon Franks) [3:05]
I Feel Pretty (arr. Jack Peabody) [2:57]
The Continental [3:01]
Cavatina [3:32]
CD 2
Pianorama Medley (arr. Harold Rich) [3:25]
Pink Panther Theme (arr. Colin Campbell) [2:52]
Che’s Out Of My Life (arr. Nick Ingman) [3:21]
Albie (arr. Bernard Hermann) [2:33]
Night And Day (arr. Bernard Hermann) [2:57]
Sally [2:50]
A Fine Romance (arr. Bernard Ebbinghouse) [3:42]
I’m In The Mood For Dancing [2:47]
Begin The Beguine [3:53]
Just For Fun (arr. Eddie Gray) [1:45]
Misty (arr. John Fox) [2:31]
How High The Moon (arr. Bernard Hermann) [2:48]
Skye Boat Song (arr. Gordon Franks) [3:32]
The Sunshine Of Your Smile (arr. Nick Ingman) [3:24]
Alfie (arr. Johnny Douglas) [3:53]
Danse Macabre(arr. Bernard Hermann) [2:58]
The Blue Danube (arr. Gordon Franks) [3:43]
Crystal Clear (arr. Gordon Franks) [2:20]
Please (arr. Neil Richardson) [4:36]
This Masquerade [ 4:52]
Here’s To The Next Time (arr. Nick Ingman) [3:40]
Leapfrog (arr. Harold Rich) [1:55]
Morning Dance (arr. Colin Crabb)[ 3:39]
The Entertainer (arr. Alan Randall) [4:06]
After Norrie Paramor died, sessions were conducted by the arrangers.
