Jack Parnell

Jack Parnell0:00

Hello, I'm Kirsty Young, and this is a podcast from the Desert Island Disc's Archive. For rights reasons we've had to shorten the music. The programme was originally broadcast in nineteen seventy seven, and the presenter was Roy Plumley.

Presenter0:32

On our Desert Island this week is the orchestra leader, drummer and composer Jack Parnell.

Presenter0:38

Jack, how do you view the idea of a year or two on a desert island?

Presenter0:43

A year or two, I think, it'd be probably very good. Longer than that?

Presenter0:46

Longer than that, uh no, I don't think I like that very much. Did you find it very difficult to pick just eight records? Yes, I certainly did because music's been my life, as you know, and uh throughout my life has given me immense pleasure. So I thought that if I picked out the records from that I bought when I was a very young child, right up to the present time, that would

Jack Parnell0:59

Pleasure.

Presenter1:10

bring back the memories of my entire life. What's the first one? Well, when I was ten I bought a record of Duke Ellington's. I don't think it's the best Duke Ellington record, but it's the one that I bought. The first first record I ever bought's called Daybreak Express. It's a marvellous playing on it.

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Daybreak Express, Duke Ellington and his orchestra.

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Your family have been in music and show business for quite a few generations. Yes, they certainly have. My mother and father were music hall artists. My father was a ventriloquist. Yes, Russ Carr. That's right. And my mother, who used to call herself Olive Gray. Did you go round with them at the time? Oh yes, yes. I used to be standing on the side of the stage.

Jack Parnell2:47

Oh yes.

Presenter2:51

when they were performing and that's really where I I started hearing bands, you know, I they were always on the bill with uh Jack Hilton's band and George Scott Wood and his Six Swingers and other bands that I can't remember the names of now. And your grandfather was a music hall artist too. Yes, she was eventually of course Fred Russell. But the I think the music actually comes from my mother's side because uh

Jack Parnell3:09

Death?

Presenter3:15

Her mother was a music teacher, piano teacher. Her father was a singer in St. Paul's Cathedral.

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And uh her grandfather was the organist in Wells Cathedral. So I think that that's really where

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The music rubs off. How old were you when you started to to learn the drums?

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I can't remember a time when I couldn't bang the drums, Roy. I got a kit of drums when I was about twelve, and uh by the time I was about fourteen I'd made up my mind that's what I wanted to do, and Max Abrams taught me. Very fine teacher.

Presenter3:50

What was your first job? First job was at Scarborough, in a concert party, in the first year of the war.

Jack Parnell3:53

Right.

Presenter3:57

Didn't last very long because uh they fortified the beach and the poor old customers couldn't get to the theatre. I can remember I got four pounds a week for that job, and that was cut to three pound ten when the business wasn't too good.

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Was there a full orchestra? No, just four of us. And we used to have to take part in the sketches and it was a lot of fun, actually.

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And after that? Then I went to uh

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Joined Sammy Ash's band at the Rex Ballroom in Cambridge and uh I learned a lot there.

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and enjoyed it thoroughly, and I stayed there until I joined the Air Force.

Presenter4:33

And in the Royal Air Force there were some opportunities for you for music, weren't there? Oh, yes, I joined Buddy Featherton Horse extort. Yes. And Buddy taught me a great deal about jazz, actually. I remember that's where we first met, the Radio Rhythm Club. That's right, that's right.

Jack Parnell4:48

Clap.

Presenter4:50

You used to write the scripts right.

Jack Parnell4:50

Yeah.

Presenter4:53

Compare the thing. Buddy always used to sign off with astonishingly good health.

Jack Parnell4:54

Buddy or

Presenter4:57

Yes, therein lies a tale, because besides teaching me about jazz, he also taught me one or two other things. I remember he used to say to me, I'll see you at the Black Lion when we were stationed up at High Wycombe there, and uh just as to day, even in those days, I could never get anywhere on time.

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So by the time I arrived at the pub,

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He'd put up a drink for every one that he'd had himself, and I used to have to start off trying to drink six whiskies before before catching up with him. He was a racing driver, too. Yes, he was a very good one in his time, but uh

Presenter5:33

They tell me that he used to get so excited he couldn't start for the Benz, so they

Presenter5:38

Which is advisable. During the war, of course, there was nothing of that. He hadn't got the petrol or his car.

Jack Parnell5:40

During the war.

Presenter5:44

No, he hadn't. But I remember we we went to Derby on one occasion.

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And uh his alpha, Romeo, was uh up there.

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in a garage and we went to see it.

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And I remember Buddy walking slowly round this beautiful car, crying his eyes out. When I was fifteen I got this one, Benny Goodman Sing, Sing, Sing. That was the first time I heard the great Gene Cruper, and that was really one of the things that sent me stomping along trying to play the drums.

Presenter7:17

Benny Goodman's Sing, Sing, Sing.

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What happened to you when you were demobilized?

Presenter7:22

I joined Ted Heath's band as a drummer. You also sang with Ted Heath. Yeah, so we don't have to dwell on that, do we, Roy?

Speaker 37:25

You also say

Jack Parnell7:25

Done with.

Jack Parnell7:26

Yes, the

Presenter7:31

How long did you stay with him? Until 1951. It was a great band. Oh, yeah, very good band.

Jack Parnell7:35

Uh

Presenter7:36

Very good pan. When and why did you decide to form your end band?

Presenter7:40

Well, I got pushed by the agent, Leslie Grade, who said, well, now look here, old chap, you've got married, you must take the next step in your career and all that sort of thing. So that's how it happened. They wanted to put a band in a show called Fancy Free with Tommy Trinder and Pat Kirkwood at the Prince of Wales. And the idea was to get away from the old thing of having the orchestra out of vision in the pit and have the orchestra on view at the side in nice clothes and a very smart stand. Did it work? It wasn't a very good idea. I remember on one occasion Charlie Henry, the producer, came to me speechless. I was standing at the side of the stage because there was a sketch going on.

Presenter8:23

I said, Come here, look at this and pulled me towards the the bandstand. It was a Saturday night, and everybody in the band had an evening paper up reading the racing results or something. Let's have another echo.

Presenter8:39

Well, when I was in Cambridge I first heard the great Count Bays's band, with the fabulous Lester Young, the great tenor saxophone, the soloist Buck Clayton's trumpet. So I've picked out one it's called Every Tub.

Presenter9:54

Count Basie in his orchestra. Every tub.

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So you started your own band. How big was it? Twelve piece.

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What happened to it after Fancy Free?

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Oh, then we had to hit the road, Jack.

Presenter10:05

And we were on the road for a long time. Touring in the coaching. Yes, one night stands. What sort of music will you play?

Jack Parnell10:08

In the coach overnight.

Presenter10:13

Well, it was um jazz orientated dance music, really, with the accent on the jazz. I'm a great jazz nut and uh so therefore everybody in the band was and that's the way we played. We we played as much jazz as we could get away with, really. You had a spell of variety as well. Yes, we did a show called Jazz Wagon.

Presenter10:36

which went round the halls and lost rather a lot of money, I'm afraid. Oh dear. A bit ahead of our time, I think. Still, you did very well. You were voted Musician of the Year and one thing and another. But uh costs were going up and variety theatres were coming down. That's right, that's right. And uh

Presenter10:52

Eventually I could see thee.

Presenter10:54

the end of the big band era, as it were. The groups were just beginning to come up, and Leslie Grade offered me the post of musical director for Associated Television when it started, or just after it started, and I took that and took the band with me.

Presenter11:08

Well, that's the end of another phase in your career, sir, another record.

Presenter11:13

Well, this time we're going a little differently. I've always loved classical music, but uh round about nineteen forty six I heard Delius for the first time.

Presenter11:25

And so I'd like to play a little bit of summer night on the river.

Presenter12:27

The Music of Delias, Summer Night on the River, by the London Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Sir Thomas Beacham.

Presenter12:34

Right, so you're now a television band leader. You did

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Sunday night at the Palladium endure for years. Seven years. Seven years. Mm-hmm.

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You must have felt

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Very much at home at the Palladium, your spiritual home. Your your uncle, Val Parnell, was the boss there for a long, long time. Yes, he was, huh? I used to get free tickets. As a kid. Great. Sunday night at the Palladium. Any panics that you remember?

Jack Parnell12:51

Yeah.

Presenter13:00

Oh, well, there's one that I must tell you about. The

Presenter13:04

One Sunday night the star fell out. I can't remember who it was, but it was taken ill suddenly and they were panic stricken in the afternoon. What are we going to do? Somebody said that there was an Italian opera singer on holiday over here, Luciano Pavarotti, but he was out horse riding in Surrey somewhere, so they managed to locate him.

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and he said he'd sing uh Padiyashi.

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And uh so we m sent somebody over to the Elstrey Music Library to see if we got an arrangement, and they came back luckily with with the arrangement.

Presenter13:38

And so we started rehearsing this poor chap in his jodpers standing on the stage looking very mystified by the whole thing, and we struck it up Da Dee Da Da and he started singing, and we got to the end of the first page, and it suddenly went into Da Da Da Da Da Da What happened was that

Presenter13:57

It had been the opening for a Harry Seacombe show, where he was going to sing a little bit of Paliashi, and then he stopped, and then we went into I'm Just Wild About Harry. But the look on uh

Speaker 314:04

Eric

Presenter14:07

This poor gentleman's face was just too much. I can imagine. How many television shows have have you acted as M D on? Well, I should think in the region of coast about four thousand, yeah. That's a time, isn't it?

Presenter14:22

Now most of the work, of course, has been accompanying. Hasn't that been rather frustrating?

Presenter14:27

Yes, it a little I suppose, but on the other hand

Presenter14:31

The uh responsibility for entertaining the customers is on somebody else, which is a good feeling. My responsibility is just to the artist.

Presenter14:39

You won an Emmy, an American television award for work on one show. Yeah, that was the Barbara Streisand special. That was a lot of fun. Some more music. Well, I've always been a a Revelle fan. I love Ravel's music, and one of the loveliest things was the L'Enfor et la Sort de l'Ége, which is an absolutely beautiful piece of music in my opinion.

Presenter15:05

And uh this is just a little bit of it. Little bit of

Presenter15:09

waltz music which I found very fascinating.

Speaker 415:12

The bedouin cause denies pain, the controls left.

Presenter15:17

Yeah.

Speaker 315:40

No matter what.

Speaker 415:44

Neuvolon, no chasson, neutron, no chaton, no weapon

Speaker 315:48

Yeah.

Speaker 415:48

So it's funny.

Presenter16:02

A short excerpt from Rabel's L'Enfoiles Sortilage, a recording directed by Ernest Bourg.

Presenter16:10

For years, Jack, it's been said that the Big Band sound is really coming back. Now you've been pushing that along, of course. Yes, we've done a couple of series for television featuring the Big Band. The first one

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I must say that uh

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We dipped into the nostalgia bag and uh

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played a lot of the old arrangements of the famous bands, which was very successful.

Presenter16:35

Isn't that a bit dangerous, though, that this policy of using so many or dead men's arrangements, I mean, recreating the sound of Glen Miller

Presenter16:43

Tommy Dorsey. It's wonderful nostralgia, but it it it's a bit retrogressive. I think it is. I agree with you. I agree with you. And funnily enough, it's it's difficult to keep up because uh

Presenter16:54

Although each of those bands had uh very large libraries,

Presenter16:59

They weren't always numbers that you can remember today, and and uh we soon found that we were running out of sort of memorable titles.

Presenter17:07

I mean when you think of Tommy Dorsey you think of uh Sunnyside of the Street, Opus One, Song of India, and then you think, What else did he do?

Presenter17:19

But there are so many good old tunes that can be given for big bad arrangements. I think that's the idea, and that's the idea I'd like to uh go along with.

Jack Parnell17:22

I think that's a new way.

Presenter17:29

In future. How many concerts do you give? Live concerts? Very, very few. Maybe two a year.

Presenter17:35

You've got some fine old stalwarts in the band, chaps who've been with you for a long time.

Jack Parnell17:38

Capsule

Presenter17:40

Yes, I certainly have. Some since uh 1945 we've been playing together. Kenny Baker and I have been pretty well working together since then. Uh Norman Stenford, with piano player. It's not a young band. No, the average age is about fifty. Is it? About two thousand years of experience between us.

Jack Parnell17:56

He said.

Presenter18:01

Well, it's certainly a great band, Jack. And we've got to record number six. Well, it's a another piece of Revelle's music, another one piece that I really do love. It's an extract from uh Le Tombeau de Couprin.

Presenter19:17

The Foilin from The Tombaud Couperin by Rabel Boules conducting the New York Philharmonic.

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Now

Presenter19:26

You're on this island. Are you a domesticated sort of man? Are you good with your hands? No.

Jack Parnell19:29

Nope.

Presenter19:32

Oh. That answers that, doesn't it? I don't know what I would do, Roy, if I got on a desert island.

Speaker 319:33

I don't know what

Presenter19:38

Would you try to escape?

Presenter19:40

Yes, I think I would. Do you know anything about small boats, about navigation, about are you a good swimmer? No, no, I'm not a good swimmer. I don't know anything about navigation. I think I could probably climb a tree and fly my shirt from the top of it or something like that.

Presenter19:55

Well, you've got trouble, sir. I think I'd have serious troubles. Let's get back to music, it's safer. Well, here's uh a piece of Bach's music, played by George Malcolm.

Presenter20:08

I first met in the Air Force many, many years ago.

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It's the second movement, the Andante from the Italian concerto, and believe me, George plays it absolutely beautifully.

Presenter21:20

George Malcolm read the harpsichord The Second Movement from Bach's Italian Concerto.

Presenter21:26

And now we come to your last record. Uh nothing by your own band so far? No. None of your own compositions? No. You've got an award for something you wrote. What was that? Uh yes, I wrote theme music, which is called The Kiss for uh the original love story series. And I got an award from Harriet Cohen before she died, the last award she made.

Presenter21:52

Have you done much film work?

Presenter21:54

Very little film work, lot of T V

Presenter21:56

background music and themes and things like that. Yeah.

Presenter22:00

Well, this last record, what's that going to be?

Presenter22:02

Well, I've chosen this one because it's really of today. And uh although I love straight music, as I call it, I'm really a jazz man. But this record to me goes right down the middle. It's beautiful music, it's jazz, it's sensitive and I I think it's just one of the loveliest things I've heard recently. What is it? Hubert Law's flautist and it's called Morning Star.

Jack Parnell22:23

I've been

Presenter23:30

Hubert Laws with an orchestra arranged and conducted by Don Sabeski, Morning Star.

Presenter23:35

If you could take only one disk, which would you choose?

Presenter23:38

That one.

Presenter23:39

Morning star, yes, I think it's beautiful.

Presenter23:42

and one luxury to take to the island.

Presenter23:44

I think I would take

Presenter23:46

A very deep

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Flock cushioned.

Presenter23:51

Easy chair.

Presenter23:53

I think that's one of the most luxurious things that there is in the world. And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare, which are already there, and big encyclopedias which you don't allow? Um well my father introduced me to uh WW Jacobs when I was about fourteen years old and I used to laugh and laugh at those stories and when I pick them up today and read them, same stories which I know backwards and I laugh and laugh again.

Presenter24:22

So, I think I'd take those. As many W.W. Jacobs stories as we can cram into one volume. And thank you, Jack Parnell, for letting us hear your Desert Island Disc. Thank you, Roy. Goodbye. Goodbye, everyone.

Jack Parnell24:42

You've been listening to a podcast from the Desert Island Discs Archive. For more podcasts, please visit bbc.co.uk slash radio four.