Robin Richmond

Robin Richmond0:00

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

This week, our castaway is the organist and entertainer, Robin Richmond. Robin, did you find it a tough job narrowing your disc down to just eight? I certainly did, Roy, and I've got them for various uh different reasons as we'll evolve as the programme goes along. Well, let's start straight away. What's the first one? Well, I think I must be very miserable being washed up on this desert island, so I brought along with me my happy record. It's a lovely thing called the Chimes of Swing.

Presenter1:54

Chimes of Swing by David Carroll and his orchestra. You're a Londoner, aren't you, Robin? Yes. Educated, I see, at Westminster School, and that was in the days of top hats and morning coats. Top hats and tailcoats? Yes. Do you come from a musical family? No, my father was a doctor. He played the violin rather badly, and mother sang, and she played the piano not too well.

Presenter2:16

But uh there's no particular music in the family. Did you take part in the musical life of Westminster School? Well not really, because uh I was there at a time when little boys should be seen and not heard and do what they were told and I had to study for the law, classics and all that, and I wasn't really interested. It went in one ear and out of the other one. We learnt a little bit of music like everybody, but uh nothing special.

Robin Richmond2:30

And I was ready.

Presenter2:37

You were an organ scholar, though, in a curious way. Well, in a very yes, uh that was a bit of a a fake actually, but we had a private service in the Abbey at half past nine every morning, and as Big Ben chimed the half hour, the um door was slammed, and anybody who wasn't in Abbey uh got six of the best, unless they had a jolly good excuse, you see. And I was a bad starter even in those days. I found two fellows were marked permanently absent because they were organ students up in the organ loft. So, of course, I put my name down to become an organ student, and the next time they said, Oh, you weren't in Abbey this morning, Richmond, what's the excuse? I said, Oh, yes, I was. I'm an organ student, I'm up in the organ loft, you see.

Presenter3:14

Did you have to play the organ? Well, no, not not at that particular time, because the first time well, one day I thought, well, I must go up and have a look and see what's going on. And as soon as I saw that organ, Roy, and heard Peasgoode playing it, I thought, This is my life's work. I want to be an organist.

Presenter3:28

But uh it didn't work out that way at that time.

Presenter3:31

What about the law? What happened to your law studies? Well, they went down the drain. I I tried them about five times and I just wasn't interested. So um I decided to capitalize on my hobby, which was organ music. Music was going to be your career? That's it. Well, that was a a momentous decision to make. Let's have your second record.

Presenter3:51

Well, in later life I got very interested in the classical organ as well and my wife is French and I always go into the organ loft at Notre Dame and of course the French lead the way and I also play at the Albert Hall a bit. So here I would like to take with me Nicholas Kiniston playing the Royal Albert Hall organ. It's a French piece of music and it is the Etude de Concare by Bonnet.

Presenter5:12

Nicholas Kiniston at the organ of the Royal Albert Hall, Etude de Concerre, by Bonnet.

Presenter5:18

Right, Robin, you've decided you're going to be a musician and you're looking for a job.

Presenter5:23

Yeah, well I went to the Brixton Astoria, which was one of the latest super cinemas at that time in London. It had an organ of course and an orchestra and stage acts and part talking pictures and part sound. Asked to see the organist. He was a fellow called Al Bollington. And he said to me, What do you want? I said, I want to be an organist. He said, can you play the organ? I said, not very well. He said, good, I've got a job for you.

Presenter5:45

So

Presenter5:46

I said, how come? He said, Well, there's another Astoria opening up the way at Streatham. I'm going to be the organist there.

Presenter5:52

And you can be my assistant.

Presenter5:54

for which would be paid ten pounds a week, which, I might say, Roy was good money in those days. Indeed.

Presenter5:59

And he said, Well, now, as you can't play the organ very well, I will do your job for you as well as mine, for which you can pay me five pounds a week.

Presenter6:07

And you'll obviously need, what shall we say, three lessons a week, a quid a time, all right. So he had eight quid a week off me before I even started, you know, but there we are. Well, that left you with two. Of course there was a lot to learn, because there was a great box of tricks at Cinema Hork and it wasn't just a matter of coming up on the lift with the spotlight on you. You had drums and train effects and horses' hooves. Yes.

Robin Richmond6:15

There we are.

Speaker 46:21

Yeah.

Robin Richmond6:21

Uh

Robin Richmond6:27

Horses

Presenter6:29

Yes, and all that sort of thing, police sirens. And every organist had his interludes. Um, music of sunny Spain or a train journey round the world. You you had to get all these things together. Yes. Slides on the screen, words on the screen we put a on the turn round and chat to the audience. Yes. An awful lot of things can go wrong with that sort of thing. Can you remember any particular organ interlude that went up the spout?

Robin Richmond6:38

You'll have

Robin Richmond6:45

Uh

Speaker 46:45

Can't for the audience.

Presenter6:57

Well, of course, you get a cipher, that means to say a note sticks and nothing on the earth will make it go off. And this note goes on. And of course, we used to have a wonderful trick, because if you played the donkey serenade in the right key, you know, if you like to sing one note, go on, you sing it, ah, and I go, keep going. See, and the note's still on. Yes. You're the stuck note.

Speaker 47:19

Uh

Presenter7:23

There's a future in this. I think we must get together. Let's have another record.

Robin Richmond7:24

Uh

Presenter7:27

Oh, well, I suppose, you know, I'm a bit of a romanticist at heart and I love operetta and a good melody, Roy, that's what I like, a good melody, and I think Annalise Rottenberg has got a beautiful voice, so I think I'd take with me uh Manelippen de Kussensohais from uh Juditha.

Speaker 47:50

It plans it stands or highs Mine and widows it peaks are

Speaker 48:00

The voice in the shape of the

Speaker 48:12

Who does this?

Speaker 48:15

Oh, it's the Lord, mine a Christmas Ishmael.

Robin Richmond8:22

Peace out.

Speaker 48:25

I hear minor obeys in openness.

Presenter8:46

Annalisa Rottenberger singing An Aria from Lehaas Judita.

Presenter8:50

It must have been rather a long day for a cinema organist. You you couldn't go far away. You had to play between every film and all those interludes and so on. You had to stand by, of course, in the old days, uh the early days of the Talking Pictures, in case the film broke down. If the organist wasn't on the organ within uh about ten seconds of the picture breaking down, you were in for trouble, you see.

Robin Richmond9:04

Mm-hmm.

Presenter9:11

Were you with the Circuit? Were you sent round the country wherever there was a an opening? Yes. Um I start I had a job, of course, at the Troquet Cinema on the Tybridge Road, on the Heinz Circuit, just down the road from the Trocadera, where the great Quentin MacLean played, and I had to also do the assistance for the MacLean there.

Presenter9:28

And then I joined Reginald Fort, dear old Reggie Fort, on the county cinemas and he sent me all round the place. Which was fine. That meant you could play the old interludes again.

Robin Richmond9:34

Which was fine.

Presenter9:38

New cinemas. Well, yes, Roy, except that you did try and make them a bit local. Did the organs vary very much from place to place? Oh, yes, enormously. De different makes. The W American Wurlitzers were the best, of course. They're defunct now, but they were.

Presenter9:53

In in the late thirties you were one of the first, if not the first, to play the new type of electric organ.

Presenter10:00

Well, that's right, Roy, because I was going to have a big travelling pipe organ made, and in fact I got all the plans out and the design and everything. Somebody said, Have you heard about these new pipeless organs? And I went to the showrooms in uh Regent Street here.

Presenter10:16

I was a bit mystified like everybody else. How can you have an organ without pipes? You know, at the time it was something brand new.

Presenter10:23

And I could see the possibility because they'd be easy to transport and so I settled for the first two. Actually I bought the first two that ever came in to England. And you could hitch one onto the back of your car and take it anywhere. Oh yes, I had a a trailer. I went all round Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Holland. I remember seeing you in a West End review. It's in the bag. You you you played the organ on stage. That was the electronic organ, yes. That was a wonderful review. Benny Ross and Maxine Stern if I remember rightly and uh Robert Ashley the singer, great singer. And of course dear El Elizabeth Welsh. But I I I remember a very funny story about that because the Savile Theatre at that time was on D C, direct current. We had to have A C alternating current to make the organ work properly.

Presenter11:06

And so they ran a wire across the pavement from the building next door, some snack bar or something, I don't know. And all was well for the first few weeks. So suddenly one night the LCC inspector came in and he saw this wire across the pavement. He said, What's that wire? That shouldn't be there across the pavement and pulled it down and cut my organ off and went back.

Presenter11:25

Right, next record.

Presenter11:27

Well, I think on this desert island it'll all be nice and peaceful and romantic and to go with that uh one of my favorite of all composers who writes his beautiful pastoral music, Delius, Walk to the Paradise Garden.

Presenter12:43

The walk to the Paradise Garden

Presenter12:45

Sir John Barbie Raleigh conducting The Halley Orchestra.

Presenter12:49

The war, of course, stopped your touring around the music halls and that sort of thing.

Presenter12:54

Well, I joined the the B B C then, not on staff, but as a contract artist, and I had my electronic organ at the Criterion Theatre, which was a studio, on call twenty four hours a day to go and do programmes for all over the world.

Presenter13:07

accompanying people there are quartermaster programmes, you know. People like uh Petula Clark, I accompanied her there and dev dear old Stephan Capelli and his fiddle and uh Richard Tauber and

Presenter13:17

Sergeant George Mitchell and the Royal Army Pay Corps Quai used to come in there. You were also at the Paramount Tottenham Court Road at the same time. Yep, Paramount Tottenham Court Road.

Presenter13:28

And uh more than that, I also had a dance band at Hammersmith Palais to Dance around the electronic organ, too. And a bicycle as well, I think.

Robin Richmond13:36

I'm advising for

Presenter13:37

But the Paramount, that was great fun there and of course, oh, there was an awful thing that happened one day there, because the first we used to do three organ interludes a day and the first one was usually pretty quiet, the business, about half past two in the afternoon. And when I started to play, I heard uh some voices behind me, right in the front row of the stores, talking and I thought oh three old

Presenter13:57

Housewives are not interested in the organ, but I glanced over my shoulder and there I saw four Air Force uniforms and to my horror I recognised Al Bollington who I'd taken the job over because eventually Al went to the Paramount University and he'd gone in the Air Force and he was up on his day off or leave with his air crew because when they saw that I had seen them then they started singing all out of tune and too fast and that and lobbing things over onto the organ, orange peelness. And finally old Al nipped out towards the end of my interlude and he jammed the lift door so that I didn't know it, but so that when I pushed the button to go down at the end the organ wouldn't move. And they were all saying, go on, get out of it, we've seen you. And they were stuck up in front of the pictures. I had to climb across the stage. That's a very, very funny picture.

Robin Richmond14:40

Very

Presenter14:43

When the war was over, you went back on the road, music halls and that sort of thing. On the road, music halls, yes. But then the organ business, so far as cinemas were concerned, began to close down. Well, they did a bit, of course, for various reasons, because the business was dropping in the cinemas and the organists were the first to go. And of course, the electronic organ was taking over. But as one door closes, another opens, you see, and radio was proliferating and variety. For the past few years, of course, you've been with the BBC arranging the theatre organ programme, such few as still go on the air. Now, the organist entertains, you're responsible for that, aren't you? That's right, yes.

Presenter15:22

How many cinemas still have organs in good condition?

Presenter15:26

Well, uh I suppose there are about eight or ten throughout the country at the moment. They're not used any more as part of the show.

Presenter15:35

But in the heyday well, I wouldn't like to say in the heyday how many. It must have been, yes. But oh, Brighton alone, for instance, had one, two, three, four, six, if you include Hove as well.

Robin Richmond15:38

Yeah.

Speaker 415:38

Yeah.

Presenter15:46

Right, another record. What now?

Presenter15:48

Well, got to have a laugh, haven't you, Roy? Even on the desert island, and I I must have uh some comedy there and uh Gerald Hoflang, I think he meets the Bill, he's the funniest man ever. What about that wonderful bit where he gets a letter from the proprietor of a foreign hotel when he's trying to book a room?

Speaker 216:07

I am amazing diverted by your entreaty for a room.

Speaker 216:14

I can offer you a commodious chamber.

Speaker 216:26

With a balcony imminent.

Speaker 216:30

To the romantic gorge, and I hope you want to drop in.

Speaker 416:37

What the

Speaker 216:41

A vivacious stream washes my doorstep.

Speaker 216:46

So do not concern yourself that I am not too good in bath. I am superb in bed.

Presenter16:56

Gerard Hofnach.

Presenter16:59

That was a a very sad figure you gave us. Only eight or ten cinema organs left out of that vast number. Those are ones in cinemas, but the actual organs are preserved all over the place, Roy. I mean, you can't get one for loving the money, they're not. Garages and pubs. Oh, garages, pubs. There's one in a hospital, in a hospital recreation room in um Birmingham.

Speaker 217:11

Garages and

Presenter17:19

And there's two or three in churches.

Presenter17:21

Because, you know, there's very little difference between the church organ and the cinema organ. If you take the the train effect off. That's right, and the drums and the tremulation, you know. Is the BBC theatre organ still going somewhere? That jaunt molo which Reggie Fort used to take round the music halls? Well, indeed.

Robin Richmond17:25

Yeah.

Robin Richmond17:38

Okay, so

Presenter17:39

BBC sold it to um Hilberton.

Presenter17:42

And when the last two operative cinema organists died in Holland and they couldn't find anyone to play the monster, they sold it back to Mollers in America and they refurbished it and they sold it to the Organ Par Pizza Parlor in San Diego.

Presenter17:56

And they got Darrow Reggie Fort out of retirement about three

Presenter18:01

Four months ago to reopen it, and I'm going over there in a couple of weeks now to play it again myself. You'll be playing in the Pizza Parliament. Yep, in the Pizza Parliament.

Robin Richmond18:08

Mm-hmm.

Presenter18:08

There's progress. That's progress. Record number six.

Robin Richmond18:10

Record numbers

Presenter18:12

Well

Presenter18:13

I think that a a little bit of gentle jazz is the thing, because if I hadn't played the organ, I'd love to have played jazz on the vibraphone, and who can play the vibraphone better than uh Lionel Hampton?

Presenter19:23

Running Wild by the Benny Goodman Quartet.

Presenter19:26

What would your morale be like on this desert island? Could you look after yourself?

Presenter19:30

That I couldn't do, Roy, no, because although I

Presenter19:34

was a King's Cart in the old days and got all the badges. I'm hopeless in I'm a really a gas man, come with man, you know, I put a n nail in and everything falls to bits. I would have thought that an organist was something of a technician, always got a screwdriver in his pocket, very good with his hands.

Robin Richmond19:43

Two.

Speaker 419:44

Yeah.

Robin Richmond19:44

Yeah.

Presenter19:49

No, well actually that's rather a dangerous thing because technician who thinks he can play can't always play well and the organist who thinks he can make the organ better can't, you know, always max up the work.

Presenter19:59

Would you try to escape? Couldn't.

Presenter20:02

Couldn't how could I escape if I couldn't make a raft or anything and I couldn't swim? Incidentally, if I may ask you something, Roy, because I listened so much to your programme over the years, but you've never really told us where this desert island is. Well, it's wherever you want it to be, within reason, in a tropical or semi-tropical climate. You can't have it off the Isle of Wight or anything like that. Oh, much too far.

Robin Richmond20:22

Yeah.

Presenter20:26

Record number seven.

Presenter20:28

Well, I would have to take just one cinema organ record with me and um a theatre organ record of very high quality and beautiful playing by Buddy Cole because he really makes the organ talk and I'd like to take um Buddy Cole playing uh

Presenter20:43

I'll follow my secret heart.

Presenter21:36

Badiko.

Presenter21:37

And now your last record.

Presenter21:40

I think

Presenter21:42

Hope for the future.

Presenter21:44

And sort of looking over the horizon, keeping the old pecker up, you know. And I want something happy, something gay in the old sense of that word, and something, as I say, that gives hope for the future. And my favourite tune for that sort of thing, cheer-up tune, is Daybreak from the Mississippi Suite by Photography.

Presenter23:05

The Hollywood Bowl Symphony Orchestra, conducted by Felix Slatkin, playing Daybreak from Thirty Grofe's Mississippi Suite.

Presenter23:13

If you could take only one disk, which would it be?

Presenter23:16

I think it would definitely have to be the devious. It's definitely because it's so beautiful, yes. And one luxury to take to the island?

Presenter23:24

Will I be allowed to take the Albert Hall organ?

Presenter23:27

I don't see why not. The Royal Albert Hall Organ, that's the blow it by, um uh the tide, water, couldn't we?

Robin Richmond23:29

Yeah.

Presenter23:33

Or that, or solar batteries. We'll find a way. We'll leave that to the technicians.

Robin Richmond23:35

We'll find a way. We'll leave that to the

Presenter23:38

And one book apart from the Bible and Shakespeare and big encyclopedias. Frankly, I'm not a booky man. I don't know, it would be a picture book or something. I know what I'd like to take, Roy. I know, and give me a laugh forever, keep me happy forever. The biggest bound volume of Giles cartoons that I could possibly get. Could I take that with me? Yes, the collected Giles cartoons. And thank you, Robin Richmond, for letting us hear your Desert Island discs. Ah, that's great. Thank you, Roy, for asking me. Goodbye, everyone.

Robin Richmond24:17

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