Tuning in…
Tuning in…
Castaway
1 appearance
Columnist, broadcaster, musician, lyricist, novelist, biographer, and TV host who read every word of the 123 editions of Wisdom.
On the island
Eight records
Jones looked very serious. As he shouted to the crowd. Oh I must go home tonight, I must go home tonight I don't care if it's snowing, blowing, and going I only got married this morning and it fills me with delight I'll stay out as late as you like next week but I must go home tonight
Frankie Trumbauer and His Orchestra
Leon Bismarck Big Spider-Vick... is a tragic figure, and I shall never forget him for this reason. His family thought that being a jazz musician didn't count... And when he was very ill and dying, he went home to Davenport, Iowa to die really, and uh he was rousing around the house and he found all the records he sent unopened. They were not even interested.
I Let a Song Go Out of My Heart
Duke Ellington and His Orchestra
It's a song he wrote in 20 minutes during a tea break in a recording session one day, 1938. And it's just dance music, but it's also beautiful.
Valses nobles et sentimentales
Paris Conservatoire Orchestra conducted by André Cluytens
I bought a record in 1953 or 4 when I was with the band, and it moved me so much that I never ever forgot its contents.
I gradually came round over the years to the realization that in many ways Fred symbolized a lot of my life for me because when I hear him to this day I think of Top Hat... this medley, you can hear Fred singing three songs of Gershwin and it seems to me the three songs are as beautiful today as they were when he wrote them.
One for My Baby (and One More for the Road)
He reminds me of the romance and the the pains of disappointment of the late teens and the twenties. He is the great romantic troubadour of our generation, and he deals in the small talk of love and romance and unrequited passion.
Nigel Kennedy and the London Philharmonic Orchestra
When I hear Elgar, I hear that tremendous pageant of England that was. Really marching to its doom in 1914. I think of it as a kind of Farewell wave to some vision of pastoral England that I never knew... and the sadness and the beauty and the sweetness of the violin concerto strikes me in that way
An Evening with Johnny MercerFavourite
It's Johnny Mercer in the early seventies standing up on the New York stage with a pianist, nobody else. Telling his life story through the songs.
In conversation
Presenter asks
1:21Was it always likely that you were going to be a musician?
No, not really. Before that, when I was in single figures, I always wanted to be what I used to call a reporter... And it wasn't until I was thirteen years old that it suddenly hit me that um I might like to be a musician instead.
Presenter asks
3:14Did school have much of an influence one way or another on your life?
Well, yeah, I uh I I would like to write a book about the schools I've been to one of these days because they were all so different... I went to a grammar school when the war started, evacuated to Cornwall... That was a nightmare... But the school and I had different ideas about what education was and uh the school had the bigger weapons. So I left after eighteen months and came back to London.
Presenter asks
7:24What was your first job as a professional musician?
It was in nineteen forty nine I went to Sherry's Bore in Brighton... to play with a band called Owl Field and his orchestra... And I was very excited about going to play at Sherry's because... I'd read Brighton Rock by Graham Greene. And in Brighton Rock, Graham Greene describes Sherry's Boreham as a pit of iniquity... And it I've never been so bored in my life. Nobody came in.
The keepsakes
The book
H. G. Wells
a reminder to me of what the first initial impact of good literature was, on my mind.
The luxury
saxophone with plenty of reeds
i suppose i could get by with a paper and pencil for the writing. in that case it would be a saxophone, with plenty of reeds.
Presenter asks
17:15How do you make the transition from being a jazz musician to being a writer?
Well, just before I joined Ronnie Scott, I was introduced to the editor of the New Musical Express... I wrote a short story about a musician that sneezes every time He takes a deep breath... and they paid me three guineas for it... And I started like that.
Presenter asks
24:20How did the idea [to compile anthologies of Wisden] start?
I was reviewing books for The Spectator in the 70s... and I got given the That Year's Wisdom Review. And I reviewed it as if it had been a novel... I got a letter from the high executive of Ford Motor Company saying... We will subsidise an anthology of the best of wisdom... after that, I pursued the idea.
“I'm not very musical, strangely enough. I have found it very difficult. I wasn't a natural musician. I didn't have an ear. I didn't have much aptitude and it took me a long, long time to reach any state of proficiency at all.”
“I've devoted my entire life to avoid going to work, which is absolutely true. I d I could never ever have contemplated the thought of going to work, and I was willing to do anything at my hobbies. But not go to work.”
“If you ask me what I do all the time it would be sulk. I'm very bad when the circumstances are not entirely comfortable and favourable. I'm not very good in adversity. I say, well, where is the deep freeze? Where is the television? Where is the sofa? Where is the electric light? And if it's not there, I sulk.”