Parky’s Kind of Music

Sir Michael Parkinson is a man on a mission. The broadcasting icon is currently touring the country to spread the word about the music he loves – the music written on the pages of the Great American Songbook and its sequels; the songs composed by such greats as the Gershwins, Cole Porter Jerome Kern, Irving Berlin, Johnny Mercer and the Beatles and performed by the stars of jazz and popular music. After decades celebrating this music on TV and radio and in print, the 83-year-old is sharing his enthusiasm through a show, Our Kind of Music, which arrives in Scotland this weekend.

Our Kind of Music, which was preceded by a compilation CD launched last autumn, finds the tables being turned very gently on the chat show king as he is the interviewee rather than the interviewer; his son, Mike Parkinson, asks the questions which guide Parky through the music that has shaped his life and career.

Clips of favourite singers and musicians – from Duke Ellington to Elton John, via his number ones Ella Fitzgerald and Frank Sinatra – pepper this production, and the dazzlingly inventive pianist and singer Joe Stilgoe provides live examples of some of Parky’s favourite tunes, as well as introducing a specially commissioned new number.

When we speak – first thing on Monday morning – Parkinson is exhilarated by the success of the show’s London debut, last weekend at the Palladium. “We got a five minute standing ovation! You forget the significance this music has for a huge swathe of the population.”

It has certainly been one of the most significant aspects of Sir Michael Parkinson’s life. Born in a Yorkshire mining community in 1935 – the year, he points out, that Porgy and Bess opened on Broadway – he was sung standards instead of lullabies by his movie-mad mum who momentarily entertained the idea of naming him Gershwin after her favourite composer, and who must have been thrilled, decades later, when the original singer of many of these songs – a certain Fred Astaire – turned up to perform them on her son’s TV show with music annotated by George himself.

Parkinson’s mother might have introduced him to the original film versions of the great standards, but he found his favourite versions by himself – when he fell in love with jazz.

“The big discovery for me was the Armed Forces Network broadcasting from Germany,” he recalls. “When I was about 13, I was fiddling with the buttons on my radio when I heard this man singing and playing the trumpet. It was Louis Armstrong playing On the Sunny Side of the Street – and it was wonderful. I’d never heard anything like it.”

This was the era when bebop was starting to blossom and before long, thanks to the AFN, Parkinson was also falling under the spell of Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker. “There was great competition between the trad and modern jazz fans and I stood in both camps. A bunch of us who liked the modern stuff used to meet every week at the bandstand in Barnsley.

“We had a record player in the middle of the bandstand and we would play records. A friend who was in the Merchant Navy would bring back the latest records from New York. We’d sit and listen in a trance, all of us dressed in duffel coats and silly shoes. I may have been hanging out with the modernists but I had to accept that Louis Armstrong was the greatest genius that there ever was.”

Unfortunately, Armstrong died less than a month before Parky launched his BBC talk show a couple of decades later, but it was two musicians heavily associated with him (including the trombonist from that first jazz record that Parkinson heard) who provided the young Yorkshire Evening Post reporter with his first celebrity interview – a particularly surreal one even by the standards of a man who would go on to interview John Lennon while sporting a bag over his head.

“I was walking down Doncaster High Street, going for a coffee, when Jack Teagarden and Earl Hines walked past me. I was probably the only person in Yorkshire to recognise them – Teagarden, the trombonist, had been in films I had seen. I did a double take, then introduced myself. They looked at me as if I was a martian. They hadn’t heard of Doncaster, they hadn’t heard of Yorkshire. They didn’t know where they were but their bus had broken down – it was en route to Bradford. I reckon whoever else was on the bus stayed on it for fear of being eaten by cannibals!”

Parkinson took these two giants of jazz for a coffee, and interviewed them before rushing back to share his scoop with the rest of the office – only to find that nobody was impressed. It wasn’t the first time his enthusiasm for jazz had been met with indifference – and it wouldn’t be the last. However, it helped instill in him the feeling that he is a “crusader” for the music and a voice for the people who love it as much as he does.

Years later when he was offered his radio show, he agreed to do it as long as he didn’t have to play the BBC’s playlist; he wanted to play only music he, personally, liked – which led to his becoming known as a major taste-maker in the jazz and easy listening scene through the 1990s and 2000s when he helped launch the careers of Michael Buble, Jamie Cullum and Diana Krall. “I believe it’s part of the job to keep my eyes and ears open to new talent – and to help them get a break,” he says.

The Teagarden-Hines encounter on Doncaster High Street may have been “the greatest moment of my life” for jazz-mad Parky in the 1950s, but it was just the first of many close encounters with his heroes – some of which were born out of similarly surreal circumstances.

One of his very favourite contributors to the Great American Songbook was the songwriter Johnny Mercer, who wrote the lyrics for many of the 20^th Century’s greatest hits – among them Moon River, Skylark and That Old Black Magic. (Indeed, the last public show Parkinson presented in Scotland was an all-star centenary tribute to Mercer organised by Scots crooner Todd Gordon.)

“Johnny Mercer was one of my great heroes – and we pay tribute to him in Our Kind of Music,” says Parky. “He was a great poet, but he was an awful drunk; one of the worst. He would insult everyone in the room – then the next day, he’d send them wine and roses, a bit like the lyrics of the song he wrote with Henry Mancini. Anyway, one night I had just got home at about 11pm and was getting into bed when I got a call from Laurie Holloway [Parky’s friend and the musical director on his TV show], who lived down the road.

“He asked me what I was doing, and I told him ‘I’m in my jammas – what did you think I’d be doing?’ … He invited me down to his house and told me Johnny Mercer was there, waiting to meet me. I got dressed in record time and arrived to find Mercer sitting on the piano stool with Laurie’s wife, the wonderful singer Marion Montgomery, and for two hours she sang all his hits.”

Breaking into the song I’m an Old Cow Hand (From the Rio Grande), Parkinson chortles: “That was one of the great moments in my life.” In his Our Kind of Music show, he proudly shares clips of himself with Mercer and Bing Crosby, for whom that number was originally written.

Parkinson is keen to point out that he has been “lucky to live through two great periods in popular music,” and he pinpoints the early 1960s, when the Beatles emerged, as the start of that second great period. Through his TV show, Scene at 6.30, which he presented at Granada, he got to know the Fab Four before they hit the bigtime.

“They were the house band,” he laughs. “When I first knew them, Paul McCartney asked for my autograph – for his mum! I wasn’t surprised that they made it big as they wrote lovely songs – you can trace the lineage back to the old songs I loved – but nobody expected the sort of world domination, the Beatlemania.”

Always one for whom work and pleasure are intertwined, Parkinson shows no sign of putting his feet up and just listening to his beloved music in the comfort of his sitting room. Indeed, this knight’s crusade continues – as his packed touring schedule demonstrates.

“The Great American Songbook is my great passion,” he explains. “It’s the greatest collection of pop tunes there has ever been and it will last forever – provided we look after it.”

* Sir Michael Parkinson: Our Kind of Music is at the Assembly Rooms, Edinburgh (0131 228 1155; www.assemblyroomsedinburgh.co.uk) on Saturday 21 at 7.30pm, and at the City Halls, Glasgow (0141 353 8000; www.tickets.glasgowconcerthalls.com) on Sunday 22 at 7pm.

• First published in The Herald, Thursday April 19

Stilgoe Rides Again

The top highlight of many music and movie lovers’ Fringe last year was singer- jazz pianist Joe Stilgoe’s joyful, classy, five-star show Songs on Film, a loving and stylish homage to the films he grew up with. In true Hollywood style, he’s back this week with a follow-up, Songs on Film – The Sequel, which runs until Sunday.

He says: “The strapline for this show is: ‘Like all good sequels, the cast is the same, most of the themes are the same – there are just more explosions and fight scenes.’ Since we’re only doing a short run this year, we will probably get some of the same audience from last year so we wanted to make it a bit different – but we have kept some of the greatest hits from the first show.”

Of course, as Stilgoe points out, songs from films is “a rich genre to mine” – so where do you start?  “The reason I thought the show worked was because I related it to my own experience of watching cinema – why I went into music, I think that made it cohesive. So this time we’ve got a section about growing up in the 1980s, and celebrating the mullets and the massive jackets, I’m thinking Ted Danson ..”

Not only that but whereas most of the standards we hear being played in jazz concerts began life in the great movie and stage musicals, many of the songs with which Stilgoe fills his show are from non-musicals. “We want to choose songs that people remember films by – whether it’s Goodnight Sweetheart from Three Men and a Baby or the waltz from Pixar’s Up. Those really give you that nostalgic burst – and people came up to us last year and said how much they enjoyed that aspect.”

What was also striking last year was the fact that we got to hear songs which most of us had probably never heard performed live before. One stand-out in that department was Arthur’s Song, from the 1981 comedy Arthur. “I love playing that one so much because I love Dudley Moore and I love that film. It’s not a song that people play over and over again but it is very evocative of that film and the era.”

At the age of 36, Stilgoe is too young to have seen Arthur in the cinema when it came out; The Jungle Book was the first film he saw on the big screen. “I loved it, specifically because of the music – I went on to be a huge fan of Louis Prima and the Sherman brothers who wrote the songs.”

Very much a chip off the old block (Stilgoe’s father is the songwriter and broadcaster Sir Richard), he jokes: “As a teenager I went through a period of hating musicals. I thought they were silly. So I guess my teenage rebellion was just not liking musicals for a few years, which must have hurt my dad. But then I came back to them and realised that this is the family business!”

It must, therefore, have been a dream come true to find himself – as recently as Saturday – onstage at The Old Vic in High Society?  “Yes, I’m still on a bit of a cloud because it was such a wonderful experience and High Society is the film that made me want to be a jazz musician.”

Playing a character (named Joey) specially created for him, but performing the same sort of function in the show as Louis Armstrong did in the film, Stilgoe “played a Nat King Cole/Mel Torme kind of figure who would have been booked for the party in the film.. Basically, I started the show by mucking around with the audience asking them to shout out songs and take part in a singalong.”

So he brought anarchy to High Society? “Yes! Some nice anarchy – because at the start you want to get the audience into a party atmosphere. I got to sing the title number and some other songs including my favourite, Well Did You Evah? .. yes, I admit it, I gatecrashed the Sinatra-Crosby duet!”

He also learned to dance for High Society. So should we be on alert for a spot of Fred Astaire-style dancing in this year’s Songs on Film? “The problem with that is, if I’m dancing, who’s playing the piano?!” Still, maybe it’s an idea for the third part of the trilogy – or further down the line when his six-month-old daughter has joined the family business?

But back to this year’s Songs on Film. Are we talking a superior sequel, a Godfather 2? “Absolutely,” laughs Stilgoe who is driving up the motorway as we speak. “We’re talking Godfather 2 and Toy Story 2; definitely not a Jaws 4 – or even 2 or 3!”

* Songs on Film – The Sequel is at Assembly from Wednesday – Sunday at 4pm; www.assemblyfestival.com; www.joestilgoe.com

* First published in The Scotsman, Wednesday August 26

Liane Carroll: A Sentimental Journey

If there is one ticket that represents exceptional value for money at the Glasgow Jazz Festival then it is surely the one-man show by Liane Carroll on the festival’s opening night, on Wednesday.

Singer-pianist Carroll doesn’t just play and sing; she takes the audience on an emotional journey which might start, end and be punctuated with rib-tickling jokes but includes detours via various levels of gut-wrenching, heart-rending ballads, swinging standards and raucous blues.

Wherever she goes during her show, Carroll takes enraptured listeners with her; there’s no “her and us” about it – it’s very much a shared experience, and one which leaves no emotional stone un-turned. It’s no wonder everyone from Gerry Rafferty, with whom she toured and recorded, to Joe Stilgoe, who penned the title track of her forthcoming album Seaside, has wanted her to sing their songs.

For Carroll, it’s essential to have the audience on the journey with her. “Singing is communicating,” she says, “so I don’t feel I’m up there on my own. I have the audience with me, and we have a laugh together.” That community feeling undoubtedly stems from the 51-year-old’s first musical experiences, when she was encouraged to sing and play in her grandparents’ home in Hastings, where, from the age of six, she lived with her mother. “It was a daft household but very musical,” she recalls, with a giggle.

Carroll’s parents were semi professional singers. “They sang at the Country Club in Eastbourne – that’s how they met. Me mum had sung for a while in the 1950s with the Ken Mackintosh Band. Me nan played the piano, and I took to it early. I was taught by a concert pianist who lived locally. She was a bit of a dragon – she would threaten to snip my hair if I made any mistakes. I really thought she might do it, and one time I wore my hair in a beret so it was out of sight. Me mum said: ‘What are you doing?’ and I explained – and she had a word with her.”

Having heard and liked jazz being played and sung at home, Carroll got hooked on it in her early teens, and her listening tastes changed from the Osmonds (“I was in love with Donnie”) and the Bay City Rollers to big band music, with which she became obsessed. “I saw the BBC Radio Big Band doing a tribute to the bandleader Ted Heath, and then got into Count Basie, Stan Kenton and Maynard Ferguson… Me mum and nan used to take me to different gigs and then when I was about 16 I started to go by myself. I’d go up to London on the train and stay with a couple of relatives and come back down. It was lovely. It didn’t happen very regularly but it was my treat.”

By this time, Carroll had begun to teach herself how to play jazz. “Towards the end of my grade exams, I really enjoyed playing jazz but it wasn’t really encouraged in those days. It was [she assumes a snooty voice]: ‘Oh well, if you like that kind of thing…’. Which of course just made me do it even more, and practise doing it even more.”

What did her schoolmates think of this obsession – or was playing and listening to jazz a closet activity? “On the whole, I think it was pretty much accepted,” says Carroll. “A few people thought I was a bit weird not wanting to go to discos, but I didn’t have much confidence about going to discos and I did prefer jazz. I wasn’t that sociable; I wasn’t one of the alpha girls, the popular girls. As I got older, I made lots of friends and they used to enjoy me playing a bit of jazz on the piano at the school assembly – the school liked to have someone playing as people were coming into the hall, and I liked the chance to show off! I wasn’t bullied about it or anything, and I wasn’t shy – I’ve never been shy! I just wasn’t in that set of girls who were popular.”

The singing quickly followed; indeed it was her eventual second husband, bass player Roger Carey, who first got her up to sing on gigs. Asked who her favourite singer was when she was growing up, and Carroll responds immediately: “Vic Damone. He was amazing, a lovely singer. He had it all – the voice, the rhythm and the phrasing – and he did lots with the Count Basie Orchestra. Of the female jazz singers, Sarah Vaughan was my favourite though of course I enjoyed Ella Fitzgerald as well. But I’ve always had diverse tastes: growing up, I used to listen to Laura Nyro – she had a big impact on me when I was about 14 – and I’ve been doing her songs ever since. My husband introduced me to Todd Rundgren’s music, and I really love him too…”

It was only after a very short marriage, from her late teens into her early twenties – “not a pleasant time” – that Carroll really got stuck into performing. “I had been living in York during that period and came back down to Hastings with my one-year-old daughter, and got a residency playing piano at the Grand Hotel in Eastbourne.”

Since then, she has worked in all sorts of bands – both in terms of musical genre and size – and notched up numerous awards, among them two prestigious BBC Jazz Awards in the same year (2005). Although she is constantly adding new strings to her bow, and gaining ever more acclaim, Carroll still has the weekly residency at her local wine bar, Porters, that she has been doing – “when I’m around” – for 26 years, and leads her trio, which features her husband on bass.

Does working with your husband only work because you both have other projects? “I think so! It really does,” laughs Carroll. “We did work together all the time at one point and that got a bit much. We’ve been together 28 and a half years, and we’re just getting there now. It’s always been a work in progress; it’s lovely now.”

In the last decade or so, Carroll has become a regular visitor to Scotland – more in her capacity as a guest teacher than as a star turn, in the popular vocal jazz workshops organised by her friend, the Pathhead-based singer-songwriter Sophie Bancroft.

But this week, it will just be the audience at Wild Cabaret that Carroll has for company. “It’s a nice change to do a solo gig, it’s more spontaneous. Sometimes I chat too much between numbers – it used to be out of nervousness but now it’s just who I am. I know I talk too much, and I know it’s bollocks – but it’s happy bollocks, and it’s true!”

* Liane Carroll performs at Wild Cabaret on Wednesday; details from www.jazzfest.co.uk. Her next Scottish workshop with Sophie Bancroft is the Cromarty Vocal Jazz Workshop, April 1-3 2016. For info, email sbancroft@btinternet.com. Her new album Seaside is out in September.

First published in Scotland on Sunday, June 21

Edinburgh Fringe 2014: Joe Stilgoe – Songs on Film

Joe Stilgoe: Songs on Film, Assembly Checkpoint, until August 22nd *****

Singer-pianist Joe Stilgoe’s Songs on Film show can be summed up in a two-word review: “sheer joy”. Why? Because it lifts the spirits, puts a smile on the face and sends you out with one of your favourite film melodies ringing in your ears. I’d say it would make you forget the frightful weather outside if you should see it during an Edinburgh monsoon, but the opposite is actually true since the first section of the hour-long show celebrates rain on film – whether in one of Stilgoe’s entertaining monologues or musically, with his trio’s lovely, gently swinging take on Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head.

When Stilgoe came to Edinburgh for the first time with his own show, three years ago, it was a solo performance – but even then he had props. Back then, those amounted to a white board with a series of diagrams and pie charts clipped to them. Now, for his Fringe version of the Songs on Film concert which he brought to the Fife Jazz Festival earlier this year, he has all manner of props, from the black umbrellas which are lowered to just above the heads of the (hopefully not superstitious) trio to the Pixar-inspired lamp which appears on the piano for Stilgoe’s touching homage to that studio’s musical output later in the show.

And this is indeed a show rather than a concert. Stilgoe is more than a singer-pianist with a witty repartee; he is a showman and one with terrific, natural, rapport with all age groups in the audience. The stylish props and lighting enhance what would otherwise still be a hugely enjoyable class act. Among the musical highlights are the seldom performed Arthur’s Theme, an exuberant Almost Like Being in Love, a spontaneously composed (if not combusted) medley of themes suggested by the audience, the bittersweet waltz from Up and an unforgettable It Had To Be You, performed sans piano, with harmonies sung by bassist Tom Farmer and drummer Ben Reynolds as the latter plays his brushes on the side of the double bass.

First published in The Scotsman on Friday August 15th

Jazz @ the Edinburgh Fringe 2014

Here’s my pick of five jazz gigs to catch during this year’s Fringe…

* Colin Steele & Brian Kellock: My Fair Lady, The Jazz Bar, August 9th & 23rd. The wonderful songs written by Lerner & Loewe for the 1956 Broadway musical version of Pygmalion have long been favourites of discriminating jazz musicians – especially trumpeters, from Chet Baker to Ruby Braff. Now, for the first time, it’s the turn of the lyrical Colin Steele and his dynamic pianistic partner in crime, Brian Kellock, to serve up their take on such loverly melodies as The Street Where You Live, Show Me and I Could Have Danced All Night. With a little bit of luck, they’ll invite the audience to shout out the key line on The Ascot Gavotte. ..

* Remembering Chet, The Jazz Bar, August 16th & 18th. Scottish vocalist Iain Ewing’s must-see homage to the great Chet Baker was a winner at the Edinburgh Jazz Festival and last year’s Fringe … Accompanied by the Baker-inspired trumpet of Colin Steele and  Euan Stevenson’s classy piano, he sings and swings with a Chet-like simplicity and elegance, while putting his own stamp on a string of classic Baker songs. No need to bring the hankies in readiness for Baker’s tragic life story; Ewing’s patter is witty as well as informative. A funny – and stylish – valentine.

* Joe Stilgoe – Songs on Film, Assembly Checkpoint, August 4th-22nd. Mr Stilgoe’s love of film shone through on his fab solo show a couple of years ago, when he seduced the Fringe audience with a bittersweet ballad inspired by the masterful, bittersweet Billy Wilder movie The Apartment – (That’s The Way It Crumbles) Cookie-Wise. Now he’s back with a trio gig entirely themed around songs from the movies, including (if the CD of his London Jazz Festival Songs on Film concert is anything to go by) a mixture of more of his original tunes as well as favourites from his formative years in film buffery.

* The Cabinet of Caligari, The Jazz Bar,  August 13th-15th; 18th & 19th. And speaking of film, if you like your silent movies to be screened with atmospheric original music, check out the screenings of the Expressionist classic The Cabinet of Doctor Caligari (1920) which will be accompanied by a performance by guitarist Graeme Stephen of his new, specially written score.

* Jazz Rite of Spring, The Jazz Bar, August 20th-24th. Pianist David Patrick’s reimagining of Stravinsky’s groundbreaking and riot-inducing masterpiece has been critically acclaimed; my Herald colleague Rob Adams describing it as “highly credible and genuinely exciting”. I haven’t heard it yet but am intrigued by the “12” certificate. Maybe they’re expecting Paris-style trouble; let’s hope The Jazz Bar has the riot police on speed dial..

CD Recommendations: September 2012

Scott Hamilton & Harry Allen: Round Midnight (Challenge Records) 

This reunion of two great US tenor saxophonists is very much a meeting of minds. Harry Allen was strongly influenced by the playing of Scott Hamilton as he grew up, but rather than coming across as an imitator, what’s clear here is that his unique, immediately identifiable sound – wispy, yet rough around the edges – complements Hamilton’s full-bodied, rich tone. They lead a super-swinging trio featuring ace pianist Rossano Sportiello through nine tracks which, surprisingly for them, includes only one ballad.

Daryl Sherman: Mississippi Belle (Arbors Records)

As Edinburgh Jazz Festival-goers discovered lastmonth, the American singer-pianist Daryl Sherman is a terrific entertainer whose frothy, coquettish vocals and swinging jazz piano make her a class act. On this CD Sherman celebrates the lesser-sung Cole Porter – a composer with whom she has a special affinity, since for years she played his piano in the Waldorf Astoria. Some of the songs here are a little too cabaret for jazz tastes but there’s still much for devotees of elegant mainstream jazz.

Joe Stilgoe: We Look to the Stars (Absolute) 

This is the second album from the singer/songwriter/pianist and raconteur who delighted Fringe audiences with his one-man show last year – and it’s a winner, though one which veers more towards pop than his last CD. The voice is very Buble-like, but the wittily-worded songs and catchy melodies are distinctly Stilgoe, with the poignant, Billy Wilder-inspired, (That’s The Way It Crumbles) Cookie-Wise and the jubilant I Like This One and Let’s Begin highlights alongside a gorgeous take on Waterloo Sunset.

Stan Getz Quartet: Swiss Radio Days Jazz Series Volume 29 (TCB) Recorded in Zurich in 1960 by the Swiss Broadcasting Corporation, this superb, swinging, six-track set by Stan Getz finds the tenor man at the peak of his pre-bossa nova powers. At the time of this concert, which was part of a Jazz at the Philharmonic tour, Getz was living in Copehnhagen and had brought a Danish rhythm section with him. But en route to Zurich he fell out with his bassist and drummer so Ray Brown and Ed Thigpen were co-opted in from Oscar Peterson’s trio to join pianist Jan Johansson. The results are simply sublime.

Sophie Milman: In the Moonlight (eOne Music) 

Milman is a Russian-born, Israeli-raised and Toronto-based singer with a rich, luscious voice who sounds as if she has been around much longer than her twentysomething years, and who has a particular love of great lyrics. On this, her fourth album, she sings 14 love songs which were selected especially for the greatness of their lyrics. Several of these are given the full romantic treatment, with strings arranged by the great Alan Broadbent.