Thu, Mar 7th - 7:18AM

Beachcombings from the Halling Valley Riverbank 2

Wed, Mar 6th - 2:36PM

Beachcombings from the Halling Valley Riverbank 1

Some Sun Drunk Day He Said

Emotions war against sense

And his mind remains

A pot pourri,

And thoughts in his head

When he lies in his bed

Would make Dorian Gray

Appear pristine.

He wishes to moralize

On a corrupt example

Yet from the wicked cup

He hath supped a sample.

He appears to think in extremes;

He is beau-laid and realist

Whose inspiration stems from his dreams.

"Life is a beautiful strain for me,"

One sun-drunk day he said,

"But I pray I say what my soul needs to

Before the heavens decide me dead."

But his mind is a disorderly drawer

Full of confused categorizations;

He has that Scott Fitzgerald illness

For dates, times, rhymes and quotations.

"I have a clear flowing mind

But I cannot foretell

When the clogging black clouds will arrive,

For they will arrive.

Live with the love, then bear the pain

Recurrent like the monsoon rain."

He is afraid of happiness

For the inevitable despair that must follow it;

Afraid of happiness

For its cruel impermanence.

Like Zola, the seasons in life, for him

Are inevitable.

"All artists," he says, "are at once alike and unique

One day, it's clear,

The next, hazy, like a beery vision

The fulfilment that they seek."

Misty dreams of sweet-smelling roses

And swaying streams

Bring him chills and pains in his soul and being;

He lives his life through a melancholy tragedy

And has an ever-yearning mind.

Bouzingo: The Gathering of the Poets

The boy was aged about eighteen,

Pale and pensive,

Weary and frail in appearance.

He could have been

Goethe's Werther,

Senancour's Obermann

Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero,

Embraced by a generation,

And about whom Sainte-Beuve said:

"René, c'est moi."

Tortured by a new mal du siècle,

He sought refuge

In the Club Bouzingo.

Two young poets,

One dark, the other fair,

Drifted past. The first,

Whose black hair

Hung in ringlets over his shoulders,

Wore a small pointed beard,

Black velvet tails,

A white linen shirt

Loosely fastened at the neck

By a thin pink taffeta tie;

The second wore a tight coat

That opened onto a silk crimson waistcoat

And a lace jabot, white trousers

With blue seams,

And a wide-brimmed black hat, and

In one of his hands

He carried a long thin pink-coloured pipe.

They were soon joined

By some of their dandified companions.

The music had stopped playing, and

The poet-leader in cape and gloves,

Dark and pomaded

With a Théophile Gautier moustache,

Took to the stage,

Where he proceeded to declaim

Selections from his subversive verses

To delirious cheers,

As if sedition was imminent;

Only the boy-poet remained silent,

His pale cheeks

Soaked by the freshest tears.

"Après nous, le déluge,"

He said under his breath,

"Our leader preaches revolution

But provides no solution

As to the fate of coming generations,

Should the infant be cast out

With the bath water that is so filthy

In his sight

That, intent on doing right,

Gives no thought to the future,

Nor to what might supplant

The society he claims to despise."

The boy was aged about eighteen

Pale and pensive

Weary and frail in appearance.

He could have been

Goethe's Werther,

Senancour's Obermann

Or Chateaubriand's melancholy hero,

Embraced by a generation,

And about whom Sainte-Beuve said:

"René, c'est moi."

Tortured by a new mal du siècle,

He sought refuge

From the Club Bouzingo.

Gallant Festivities

It was my evening, that's

For sure -

"Its your aura"

For sure -

At last I'm good

At something.

"Spot the Equity card!"

"When are you going

To be a superstar?"

Said Sarah.

That seemed to be

The question

On everyone's lips.

At last, at last, at last

I'm good at something.

And so the party...Zoe

called me...I listened

To her problems;

References

To my "innocent face"

Linda said:

"Sally seems elusive

But is in fact,

Accessible;

You're the opposite -

You give to everyone

But are incapable

Of giving in particular.

Madeleine was comparing me

To June Miller;

Descriptions by Nin:

"She does not dare

To be herself..."

Everything I'd always

Wanted to be, I now am.

"...She lives

On the reflections

Of herself in the eyes

Of others...

There is no June

To grasp and know."

I kept getting up to dance

Sally said: "I'm afraid;

You're inscrutable;

You're not just

Blasé

Are you?"

I spoke

Of the spells of calm,

And the hysterical

Reactions,

Psychic Exhaustion,

Then anxious elation.

The Wanderer of Golders Green

I awake each morning

With fresh hope

And tranquility;

I might go for a saunter

Down quiet London backstreets...

Soon my aimlessness

Depresses me,

And I realise

I'd been deceiving myself

As to my ability

To relax as others do.

I decided on a Special B

Before the eve.

I bought a lager

At the Bar

And chatted to Gaye.

Then Ray

Bought me another.

I appreciated the fact

That he remembered

The time he,

His gal Chris,

And Cary Downed

An entire Bottle

Of Jack Daniels

In a Paris-bound train.

A tanned cat

Bought me a (large) half,

Then another half.

My fatal eyes

Are my downfall.

I drank yet another half...

My head was spinning

When it hit the pillow;

I awoke

With a terrible headache

Around one o'clock.

I prayed it would depart.

I slowly got dressed.

I was as chatty as ever

Before the exam...

French/English translation.

Periodically I put my face

In my hands or groaned

Or sighed -

My stomach

was burning me inside.

I finished my paper

In 1 hour and a half.

As I walked out

I caught various eyes

Amanda's, Jade's (quizzical) etc.

I went to bed;

Slept 'till five;

Read O'Neill until 7ish...

Got dressed,

And strolled down

To Golders Green,

In order to relive

A few memories.

I sang to myself -

A few memories

Flashed into my mind,

But not as many

as I'd have liked -

It wasn't the same.

It wasn't the same.

Singing songs brought

Voluptuous tears.

I snuck into McDonald's

Where I felt at home,

Anonymous, alone.

I bought a few things,

Toothpaste and pick,

Chocolate, yoghurts,

Sweets, cigarettes

And

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Wed, Mar 6th - 4:20AM

A Halling Is a Halling Wherever He Is

Incidents from an Infamous Year Zero

As the '70s proceeded apace, both Prog and Glam receded in terms of influence, although they'd experience periodic rebirths. Glam, for example, would be revived in the '80s through American Glam Metal, and the British Goth and New Romantic movements; and still exists to this day. However, given the extent to which the West has become inured to outrage, its power to shock has been reduced to zero.
By '77, it had been supplanted by Punk, a movement which, if it were at all possible, was even more scandalous.
While some years earlier, Soul, a melodic fusion of Gospel and R&B which had made a massive impact on the Pop charts, birthed a mutation known as Disco, one of whose major hallmarks was the liberal and highly distinctive use of strings.
Thence, Pat was involved in several major projects at the height of the Disco era, including the international hit album, Symphony of Love (1978) by Miquel Brown, which was produced by British composer Alan Hawkshaw. And another Hawkshaw production, Again and Again by Love De-Luxe, from the following year.
Pat also worked with Alec R Costandinos' Love and Kisses project, which produced three albums between 1977 and '79 which were massively successful at the time, yielding several US hit singles, and helping to define the Disco sound.
And both Pat and Costandinos had worked with another French Disco pioneer, Jean-Marc Cerrone, on the 1976 hit album, Love in C Minor, concocted at a time when Disco had yet to truly enter the mainstream.
While Pat played on several other Costandinos records, including an acknowledged Disco masterpiece, Romeo and Juliet (1978), which has to be lauded for its subject matter. For while Soul in the seventies was as extensive as Rock; and every inch as sublime at its most artistic, Disco had a greater tendency to fixate on the pleasures of the flesh. And so was the ultimate music of the mid 1970s, at a time the values of the permissive society were seeping into the mainstream. Yet at the same time, there were many exceptions, and Disco could be no less artistically exalted than Soul.
He also appeared on Costandinos' own Sphinx and Winds of Change, from '77 and '79 respectively, Look Out and Ordinary Man (1979) for Bad News Travels Fast, and a Costandinos produced album for Tina Turner entitled Love Explosion, also from '79. As well as, from the year before, Melaphonia's Limelight Disco Symphony, produced by Franck Pourcel and Alain Boublil as a Disco tribute to Sir Charles Chaplin, who'd died the previous Christmas Day.
Boublil went on to write the libretto for the smash-hit musical, Les Misérables, with composer Claude-Michel Schoenberg; while John Cameron provided the original orchestration.
And Pat was involved with the London production of Les Miz for many years as the leader of the orchestra, one of several highlights of a concert career which has seen him work with Pop legends as diverse as Ella Fitzgerald, Perry Como, Tony Bennett, Tiny Tim, Barry Manilow and Boy George of Culture Club; and tour with Tom Jones and Barrie White.
But as a personal fan of the Old Groaner's, it's his participation in Bing Crosby's final tour that is perhaps the dearest to his heart.
In September '77, Bing, his family, and close friend Rosemary Clooney began a concert tour of England that included two weeks at the London Palladium. He recorded an album, Seasons, and a TV Christmas special with David Bowie and Twiggy, which featured a famous duet with Bowie.
And Pat actually managed to wangle an autograph from Der Bingel during what may have been a final recording session at Maida Vale studios. But the great man had initially objected to Pat helping himself to a piece of his sheet music, before relenting with the words, "He seems like a good man," and signing the music into the bargain.
His final concert took place at the Brighton Centre on the 12th of October 1977. For two days afterwards, following a round of 18 holes of golf on a course near Madrid, he died from a massive heart attack. And his passing came at the end of a year that had claimed a string of cultural giants including Joan Crawford, Elvis Presley, Groucho Marx, Maria Callas, Marc Bolan, and Charlie Chaplin.
And amidst all this tragedy, Punk's inexorable ascent to international notoriety showed no signs of abating. Yet while the London variant thrived, New York failed to capitalise on its initial promise as Punk's true spiritual capital.
For lest we forget...Punk's origins lie in the US among the so-called Garage bands of the 1960s. And their attempts to emulate the rougher acts of the British Invasion, themselves heavily indebted to American Rhythm and Blues. But it was the distinct New York variant of the early '70s that exerted the greatest sway on British Punk, and largely through the influence of a young entrepreneur by the name of Malcolm McLaren.
McLaren was born in London as the son of a Scottish father and Jewish mother, and raised by his grandmother, the daughter of a Sephardic-Jewish diamond merchant.
As an art student in the late 1960s, he was drawn to the subversive ideas of the Paris Situationists, believed to have played a part in fomenting the '68 riots, and were themselves offshoots of the post-war Lettrists.
Formed by the charismatic Isidore Isou in the late 1940s, the Lettrists were very much precursors of the Punks, and one of their number, Jean-Michel Mension sported a pair of trousers scrawled with slogans as early as 1953, as seen in a famous photograph by Ed van der Elsken.
In 1971, he and his then girlfriend, Vivienne Westwood, opened Let it Rock, an outlet specialising in '50s style Teddy Boy clothing designed by himself and Vivienne, at 430 Kings Road, Chelsea. It exists today - as Worlds End - as part of Dame Vivienne's global fashion empire.
Four years later, he became the manager of the disintegrating New York Dolls, who'd created a sensation in the UK at the height of Glam with a combination of androgynous image and uncompromisingly raw proto-Punk music.
He designed some red leather outfits for them in tandem with a new pseudo-Communist image, but it was too late to save them, and they folded soon afterwards. But while in New York, he came across a former Sandford Preparatory student from Lexington, Kentucky, by the name of Richard Hell.
He'd taken his name from a famous prose poem by Arthur Rimbaud, and was at various times a member of several key New York Punk Rock outfits. And McLaren was especially impressed by his unique image of torn tee-shirt and spiky unkempt hair, allegedly inspired by the famous tousle-haired photograph of Rimbaud by Etienne Carjat, and so before long he'd decided to take it back home to London and promote an anglicised version.
Some time afterwards, he afforded his Kings Road boutique the provocative new name of Sex, and set himself up as the manager of a group formed by three denizens of the Hammersmith area of West London, allegedly at the urging of their guitarist, Warwick "Wally" Nightingale. And there is some evidence they were called the Strand, after a song on the second Roxy Music album, For Your Pleasure.
And with Johnny Rotten, a young London Irishman born John Lydon in 1956, on board as front man, the band was renamed the Sex Pistols, and so began the most infamous Punk odyssey of them all.
However, no sooner had Punk taken off, than it was supplemented in the UK with those very elements it was reacting against; as a generation of brilliant acts and artists, such as the Police, Elvis Costello and Joe Jackson, fused the attitude of Punk with the sophistication of Art Rock.
While this New Wave threatened to supplant Punk at its crudest, other genres competed with it for the hearts and souls of the British young. Such as Reggae, which was favoured by many Punks, and Electronica, which had been pioneered all throughout the '70s mainly by so-called Kraut Rock acts such as Can, Kraftwerk and Tangerine Dream. And which became highly fashionable in the London of the late 1970s, ultimately birthing the New Romantics.
And Disco was at the height of its popularity, not just in the UK but the US, although I can't remember even being aware of the term. One thing is certain, though, is that I was as much a lover of Soul as Punk circa '77; and for much of that year, dressed more like a Soul Boy than a Punk, although I would not be apprised of the existence of such a phenomenon until relatively late in the year. Soul Boys and Girls being largely young working class men and women who in the late 1970s, dressed in a flamboyant style somewhat reminiscent of Punk (at least how I saw it), while favouring, as their name suggests, the melodic and rhythmic beauties of Soul.
In fact, it was only in its final few months I started affecting the more flagrant trappings of Punk; such as spiked and dyed hair and drainpipe jeans.
So for me, '78 was my own personal Punk Year Zero; and it was in that year, at the very height of Disco, that Central Heating by Heatwave, a rare classic of British Soul, was released.
Produced by former teen idol Barry Blue, and with arrangements by John Cameron, with Pat Halling serving as his concertmaster, it was a massive hit on both sides of the Atlantic, ascending to number 10 on the Billboard 200. And yielding two hit singles in the shape of The Groove Line by Englishman Rod Temperton, and Mind Blowing Decisions by American lead vocalist Johnny Wilder Jr.
Temperton went on to write for the best-selling album in musical history, which is Michael Jackson's Thriller, produced by Quincy Jones in 1982.
He also wrote for Quincy on his own hit album The Dude, with singer Patti Austin sounding remarkably like Jackson; as well as for Patti herself. While George Benson's Love X Love was blessed with the same kind of stardust that helped turn Michael Jackson into the most famous Rock star on the planet.
Then towards the end of the '70s, Pat played what was possibly his most memorable ever solo for a television program. And this was for the stunning opening and closing theme to the BBC's Life on Earth natural history series, composed by Edward Williams, and conducted by Marcus Dods.
As a solo it was so breathtakingly beautiful that Pat was compared by one devotee of the violin to Jascha Heifetz, whom many believe to have been the greatest violinist of them all. Quite an honour for the boy from the Tamar Valley.

From New Pop to Rap in the Crazy 1980s

The '80s was a potentially tough decade for session musicians such as Pat Halling as the synthesizer started threatening the world of recorded music as never before. And one of the fruits of this putsch was the so-called New Pop that arose in the wake of Punk.
And New Pop could be said to be a more purely commercial variant of the aforesaid New Wave; itself an offshoot of Punk. Although the term was only ever used in the UK, while the US continued to favour that of New Wave to describe the explosion of British synth-driven bands that invaded the Pop charts on both sides of the Atlantic throughout the '80s.
For several New Pop acts took part in the so-called Second British Invasion, which saw British bands dominating the American Pop charts to a degree unknown since the hey day of the Beatles. And this was largely due to a demand on the part of the newly launched MTV music channel for glamorous videos which enabled British acts such as Culture Club, Duran Duran and Eurythmics to score massive transatlantic hits.
But for many, this resurgence of Pop was a negative development, despite the musicality of many of its proponents, so that it fused the commercialism of Pop with the virtuosity of Rock. And it could certainly be said that such phenomena as Glam, Punk and Goth witnessed a certain taming throughout the '80s; so that by the end of the decade, they had been shorn of their ability to shock.
But for all the ballyhoo created by the rise of Electronica, Pat Halling's career was barely affected. And in 1980, he worked again for his old friend John Cameron...this time on the movie The Mirror Crack'd, based on the Agatha Christie novel, with music by JC, and featuring a roll call of Hollywood legends. Pat even had a small non-speaking cameo in the movie as a World War II bandleader.
And in that same year, he led the orchestra for Man of the World by Greek superstar Demis Roussos, which, while produced by David Mackay, featured another close friend, Barrie Guard, as conductor.
He also found time to lead for the distinguished composer Wilfrid Joseph's theme to the 1980 BBC TV series of Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice. While a year later, he appeared on Pas Facile by French Rock and Roll legend Johnny Hallyday.
In 1982, he was back with John Cameron for a further star-studded Agatha Christie movie, Evil Under the Sun, helmed, as in the case for Crack'd by Bond director Guy Hamilton, and produced by Lord Brabourne and Richard Goodwin, who became a close friend.
For Richard's wife, Christine Edzard, he served as the soloist for "Biddy" in 1983...working again with Christine, with Richard producing, on Dickens' Little Dorrit in '88, and two years later on The Fool, written by Christine with Oliver Stockman. While all three movies were scored by Michel Sanvoisin.
For Paul McCartney, possibly the most lauded Rock and Roll musician in history, he led the orchestra for the soundtrack to the '84 movie, Give My Regards to Broad Street. And while it sold well, the film itself performed poorly at the Box Office; although it benefits from a good deal of affection from contemporary McCartney fans.
A year later, he was concertmaster for his old colleague David Essex on the album version of the musical Mutiny, based on Mutiny on the Bounty by Nordhoff and Hall. And also in '85, played on three tracks from Jazz musician Barbara Thompson's album Heavenly Bodies.
And then a year after that, he contributed to To Go Beyond II, final track from the hugely successful Enya album by Irish superstar Enya Brennan. As well as If for Hollywood Beyond, featuring singer-songwriter Mark Rogers. And tenor saxophonist Spike Robinson's Gershwin Collection.
In 1988, he and Richard Studt served as orchestra leaders on Elaine Page's The Queen Album, produced by Mike Moran, while in '89, he worked with yet another Rock legend, Pete Townshend, serving as leader on his concept album, The Iron Man - The Musical, based on the novel by Ted Hughes.
Interestingly, Pete's father Jazz saxophonist Cliff Townshend had been a colleague of Pat's during their time together on the famous BBC television chat show, Parkinson, named after host Michael Parkinson.
Then in 1990, he appeared on John Williams' album, The Guitar is the Song, having earlier worked with the great Classical guitarist on John Williams plays Patrick Gowers and Scarlatti (1972), and Portrait of John Williams (1982).
But briefly returning to film and TV, television projects on which Pat worked throughout the '80s include Hold that Dream (1986), based on the novel by Barbara Taylor Bradford, with original score by longtime friend Barrie Guard, Tears in the Rain (1988), from a novel by Pamela Wallace, with music again by Guard, and The Darling Buds of May (1992-1993), based on the novel by H.E. Bates, and with music by Pip Burley and Guard.
His recording career in the '90s included work for acts and artists as varied as British Indie band Cud, and French singer, Dany Brillant (Nouveau Jour from 1999).
And on a larger scale, the '90s witnessed the fading of such once provocative cults of Glam, Punk and Goth to make way for the far starker cult of Grunge, as well as the facelessness of Electronic Dance. But the greatest success story of the decade was Rap, which many would contend is not a Rock music genre at all, but an entirely different form of music, as distinct from Rock as Rock once was from Jazz.
While others would insist all offshoots of Rock's first forefathers that have in some way benefited from the Rock revolution are perforce forms of Rock and Roll. And by forefathers I'm referring primarily to Rhythm and Blues and Country and Western. And I'm inclined to side with this view.

A Halling Is a Halling Wherever He Is

Moving into the Noughties...and Tiny Tim's 1968 concert at the Albert Hall finally secured a CD release in 2000 through Rhino Handmade Records as Tiny Tim Live! At the Royal Albert Hall. And conducted by Carpenters producer Richard Perry, and with Pat among the first violins led by Tony Gilbert, it was revealed as a neglected masterpiece that had remained unreleased for nearly two decades. Yet within two years of its recording, Tim's legendary appearance at the Isle of Wight Festival would secure a standing ovation from the assembled hippies, with the Beatles and the Stones among them.
And between 2000 and 2002, Pat played violin for a band formed by his good friend Barrie Guard, and featuring myself on vocals; and together with bass player John Sutton, we recorded a series of demos at Barrie's home studio in Esher, and even went so far as to record a pilot radio show. We gigged sporadically for about a year and a half to limited response, until a final concert at the 2002 Shelton Arts Festival brought us - as I see it - into contact with the kind of intimate cultured audience we should have been aiming for all along...and we all but brought the house down. But dispersed soon afterwards after barely eighteen months together.
On a brighter note, there's a fascinating tale attached to singer-songwriter John Dawson Read for whom Pat served as leader on his two classic albums from the '70s, namely A Friend of Mine is Going Blind from '75, and Read On from a year later.
Sometime around 2005, fellow singer-songwriter Michael Johnson included an MP3 of Read singing the title track of his first album, A Friend of Mine on his website, and many Read fans began communicating through the site as a result.
His subsequent re-entry into the music world after nearly thirty years of relative inactivity, resulted in a third album, Now where were we? being released that same year, and a fourth, One Life, in 2012.
Until quite recently, Pat served as leader for the longest running comedy series in television history, Roy Clarke's Last of the Summer Wine. And working alongside Pat was harmonica maestro Jim Hughes, whose playing it was that made Ronnie Hazelhurst's gently pastoral theme tune so distinctive.
From about 2005, Pat began work on an album of popular song standards featuring Jim on harmonica, myself on vocals, Judd Procter on guitar, Dave Richmond and John Sutton on bass, and John Dean and Sebastian Guard on drums.
The album was produced by Pat and arranged by John Smith. And largely engineered by sound recordist Tony Philpot, with contributions by Keith Grant of West London's legendary Olympic Studios. To be finally released in 2007 as A Taste of Summer Wine by James Hughes Carl Halling with the London Swingtette.
Pat's most recent projects as of early 2013 have included the 2007 world premiere of A Poet's Calendar by long-time friend Derek Wadsworth, with whom Pat first worked in the '70s, such as on Alan Price's Metropolitan Man from '75. As well as performances of Quartets 1 and 2 by legendary drummer, composer, arranger and band leader, Tony Kinsey. And a string of concerts, the first of these taking place at Central London's Cadogan Hall in the spring of 2010, and featuring works by Haydn, Debussy and Purcell. To say nothing of the world premiere of John Cameron's Tara's Brooch,which features on a CD of theirs released towards the end of that year. All with the revived Quartet Pro Musica.
Then in early 2012, the quartet - whose current members are, apart from Pat, Keith Lewis (violin), Richard Cookson (viola) and Myrtle Bruce-Mitford (cello) - worked with harmonica genius Philip Achille in bringing a beautiful new work by Tony Kinsey, Quintet for String Quartet and Orchestra, to glorious life.
Away from his music, Pat continues to be a fervid dinghy sailor during the season at his local club of Aquarius SC.
Also, for several years he's attended functions organised by PPL, formerly known as Phonographic Performance Limited, a music licensing company which collects and distributes airplay and performance royalties on behalf of record companies and performers throughout the UK.
At one of these, the Fair Play 95, which took place on behalf of the Fair Play for Musicians campaign at the Stanhope Hotel in Brussels in April 2009, he played a medley of Tony Hatch's Downtown and the Beatles' All You Need is Love, before inviting flamenco guitarist Manuel Espinosa on to the stage for a short duet.
There seems to be no end to the man's almost preternatural energy and force of will. And although there's no hard and fast evidence that Pat has Scandinavian blood, research related to the Norwegians who emigrated to the American Midwest from about the mid-19th Century onwards reveals that one of the purported characteristics of the Hallings of the Halling Valley in Norway's Buskerud County is firmness "in thoughts and beliefs"; so that he would "rather break than bend." This in the words of the Norwegian-American writer, Syver Swenson Rodning, who allegedly took first prize in an essay set by a man called Hallingen in 1917 called A Halling is a Halling wherever he is, the Hallings themselves settling primarily in Spring Grove, Minnesota, where traces of their dialect and subculture survived into the 1930s.
Perhaps then, alone among the three children born to Phyllis Mary Halling, Patrick is a true Halling with roots deep in the Hallingdal where the Halling Valley River lies.
And what of the music that has dominated his days and nights for so many decades? The truth is it has never been more accessible thanks to the miracle of sites such as Spotify and You Tube. Sites where one might access a degree of music inconceivable to those of my generation, who as late as the late 1990s could only ever hear as much music as they were able to afford via the medium of the long playing record, Compact Disc or Musicassette.
And of Rock...surely the most revolutionary music form in history, it could be said it has been tamed at long last. And quietly taken its place alongside Classical, Jazz and Folk as just another facet of the massive music industry. But then is that not its final victory?

Tue, Mar 5th - 6:59AM

Rock and Roll and the Western Soul

The Burgeoning Generation of Love

The highpoint of Patrick Halling's early Pop career was undoubtedly his leadership of the string section for the Beatles' All You Need Is Love, transmitted live at the height of the so-called Summer of Love on July 25th 1967.
The programme, entitled Our World, was the first satellite broadcast in history, and it secured an audience of 350 million, which was unprecedented at that time. And among those taking part were such legendary figures of the swinging sixties as Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Brian Jones, Eric Clapton, Keith Moon, Marianne Faithful and Donovan.
But this was not Pat's first involvement with the burgeoning Underground or Progressive Rock movement. For the previous year of '66, he'd taken part in the recording of Donovan's Museum, destined to see the light of day on the Mellow Yellow album, which reached the number 14 position on the Billboard Hot 100. Although it failed to secure a UK release due to contractual complications.
Also involved with the Mellow Yellow sessions were close friends Mickie Most, who produced; and John Cameron, who did most of the arrangements. As well as session guitarist Big Jim Sullivan, and future Led Zeppelin members, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones.
A year later, he worked on a project that was as much a concept album as any of the Beatles' records of the same period, Ken Moule's superb Adam's Rib Suite, which fused elements of Jazz, Pop and Classical music to recount the history of womankind from Eve to Cleo Laine.
Needless to say, though, it was infinitely less successful than any comparable record within the Rock genre, Rock being at the vanguard of popular culture in a way that Jazz had once been, but no longer was. However, by the turn of the decade, a reconciliation between the two alienated factions was well under way, with Jazz-Fusion coming from one camp and the more populist Jazz-Rock from the other.
In '75, Pat served as leader for Mike Gibbs' The Only Chrome Waterfall Orchestra, an unsung early example of British Jazz fusion, which was finally released on CD in 1997. Adam's Rib followed it on CD exactly ten years later.
By the time of his involvement with Adam's Rib, Pat had already moved into the worlds of film and television. And his early career included solos for the 1960 movie, Exodus, produced and directed by Otto Preminger, with music by Ernest Gold, as well as for much treasured British sitcom, Steptoe and Son (1969-'74), whose incidental music was composed by his close friend Ron Grainer.
He also served as concertmaster for the great Johnny Green on Carol Reed's version of Lionel Bart's Oliver in 1968, and for John Williams on three movies beginning with the musical version of James Hilton's Goodbye Mr Chips.
And going on to include Jane Eyre (1970), directed by Delbert Mann, and Fiddler on the Roof (1971), by Norman Jewison.
Directed by Herbert Ross in 1969, Chips featured a screenplay by no less a luminary of British literature than Terence Rattigan. And as he was the author of such quintessentially English tragedies as The Browning Version and The Winslow Boy, both centring on the English private school system, he was the perfect choice.
Sadly, though, for all its virtues, including a lovely score by Leslie Bricusse, it was not a critical success, although it was nominated for several major awards, and has gone on to enjoy something of a following on the internet.
Also in '69, he worked on David Lean's Ryan's Daughter, a visually beautiful epic set in rural Ireland during the First World War, which was another film that has grown in stature since its initial release. Written by playwright and screenwriter Robert Bolt, with music by Maurice Jarre, it was poorly received by the critics (while being a modest box office success), although today, its considered by many to be among Lean's finest works.
In addition to Williams, Green and Jarre, he's served as concertmaster for a panoply of major 20th Century musical figures working within the media of film and television, including Dimitri Tiomkin, Nelson Riddle, Georges Delerue, Wilfred Josephs and Christopher Gunning.
But to return the world of Pop, which mutated into Rock, possibly some time towards the end of the late 1960s, while retaining a Pop subsidiary; and became known as such to many of its devotees, presumably as a means of investing it with some respectability as an art form:
As the '60s ceded to the '70s, Pat's close friend Mickie Most was poised to enter the second phase of his glittering Pop career, having been briefly involved with the nascent Rock movement through his management of the Jeff Beck Group. And yet, even at that, he'd sought to turn guitar virtuoso Beck into a major Pop star...while apparently remaining impervious to the star quality of his one-time front man, Rod Stewart.
And it fell to business partner Peter Grant to prosper within Rock music, first as co-manager of the Yardbirds with Most; then as sole manager of Led Zeppelin, who went on to become the ultimate Rock band; and second only to the Rolling Stones in terms of legendary darkness and mystery.
And by the time of the Zeppelin's conquest of America, the face of Western society had been altered almost beyond recognition by the Rock and Roll revolution. Yet, in all good conscience, responsibility for this transformation can't be laid exclusively at the feet of Rock. For, after all, tendencies hostile to the Judeo-Christian fabric of the West can be traced at least as far back as the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th Centuries.
Much of the groundwork had already been done in other words, and that's especially true of the forties and fifties.
It was in these two immediate post-war decades that the Existentialists and the Beats became international icons of revolt, while lesser groups such as the Lettrists of Paris served as scandal-sowing forerunners of the Situationists, believed to have played a major role in fomenting the Paris riots of May '68.
At the same time, Britain's first major youth cult surfaced in the shape of the Teddy Boys, and a cinema of youthful discontent flourished as never before.
Movies such as Stanley Kramer's The Wild One and Nicholas Ray's Rebel Without a Cause fostered a desire among millions of young Americans to be identified as rebels themselves, reacting against the widespread conformity of Eisenhower era America.
For all that, though, none of these phenomena enjoyed a tithe of the influence of Rock in terms of its effect on the Western soul.

Glam and the Gender Revolution

My Pangbourne years coincided with the rise of Rock, which was Pop transmuted into an art form, while somehow including Pop as its less intellectual counterpart. And the music we listened to as self-styled lads had "lad value"; and we called it Underground for its shadowy exclusivity, while at some point it became known as Progressive.
But as I recall...it included both Hard Rock and Soft Rock, and the sophisticated Art Rock of acts and artists as diverse as the Beatles, Frank Zappa and the Doors. And for me, there was no real difference between the experimental Hard Rock of Deep Purple, and the out and out Prog of Yes or Emerson, Lake and Palmer.
For Rock was split into two categories...Underground and Commercial...a term we tended to spit out like some kind of curse, as this was pure Pop, whose domain was the despised hit parade featured weekly on the long-running British TV programme, Top of the Pops.
The Underground, on the other hand, was composed of acts and artists who made music largely for the growing album market. And there were those among them, such as Led Zeppelin, who never graced the singles chart despite earning fortunes through concerts and album sales. And from about '69, the Zep constituted one of my prime facilitators into the turbid depths of the Underground.
But by the time I quit Pangbourne in 1972, a new Rock revolution was underway in the shape of a heterogeneous mix of Rock and Pop allied to an outrageous androgynous image...and known as Glam.
Glam had begun to infiltrate the British charts as early as '71, while making little impact on the US, despite the fact that many of its pioneers were American. While its true roots were to be found in the Blues and early Rock and Roll, more of which later.
But it had been carried into the mainstream by one Marc Bolan, born Mark Feld in 1947 into a Jewish family of working class origins, who had been featured in 1962 in a magazine called Town, as one of the Faces, or leading Mods of Stamford Hill in East London. Although by then he'd moved with his family to a council house in Summerstown in West London.
He went on to achieve major success as one half of the acoustic duo, Tyrannosaurus Rex; the other being multi-instrumentalist Steve Peregrin Took who, like Bolan, was a leading figure of London's Hippie Underground centred on Ladbroke Grove.
But In 1970, Took was replaced by percussionist Mickey Finn, who shared Bolan's love of old-time Rock and Roll. And as T. Rex, they had their first top 5 hit in the shape of Ride a White Swan.
And by the time of their first number one the following year, T. Rex were a four-piece band, with Bolan the biggest British teen sensation since the Beatles. While the Bolan phenomenon was dubbed T Rextasy by the British press...and all throughout the land, bedroom walls were adorned with Bolan's fascinating elfin face.
However, for the true roots of Glam one must return to the very earliest days of Rock and Roll. And specifically to a certain Rhythm and Blues shouter by the name of Little Richard.
As a boy, Richard had attended the New Hope Baptist Church in his native Macon, Georgia, and sung Gospel songs with his family as The Penniman Singers. And aged just 13, he joined Gospel legend Sister Rosetta Tharp onstage in Macon after she heard him singing before the concert. And he had serious ambitions of becoming a full-time minister of the Gospel, while demonstrating extraordinary gifts as a boy preacher.
By 1951, however, the world had begun to beckon, and he won a talent contest in Atlanta that led to a recording contract with RCA Victor, but the four records he subsequently released all flopped. While around about the same time, he came under the sway of an outrageous Rhythm and Blues musician by the name of Esquerita, who shaped his unique piano style.
Esquerita is also believed to have influenced his increasingly flamboyant image, although self-styled King of the Blues Billy Wright, who piled his pomaded hair high on his head and wore eye liner and face powder, was also an influence in this respect.
Real success came for Richard in 1955 with Tutti Frutti, which has been cited as the true starting point for the Rock and Roll revolution; but within two years, he'd quit the business and returned to his faith. And as a Christian myself, I can only hope that for all his struggles, the good Reverend Penniman is a saved Christian man, and there is a good deal of evidence he is. For few Rock stars have been as vocal in their condemnation of Rock and Roll as he has been.
Yet, in his wake, androgyny went on to become one of its major features; and this was true of several of its earliest pioneers. And that includes the single most influential phenomenon in Rock and Roll history with the possible exception of the Beatles, the boy who once worshipped as part of the Pentecostal Assemblies of God for whom fame turned out to be such a mixed blessing: Elvis Aaron Presley.
And the mantle was taken up in the mid to late sixties by such pioneers of Glam as the Kinks, Barrett era Pink Floyd, early Soft Machine, the Rolling Stones, and Alice Cooper. But the decade as a whole witnessed an extraordinary explosion of androgyny on the part of the Western male, which served to pave for the way for the '70s.
And Glam swept a host of musicians who'd been striving for major success since the early '60s to fresh levels of stardom in the UK and elsewhere. Such as David Bowie, Elton John and Rod Stewart. For all three had first appeared on record as part of the British Blues Boom...Bowie and Stewart in '64, and John in '65; and despite being idolised at the height of Glam, they continued to be admired as serious album artists.
For there were two major strands of Glam in its heyday of 1971-'74, one being allied to the consciously artistic tradition of Progressive Rock, the other, to the purest pure Pop. And among those acts and artists affiliated to the former were David Bowie, Roxy Music, Mott the Hoople and the Sensational Alex Harvey Band; while the latter embraced T. Rex, the Sweet, Gary Glitter, Slade and Wizzard. While there were many more who either flirted with the genre from within the confines of Prog, such as the Strawbs, or existed on its fringes, such as Silverhead.
As to stateside Glam, pioneered primarily by Alice Cooper, it went on to include such cult icons as Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, the New York Dolls, Jobriath and Brett Smiley; as well as singer-songwriter, Todd Rundgren, a serious candidate for the most gifted Rock artist of all time. While several major acts were briefly touched by it; such as Aerosmith and Kiss, but it would not be until the 1980s that Glam entered the mainstream in the shape of Glam Metal.
Also among those part of the first wave of Glam was the band that effectively invented the genre, the Rolling Stones. Although they didn't adopt its more flagrant trappings until around 1972, the year they released the album which is widely considered to be their masterpiece, Exile on Main Street.
Initial sessions took place in the basement of the Villa Nellcôte, a 19th century mansion on the waterfront of Villefranche-sur-Mer in France's Cote d'Azur, which had been leased to Keith Richards in the summer of '71. However, several tracks had already been recorded at Mick Jagger's country estate, as well as at West London's legendary Olympic Studios.
Originally a theatre, then a film studio, Olympic was converted into a recording studio by the architect Robertson Grant, while his son Keith Grant - a very close friend of Pat Halling's - completed the acoustics in tandem with Russel Pettinger. It went on to become the virtual nerve centre of the British Rock movement.
Much has been written of the Exile sessions, which saw various icons of the Counterculture passing through Nellcôte as if to lay blessings on the decadent antics taking place therein, which stand today as the very quintessence of the benighted Rock and Roll lifestyle. While less than a decade had passed since Rock's true inception at the hands of the clean-cut Beatles, Western society had already been altered almost beyond recognition within that short space of time.
Yet, responsibility for this transformation can't in all good conscience be laid exclusively at the feet of Rock, given that tendencies inimical to the West's moral fabric can be traced at least as far back as the Enlightenment of the 16th and 17th Centuries. So, how had society come to be so successfully and swiftly revolutionised by Rock?
Part of the answer lies in its sheer popularity, itself arguably born of its extraordinary eclecticism. And among bands embodying this quality during Rock's first golden age of the mid-1960s were the Rolling Stones. And this thanks significantly to the sheer musical brilliance of founder member Brian Jones, who plausibly helped to sow the seeds of the Progressive movement to come, but buttressed by the considerable song writing gifts of Mick Jagger and Keith Richards. However, in the late 1960s, with Progressive Rock in the ascent, the Stones seemed to make a conscious effort to return to their Blues origins, as well as embracing other forms of roots music, such as Country and Western, and this process could be said to have reached an apogee with Exile on Main Street in 1972.
In that selfsame year, Pat Halling was involved with an album that was greeted with little of the ballyhoo of Exile. This being Slides, by the great Irish actor Richard Harris, who'd launched a Pop career on the back of Jimmy Webb's 7 minute Pop tour de force, MacArthur Park.
In 2005, it was released on CD with My Boy, receiving very high ratings from Amazon reviewers both in Britain and the US.
However, as the '70s progressed, Pat became involved with several far more successful projects on the fringes of Glam, more of which later.

Rock and Roll and the Western Soul

When such Glam acts and artists as David Bowie and the Sweet had first appeared on British television in full make up around 1972, there were those undilutedly masculine British males who were doubtless moved to revulsion and rage. Yet by about '74, Glam could be said to have shed much of its revolutionary potency.
But by the time it had done so, it had effectuated a minor sexual upheaval by making male androgyny more acceptable than ever before. And it did so in defiance of the Bible's strict delineation of the sexual roles, and prohibition of any form of cross dressing.
And one can only wonder what effect it had on the psychological development of young men such as myself, who'd already been weaned on the ferocious rebel sounds of Rock, only to swoon at the feet of the gorgeous androgynes of Glam.
But while it had entered the mainstream as Teenybop Pop, an avant-garde form persisted in the shape of an apparent nostalgic love affair with Europe's immediate past - and especially its decadent cabaret culture - on the part of acts and artists as diverse as Bowie and Roxy Music; as well as critically acclaimed newcomers Cockney Rebel. And the persona Bowie adopted in 1976, and which he enigmatically dubbed The Thin White Duke could be said to have been the apotheosis of this romantic Europhilia.
But little of this was in evidence in the happy world of Pop which continued to mine the Glam Rock craze for all it was worth, propelling a multitude of entertainers into the charts in the process. Such as one David Cook, a startlingly handsome young cockney Londoner of Irish Traveller extraction who as David Essex became a major star on the fringes of Glam.
But rather than Rock or Teenybop Pop, he did so largely through acting. And it was his own song Rock On that really put him on the map as a major heart throb in 1974, when it became a major hit on both sides of the Atlantic, due in no small part to its distinctive string arrangement, featuring one Pat Halling as concertmaster.
Its follow-up, Stardust, was the title of the hit movie of the same name, a salutary tale of a young Londoner who achieves his dreams of superstardom, only to end up holed up in some Spanish castle as a drug-addicted recluse.
Like its predecessor, it had been produced by New Yorker Jeff Wayne, with whom Pat worked both on Rock On and his own Jeff Wayne's Musical Version of The War of the Worlds, widely viewed today as a masterpiece.
That same year of '74 saw the release of Cilla Black's In My Life, produced by David Mackay, and The Butterfly Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast by Rod Edwards and Roger Hand from an original book by William Plomer; both with orchestra led by Pat.
While he was still a close colleague of Mickie Most, who was enjoying the second phase of his glittering Pop career. For as previously stated, Most had been briefly involved with the burgeoning Rock movement in the shape of the Jeff Beck Group, which had been formed in early '67.
But in time, he bequeathed the band to his friend and business partner, Peter Grant, and under Grant's aegis, they went on to enormous success in the US. And by so doing, they anticipated the mega-glory of another Grant-managed band led by a one-time member of the Yardbirds.
I'm referring of course to Led Zeppelin, a band perhaps second only to the Rolling Stones in terms of legendary darkness and mystery, if you'll excuse the leitmotiv.
While Grant went on to take the US by storm with Led Zep, Mickie set about turning RAK, which they'd formed together in 1969, into one the key Pop record labels of the '70s and home to several classic Glam, Pop and Teenybop acts.
These included Disco-Poppers Hot Chocolate which had been formed as early as 1969, and former Detroit native Suzi Quatro, both of whom Pat worked with on several occasions with Mickie at the helm; as well as Mud, Arrows, Kenny, Smokie and Racey.
Quatro benefited from the brilliance of songwriters Nicky Chinn and Mike Chapman, who also wrote for the Sweet, Mud, Arrows, Smokie and Racey, and for a time was one of the few female stars of the Glam-Glitter genre. But Pat's work in the mid 1970s was by no means restricted to the purest pure Pop, far from it.
There was a major movie project in the shape of The Day of the Jackal, directed by the great Fred Zinnemann, whom I have always admired enormously.
I was fortunate enough to be introduced to him by Pat. And he was the second of two legends of the cinema I met around about that time, the first having been the great Charles Chaplin, and they were both quite delectably charming to me.
Pat was the concertmaster, serving under the Frenchman Georges Delerue - whom I also met - who both composed and conducted the music.
In terms of recorded music, Pat became caught up in the final stages of the Prog Rock boom when he served as leader for Jethro Tull, for despite himself, he'd been part of the growing Rock movement from the outset.
And notably through his association with the Beatles, who by '67 were at the forefront of the Rock revolution; although their Rock was ever replete with beautiful Pop melodies. But the same could also be said of Tull, one of the most purely artistic bands of the genre, which yet achieved both commercial and critical success on both sides of the Atlantic. And the first of these projects, War Child from 1974, could be said to be the quintessence of Rock as an art form, whose earliest expression was the aforesaid Prog.
For by fusing elements of Classical, Folk and Rock, the Prog phenomenon created a music that at times amounted to high art, as in the case of Tull.
But it was Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention who effectively birthed the genre; although the notion of Rock as art had evolved by degrees in both Britain and America, with both the Beatles and Bob Dylan being especially influential in this respect.
Yet while both Britain and America served as the cradles of Art Rock, Prog was characteristically British, with King Crimson, Emerson, Lake and Palmer, Yes, Gentle Giant and Genesis serving as early exemplars. And in keeping with its position within the rebel music of Rock, its lyrics often inclined to a darkness of tone which was characteristic of much of the musical Underground of the late 1960s.
Speaking of which...from about '73, it could be said that Progressive Rock set about a return to the Underground whence it had emerged. And from there, took to informing a vast variety of musical genres...including Glam Rock, Jazz Rock, New Wave, Post-Punk, Alt Rock and Indie. In fact, one might go so far as to say its been ubiquitous ever since, so that as things stand, several of the most successful acts in the world could be said to be Progressive in varying degrees.
But by '73, pure Prog was already starting to look stale in comparison to the Art Rock of figures such as Todd Rundgren and David Bowie, who were operating as progressives within the Glam Rock genre.
And in that selfsame year, Pat worked on two concept albums that were nowhere nears as commercial as anything by these two innovators, namely Cosmic Wheels by Donovan; and Johnny Harris' All To Bring You Morning, for which he led the strings. And which featured no less than three one-time members of Yes, who just happened to be recording next door at the time as Johnny and friends, and were great admirers of his work.
He went on to work on a series of Art Rock projects which while not as successful as international best-sellers by the likes of Tull have received fresh critical acclaim through the internet.
They include Beginnings (1975) by Steve Howe, Octoberon (1976) by Barclay James Harvest, Visionary and Perilous Journey (1976/'7) by Gordon Giltrap, Donovan (1977) by Donovan, and Woman in the Wings (1978) by Steeleye Span lead singer Maddie Prior. While a very early Progressive project of Pat's was Definitely What (1969) by Brian Auger and the Trinity.
But for Pat, involvement in the rebel music of Rock and Roll was ever but a means of earning the amounts of money necessary to support a home and family. While in my case, it was entirely voluntary, and one after the other I immersed myself in its messages of revolt.
Which is not to say that all Rock music is overtly dark or iconoclastic, far from it. For much of it is relatively innocuous, and there is much beauty to be found in all forms of Rock, both musically and lyrically, as I've already made clear. Yet from a historical perspective, it could be said that few art forms have been quite so effective in challenging the Judeo-Christian foundations of Western culture as Rock.
And for a time, it was as if a civil war was being fought for the hearts and minds of the young. And that's especially true of the '60s, where in both Britain and America, the conflict was quite extraordinarily fierce...and this persisted into the '70s. With the result that the British Punk insurrection provoked a reaction from ordinary members of the public which would be inconceivable today in a West that has become so utterly inured to outrage.
While by the '80s it could be said to have started to wane, as the values of the Counterculture started percolating the mainstream. And while this was concurrent with a famous conservative backlash, the latter hardly constituted a wholesale return to traditional values. For these were still in terminal recession, and fighting desperately for their very existence. And the backlash was but an expression of this desperation as I see it.
And to those who disagree, I can only say they have failed to realise just how deeply embedded into our society these values once were.
While today, they are merely the province of a minority, and a relatively powerless one at that. So for the time being, it could be said that the culture wars of the past half century or so have been won...and that Rock and Roll stands tall among its victors.

Mon, Mar 4th - 6:38PM

And So the British Blues Explosion

Mon, Mar 4th - 5:45AM

Miss Ann Watt Had Stars in Her Eyes

The Scots-Irish Sept of Watt

My father Patrick Clancy Halling joined the London Philharmonic Orchestra while still a teenager during the Blitz on London. And during this time, he served in the Sea Cadets as a signaller, seeing action as such on the hospital ships of the previously mentioned Thames River Emergency Service.
Following his time with the LPO, he played with the London Symphony Orchestra with his cellist brother Peter, before going on to specialize in Chamber music.
His chamber career included eight years with the Hirsch quartet, led by Dublin-born violinist Leonard Hirsch, and the formation of his own Quartet Pro Musica in 1955, with Roger Raphael, Peter Sermon and his brother Peter, while Ernest Scott and Gwynne Edwards joined at a later date. And three years later, this resulted in an extraordinary event taking place in the Recital Room of the Royal Festival Hall.
On the 2cnd of November 1958, the Quartet convened to take part in a reading of TS Eliot's Four Quartets by four giants of the arts, including the then poet laureate Cecil Day Lewis, together with his wife, the actress Jill Balcon, fellow actress Maxine Audley, and Shakespearean scholar George Rylands. By which time, Lewis' and Balcon's son, future Hollywood superstar Daniel Day Lewis, would have been a little over a year and half old. And this was interspersed with a rendition of Bela Bartok's Sixth Quartet.
He also played with the Virtuoso Ensemble, whose distinctions are believed to have included first UK performances of works by major British 20th Century composers, such as Elizabeth Lutyens, Humphrey Searle, Peter Racine Fricker and Mátyás Seiber.
And among his recordings from the late 1950s currently featured on the internet are The History of Music in Sound, Vol. VI: The Growth of Instrumental Music (1630-1750), on which, with Richard Hadeney on flute, Basil Lam on harpsichord, and Terence Weil on cello, he interprets Vitali's Trio Sonata in E Minor, Op. 2, No. 3, Legrenzi's La Cornara and Jenkins' Fancy in G Minor.
In June 1949, he wed my mother, the Canadian singer Miss Ann Watt, who through marriage became Mrs Ann Halling, thereby substituting a Scottish surname for a Danish one.
In Ireland, the Watt surname is allegedly exclusive to Ulster, home province of my grandfather James Watt, having been carried there by the Scottish and English planters of the late 1600s. It's common in the Scottish Lowlands, especially in the counties of Aberdeenshire and Banffshire.
As might be expected it's affiliated with that of Watson, and both are what is known as septs of the Forbes and Buchanan clans. A sept being a family that traditionally followed a particular chief or clan leader in the Highlands or Lowlands of Scotland, either through being related by marriage or resident on his land, and so helped to make up a larger clan or family.
Kindred septs include those of MacQuat, MacQuattie, MacQuhat, MacQwat, MacRowatt, MacWalter, MacWater, MacWatson, MacWatt, MacWatters, MacWattie, Vatsoun, Vod, Vode, Void, Voud, Voude, Vould, Walter, Walterson, Wasson, Waters, Waterson, Watsone, Watsoun, Wattie, Wattson, Wod, Wode, Wodde, Woid, Woide, Wood, Woyd and Wyatt.
She'd been born Angela Jean Elisabeth Watt in the city of Brandon, Manitoba, the youngest by 7 years of the six children of James and Elisabeth Watt from Ulster, Ireland and Glasgow, Scotland respectively. And the only one not to be born in Britain...the others, Annie-Isabella, Robert, James, Elisabeth, who died in infancy having been born in Glasgow, Catherine in Ireland.
While still an infant she moved with her family to the Grandview area of East Vancouver, whose earliest settlers tended to be shopkeepers, or tradesmen, in shipping or construction work, and largely from the British Isles. Such as James Watt himself, a builder by trade from the little town of Castlederg in County Tyrone, Ireland, then part of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Grandview underwent massive change following the First World War when Italian, Chinese, and East European immigrants moved in, and still more after World War II with a second wave of Italian immigrants. Today its part of the Grandview-Woodland area of East Vancouver.
Ann's mother was from the Springburn area of Glasgow. And she's believed to have been born there possibly to an Englishman, from either Manchester or Liverpool; while her mother was allegedly a Scot. And if so, my mother is of mixed Lowland Scottish, Ulster-Scots and English ancestry, not that any real difference exists between these three ethnicities.
As to my maternal grandfather...he was almost certainly a descendant of the Planters sent by the English to Ulster in the 1600s, many of them originally inhabitants of the Anglo-Scottish border country and the Lowland region of Scotland.
According to some sources, Lowlanders are distinct from their Highland counterparts, being of Anglo-Saxon rather than Gaelic ancestry, although how true this is I'm not qualified to say. Certainly, the region straddling the Scottish Lowlands and Anglo-Scottish Borderlands, is one traditionally perceived as Sassenach, which is the Gaelic term for Saxon, or person of Anglo-Saxon origin.
Whatever the truth, the sensible view is their bloodline contains a variety of kindred strains including - as well as Anglo-Saxon - Gaelic, Pictish, Norman and so on, depending on the exact region. Moreover, all Caucasian inhabitants of the British Isles - including the independent sovereign nation of Ireland - partake of a fairly homogenous ancestry, which certain experts are claiming to be more Iberian than anything else. In the end, though, are we not all of the same single human race created by God? As a Christian, I can't believe anything else.
The Ulster Scots reportedly began to emigrate to the US in sizeable numbers in the early 1600s, and their descendants are to be found all throughout the country. But most famously perhaps in those regions which are culturally Southern, which is to say those states situated beneath the Mason-Dixon Line. Indeed most of the original European settlers of the Deep and Upland South are widely believed to have been of British and especially English and Scots-Irish origin. Today, many of them describe themselves as merely "American", while others continue to claim either English or Scots-Irish ancestry.

The Theatre Under the Stars

By the time he'd moved his family to Grandview in the autumn of 1924, my grandfather James Watt had, according to my mother's account, forsaken the Presbyterian Calvinism of his Ulster boyhood and youth for the Wesleyan theology of the Salvation Army. Yet, in keeping with the Army of that time, his approach to Scripture was what would be described as fundamentalist today; and he was accordingly opposed to worldly pleasures such as dancing, the theatre, and movie-going.
Moreover, I think it's fair to say that alcohol was anathema; while even the drinking of tea and coffee was frowned upon.
Some years after moving to Grandview, James Watt built his family a house in Kitsilano on the city's West Side, but a reversal of fortune in terms of his business meant that the family was forced to return to Grandview.
Then at the age of 14, Angela joined her friend Marie and Marie's mother on a car trip just beyond the US-Canadian border into the state of Washington, where she saw her very first movie, a romantic civil war picture entitled Only the Brave starring Gary Cooper and Mary Brian. Its effect on her was little short of seismic, as by her own admission it introduced worldly ideas into her psyche for the very first time.
Despite an intensively Christian upbringing, from then on, she became consumed by the glamour of the movies and show business. In other words, she'd allowed the camel's nose into her life, and it only remained for the rest of the camel to follow.
At high school, she'd been a diligent but not exceptional pupil; and her sole and only sporting distinction consisted of being part of her school track team. While her closest friend, the universally popular Margaret Stone, was an exceptional young sportswoman. However, Angela came into her own in the Glee Club, where presumably she first started using her beautiful singing voice beyond the confines of the Army.
When she was 17, her father became very seriously ill and she was forced to take time off school to do her share of looking after him. She spent long periods of time by his bedside, weeping for a man who when she was still only a little girl had a habit of affectionately flicking the back of her hair and she'd scolded him to make him stop. She was off for so long that Margaret Stone had come calling for her with another friend, concerned by her protracted absence. James Watt died after a short illness, and Angela, utterly heartbroken, wept openly at his funeral.
In her final year at high school, she learned short hand and other tools of the secretarial trade, while working part time at F.W. Woolworth's on Commercial Drive.
After leaving, she started work answering telephone enquiries on behalf of a laundry business by the name of Pioneer Laundry, where her sister Cathy ran a branch specialising in the washing and starching of men's collars.
And it was during her time at Pioneer that Angela received her first big break, when one of her co-workers, presumably after discovering Angela had ambitions to sing professionally, suggested she accompany her to a singing engagement at a gentleman's club in the city.
Angela promptly took her up on her offer, and as a result of having done so, was tendered details of a singing teacher by the name of Avis Phillips by a member of the club.
Soon after having made contact with Avis, Angela became her pupil, and ultimately also her friend, and this association brought her into contact with Avis' regular accompanist, Phyllis Dilworth, whose uncle Ira Dilworth just happened to be regional head of the Canadian Broadcasting Company.
It was through this family tie that Angela secured her first professional engagements as a soprano, indeed her entire singing career, with many of its greatest triumphs taking place at Vancouver's famous Theatre Under the Stars, which officially opened on August the 6th 1940. And where Miss Ann Watt played the lead in such classic operettas as Oscar Straus' The Chocolate Soldier, Naughty Marietta by Victor Herbert, with libretto by Rida Johnson Young, and The Student Prince by Sigmund Romberg, with libretto by Dorothy Donnelly.
And for the CBC with full orchestra, she broadcast many popular classics. Such as, to the accompaniment of Percy Harvey and the Golden Strings, two songs by Victor Herbert with the baritone Greg Miller, viz., A Kiss in the Dark, from Orange Blossoms, and the lovely title song from Sweethearts.
As well as Neath the Southern Moon, another breathtakingly romantic melody by Herbert, Strange Music from The Song of Norway, adapted from Grieg by Wright and Forrest, and Can't Help Singing by Kern and Yarburg from the 1944 movie of the same name.
Such was the loveliness of her voice, to say nothing of looks so glamorous she was likened to Betty Grable, she became something of a sweetheart of the Canadian Forces. While her irresistible vivacity and charm caused both audiences and press to fall in love with her not just in Canada but parts of the northern US as well.
Among the Classical songs she broadcast during the North American phase of her career were Schumann's Dedication, Brahms' The Vain Suit, Delibes' Les Filles de Cadix, Debussy's Mandoline, Rachmaninov's Before My Window, and Vaughan Williams' exquisite musical evocation of Rossetti's Silent Noon...with all liede rendered in English due to wartime restrictions on the German language.
After the war, she hoped to expand her career either in the US or the UK, but despite a successful audition for the San Francisco Light Opera Company, she ultimately opted for England, once a ticket to sail had become available to her.
She left for Britain laden with letters of recommendation from Avis Phillips, as well as numerous press cuttings from her brilliant Canadian career, possibly persuaded that once in London, success would be hers for the taking, at Drury Lane and elsewhere. Sadly though, soon after arriving, she failed an audition for the internationally famous Glyndebourne Opera House, home of the annual festival of the same name.
However, she did land a small role in the Ivor Novello musical, King's Rhapsody, which opened at the Palace Theatre on the 15th of September 1949, with its author, one-time matinee idol Novello, in the title role. It ran for 841 performances, surviving Novello who died in 1951.
And she broadcast for the BBC, with De Fleurs from Debussy's Proses Lyriques, Stars in my Eyes, an unutterably poignant love song by Fritz Kreisler, with lyrics by Dorothy Field, and the popular Harry Ralton standard, I Remember the Cornfields, with lyrics by Martin Mayne, among the songs she performed for them.
She also appeared in an early television show called Picture Post, of which there remains no record.
Sadly though, it wasn't long after her arrival in London that she realized her voice was deteriorating - this being especially true of her top notes - possibly as a result of sleeping difficulties; although she was a smoker.
And she had enjoyed a somewhat hedonistic lifestyle at the height of her fame in Vancouver, when she was Miss Ann Watt. And a fairly wealthy young woman at that, with a passionate love of beautiful clothes and shoes.
She went from one singing teacher to the other in the hope that her once near-perfect voice might be restored to her but little came of her efforts; although one of her tutors, who just happened to be the great German soprano Elisabeth Schumann, did offer some hope.
Schumann suggested that once her time in England was over, for she was recording her final liede 78s in London with the British pianist Gerald Moore, she accompany her back to New York City, where she'd been resident since 1918.
However, my mother turned her down, perhaps feeling she'd already spent enough money on lessons. And besides, she'd only been married to my father, the London-based musician Patrick Halling, since June 1949, and uprooting would not have been easy.
Pat and Ann spent the next seven years pursuing what I've been led to believe was a semi-Bohemian existence in London and on the continent, where they vacationed by both car and motorcycle...during the early years of that relatively innocent period between the end of the Second World War and the onset of the Youth Culture of the sixties, after which things would never be quite the same again.

Sun, Mar 3rd - 7:16AM

The Heroic Life of Phyllis Mary Pinnock

The Mystery of Ormonde

But who precisely were these Normans who went on to create one of the most powerful monarchies in Europe and whose territorial conquests would ultimately include not just Ireland, but England, Scotland, Wales, Southern Italy and the island of Sicily?
Unsurprisingly, they are largely Nordic, although believed to have been of mixed Viking, Frankish and Gallo-Roman stock, a mixture which apparently produced an instinct towards elitism and dominance.
And the Norman conquest of England was famously sealed with William the Conqueror's success at the Battle of Hastings in 1066 AD, which introduced a new aristocracy into the country. Which means that the Normans replaced the Anglo-Saxons as the ruling class of England, while becoming part of a single French-speaking culture with lands on both sides of the channel.
And this explains her fierce rivalry with mainland France, as well as the 1842 poem, Lady Clara Vere de Vere, in which Tennyson makes the valid point that "Kind hearts are more than coronets, And simple faith than Norman blood," which of course inspired the classic Ealing comedy, Kind Hearts and Coronets, directed by Robert Hamer in 1949.
And what the poem was alluding to was the specifically Norman nature of the English aristocracy. But back to the travails of the Emerald Isle.
By the fateful year of 1169, Ireland, a land once given over to the ancient Celtic faith of Druidry and the worship of the Sidhe or Faery Folk, was profoundly Christian, despite a remnant of paganism.
But an invasion had already been authorised as early as 1155 by the first and only English Pope Adrian IV, decision which occasioned centuries of English dominance and Irish misery. While MacMurrough had been forced into exile in 1166 by a coalition of forces led by the High King of Ireland Rory O'Connor, and had fled...allegedly to Bristol first...and then to France.
There are various accounts of what happened next, but it's certain he asked Henry II, first English King of the Norman House of Plantagenet, for help in regaining his kingdom. And after Henry had pledged his aid, began recruiting allies in Wales, with Richard de Clare, known as Strongbow, foremost among them. So Ireland was earmarked for invasion.
In 1167, he returned to Ireland with a small army of mercenaries, but it wasn't until '69 that a full-scale invasion by the Anglo-Normans and their Welsh and Flemish allies got under way. And while contemporary accounts refer to the invaders as English, they have also been described as Anglo-Norman, Cambro-Norman and Anglo-French. With the Flemish contingent recruited largely from those Flemings who'd arrived in Britain with William the 1st and had settled in Wales...only to be perceived by the hostile Welsh as English. And also believed to have taken part was one Theobald Walter, patriarch of the Butlers of Ormond.
Two years afterwards, Henry II set foot in Ireland, the first English King to do so, and so High Kingship was brought to an end, to be replaced by over 750 years of English rule.
Henry was an ancestor of future generations of Butlers, and a grandson of William the Conqueror, which may provide a kinship with the mysterious Merovingian dynasty of Frankish Kings.
And when his son Prince John arrived in Ireland in 1185, it was in the company of the said Theobald Walter, whose father had been Butler of England; and so he was appointed Butler of Ireland and given a portion of land in eastern Munster that would become known as Ormond. Thence the name, the Butlers of Ormond.
Around 1200, he married Maud le Vavasour, purported inspiration for Maid Marian, wife of the mythical outlaw Robin Hood, himself allegedly based on Maud's second husband, Fulk FitzWarin.
And they had one son together, Theobald le Botiller, 2cnd Baron Butler, who, by marrying Margery de Burgh, a descendant of both Dermot McMurrough and the legendary Brian Boru, brought royal Gaelic blood into the Butler bloodline. While their sole and only son...also known as Theobald, took Joan FitzJohn as his spouse; and from their union came eight sons, the second of which, Edmund Butler, married Joan FitzGerald of the ancient FitzGerald dynasty.
It was for their eldest son James that the earldom of Ormonde was created for the first time. And his appointment came in 1328, only months after his marriage to Lady Eleanor de Bohun, beautiful grand-daughter of Edward the 1st of the House of Plantagenet, known as the Angevins from their origins in Anjou, France.
Dubbed The Hammer of the Scots, Longshanks was that Anglo-Norman king who'd had Scottish noble Sir William Wallace executed in 1305 for having led a resistance during the Wars of Scottish independence.
While among James Butler's descendants was Anne Boleyn, whose father Thomas, a Butler by matrilineal descent, became Earl of Ormonde in 1528. This having occurred when Piers Ruadh Butler resigned his claim by orders of the king; only to have the earldom restored to him ten years later. Act which heralded the title's third creation.
And by this time, England had become a Protestant nation, and Anglicanism established in Ireland as the state religion, despite the vast majority of the population being Catholic.
And much to Ireland's misfortune, the Butlers became involved with some vicious feuding with their long time rivals the FitzGeralds in the late 1500s. And when the so-called Black Earl Sir Thomas Butler vanquished his own mother's family at the Battle of Affane in 1565, it helped provoke the Desmond Rebellions of 1567-73 and 1579-83, the second of which was bolstered by hundreds of papal troops.
But these were defeated by the Elizabethan Armies and their Irish allies, soon after which the first English Plantations were carried out in a devastated Munster. While the first plantations in Ulster, Ireland's most purely Gaelic region, remained yet in the future.

Sat, Mar 2nd - 2:44AM

Seven Chapters from a Sad Sack Loser's Life - Chapter Seven

David Cristiansen struggled on with the Post Graduate Certificate in Education throughout the earliest days of 1993.

Fri, Mar 1st - 8:04AM

Seven Chapters from a Sad Sack Loser's Life - Chapter 6(c)

He genuinely came to believe that for all the horrors he underwent, it was during that first night he came to accept Christ as his Saviour, and that had his violent conversion not come about when it did, he might have been lost forever, although whether one agrees with him or not depends on where one stands on the issue of predestination versus free will. But he'd have surely immersed himself further in the new bohemianism of the 1990s, which of course was not new at all, simply a revival of the adversary values of the sixties. Far from vanishing around '73, these values had merely gone back underground, where they set about fertilising new anti-establishment clans such as the Anarcho-Punks and the New Age Travellers who quietly flourished throughout the '80s.