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More trainspotting and digging-up of obscurities!
Don’t know how many of us are familiar with the BMI database, which is a database for music publishing rights management. Basically you can put in a composer or an artist, and it comes up with a full list of all compositions that have been registered through their music publishers. In Jake’s case, there are absolutely loads of songs that I’m not familiar with:
Titles I didn’t know include:
Agatha
Beauty Queens
Body Builder’s Song
Bus Conductor’s Song
Children’s Song 1
Codger (maybe a typo for The Lodger?)
Counting Sheep
Country Blues
Death (= Last Will?)
Dog Song I Was A Prince
Farrow People
Fashion / Fashion Musical Links (from Jake’s Scene?)
Fifty (sic) Golightly
Fisherman’s Song
Flex Your Do Dans
Food Song
God Bless Newcastle Fest
Good Day Jupiter
Goodbye 1970
I’ve Travelled the World Round and Round
Lindfield Ladies
Listen to the Band
Lost Property Song
Millionaire
Miniature Spanish Suite
Minister
My Missus (Jake’s Wedding)
Newcast Festival Songs 1 and 2
Oh Charlie Windsor
Our Little Arthur
Over in Bethlehem
Playgroup Song
Politician’s Song
Radio Leeds Opening
Ram
Song About Love
Sophy and Timothy
Stumbling Fumbling Round
Swaledale / Swaledale Musical Links (Jake’s Scene?)
Thursday Two O’Clock
Tickertape
Tractors
Two O’Clock on Tuesday
Uncle Water
Which Way
World
World of Swaledale
Would’ve Been Easy
Yorkshire Dales
You and Your ChildPhew!
Possibly some of these are working titles for more familiar songs, but a lot of them must be completely lost songs, presumably his ‘point’ numbers for TV for the most part. Anyone familiar with any of the above?
Talking to myself here, but I’ve found a couple of snippets about Fifi Golightly and Millionaire:
A 12-year old post on this forum recalls watching Jake on Braden’s Week: “I remember one song in which Jake reflected that if he were a millionaire and presented his lady love with an elephant, she’d be bound to complain that “you never know where the trunk has been” and another that began “Fifi Golightly / I’m ever so slightly / In love with you …”
A 1969 Radio Times listing for Braden’s Week has a nice bit about Jake – “If Noel Coward had been born in Leeds it would not have been necessary to invent Jake Thackray. As it is, there are differences. In the world of Noel Coward, men enter through french windows saying “Anyone for tennis?” In Jake’s world they come through pub doors saying “Where’s the draught beer?”
So far, in the songs he writes each week, Jake has fallen in love with our Sally-Ann girl, dreamed of kissing a vicar’s missus, lusted after a newspaper pin-up called Fifi Golightly, and knocked ash from his pipe all over his landlord’s suede shoes. This week… only Jake knows.”You’re having a great conversation with yourself, Mark! But how amazing is this? It would be so good to know if any of these titles are just alternatives to songs we already know, but i have a very early programme in which lots of titles are listed, but I don’t think they’re all titles we’ve recognised. I could send photos, if only i could find out how to do that!
I think I might have found out how to attach a picture, but if it doesn’t work I hope I can delete it afterwards!
Many thanks for posting that Pam! A fantastic relic. As the songs seem to go up as far as the Bantam Cock album I’d guess it’s from the early 70s?
Very little crossover between the unheard songs on that list and my list, interestingly. I suppose When I Get Filthy Rich could be Millionaire?
You’re not talking to yourself, Mark. I just haven’t logged on for a day or two. And well done Pam for sussing out how to attach your attachment !
All good stuff.
(Now if only we could unearth the Phantom Flan Flinger song……..!)
Lol
HughieA fair few of these titles look as though they will be songs from Tickertape, I think, and the list doesn’t include anything post-Bantam Cock.
The Lonely American is God Bless America (which I think is the title given when John Watterson and I looked at the lyrics in the BBC’s paper archives at Cranley).
‘Fumbly Stumbling Around’ is a line from the recurring song Fashion which is the theme of one of the two Jake’s Scene programmes.
Radio Leeds Opening is exactly that – it uses the tune of Miss World and is a one minute jingle to announce the opening of BBC Radio Leeds. John Watterson got asked to write an updated version for the anniversary a couple of years ago.
Country Blues might well be The Poor Sod which, although not released until 1976, had been around for some time, I think.
Thanks Paul. I’m guessing nothing at all survives of Tickertape? All I could find online was a list of episode dates from 1968 – 16 episodes, all of which are apparently lost.
Sadly, nothing from Tickertape survives. The company reused the tapes, wiping them every time. Jake, I’m sure, would be pleased, as he was always hugely embarrassed about having done the programmes.
It’s a shame all the same – most of us being kinder judges of Jake’s dregs than Jake himself!
I suppose chances of any episodes ever being found are pretty remote – it doesn’t seem like the sort of thing that would have been sold overseas, which is how wiped episodes of things like Doctor Who tend to get recovered. The only vague possibility could be if anyone involved with the programme managed to get hold of a copy for their own use, and it’s somehow survived in a personal archive somewhere – maybe Bernard Bresslaw or the producer David Coulter, or one of the guests like Ray Davies. Improbable, but stranger things happen..
I like the way you think, Mark.
I hate to be pessimistic but it is the way I thought when I brought up the TISWAS topic all those years ago. Surely one of Jake’s family or even Chris Tarrant himself would at least have remembered him being on the show but nothing ever came properly to light. In fact until “sbriddon” turned up I was a lone voice on the topic.
(Having said that, I was shown a photograph of myself at a “Vicar and Tarts” evening from many a long year ago and I have no recollection of it whatsoever. I’m imagining alcohol was consumed !)
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