Jake Thackray
So, I saw a (repeated) bbc four documentary about Jake maybe six months ago and then kept on entirely failing to search for his stuff, but then a friend linked to the above and I found an treasure trove of stuff on spotify (sorry Americans), and he is all kinds of awesome, jazzy and silly and slightly rude, but very british (and a bit 70s to be honest, as the above example shows). I’m not sure why he’s disappeared into obscurity, given that the doco showed him on many TV shows, and he seemed to have a fanbase of slightly alt comedians (i’m pretty certain the programme was made by Associated Rediffusion, ie Victor Lewis-Smith).
CarsmileSteve in FT • Pop • 304 views • Share/Save
Nice obituary on Jake here: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/obituaries/jake-thackray-612178.html
I liked Harvey Andrews’ line: “Me and Jake and a bottle of whisky – and the whisky won’t go far…”
Fantastic, fantastic stuff. But he was always destined for obscurity – Britain’s rubbish at cherishing the non-pigeonholable, no matter what their talent. There was also a BBC4 doc on recently about the history of comic song, which startlingly failed to mention him.
Victor Lewis Smith was indeed one of his biggest champions, and wrote the liner notes on the box set that appeared after Jake’s death.
He was ill-served by EMI, who insisted on putting bloody awful ‘comedy’ light-programme orchestral arrangements and BLOODY CELESTES on his early material. Yet his stuff with the jazz trio swings like crazy – Ike Isaacs is a great guitarist, and he played with John Etheridge later on.
I seriously think he was a genuine star. Off to Spotify now… thanks.
I think the EMI arrangements, though foisted upon him, work pretty well. They certainly helped to steer Jake’s sound away from his obvious chanson source material. La Di Dah – with strings attached – is English baroque perfection.
Though he was clearly a cut above, I think Jake’s place in TV land has fatally blighted his legacy. He was seen as a bit That’s Life, a forerunner to Richard Stilgoe – and you wouldn’t expect to see him in a doc on the history of comic song.
Even aside from Britain’s tendency, while priding itself on how it Gets Irony and Has A Sense Of Humour, to horribly undervalue anyone who puts jokes in their songs (Neil Hannon) or else miss the jokes entirely (Morrissey), Jake was to some extent his own worst enemy – I believe the documentary mentioned his tendency to miss gigs on the most spectacularly flimsy of excuses. If he’d still been playing around the circuit in later years, as against the occasional impromptu show at his local fete, I’m sure he’d have got the obligatory revival which comes to far lesser talents for simple long service.
I concede Lah di Dah, WL. It works beautifully. But you could also argue that it steered his stuff away from the obvious chanson source material to an obvious BBC Light Ent source material and thus fatally dated it. To me it sounds terribly awkward – like a promoter booking Alan Bennett but insisting that he wore a sparkly jacket and cued a ‘ker-chinnng’ on the cymbals after each gag.
Jake did appear to be his own worst enemy, yes – I guess the stage fright had a lot to do with that. Of course he did get his revival in a small way, by dying.