With her husband Barry Mann she wrote some of the most well-known songs of the 1960s. I featured one of them here. So apparently simple, yet so effective.
However, the song of theirs people are most familiar with is probably You’ve Lost That Lovin’ Feeling as performed by The Righteous Brothers.
To celebrate her skills I’ve chosen this recording by a British band, though.
The Animals: We Gotta Get Out of This Place
Cynthia Weil: October 18/10/1940 – 1/6/2023. So it goes.
And on Wednesday it was the turn of Jeff Beck to leave us too early. He was one of that group of English exponents of the electric guitar which sprang up in the early to mid-sixties. But Beck was the electric guitarist’s electric guitarist.
Sadly he never gained the commercial success on his own account to match his status with his peers. He really only had the one hit and that track, Hi-Ho Silver Lining, wasn’t representative of Beck’s musical tastes.
One of the two men behind the hits of Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich (not to mention The Honeycombs and The Herd,) Alan Blaikley, died in July but I only found out when his obituary was published in today’s Guardian.
The two were apparently the first British composers to write a song for Elvis Presley.
An (incomplete) list of the songs the duo wrote is here. It’s not a bad CV.
This is the one featuring the “man with the whip” as the Queen Mother is supposed to have said to Dave Dee. In reality I believe the sound was made by scraping a bottle across the strings of a guitar.
Dave Dee, Dozy, Beaky, Mick and Tich: Legend of Xanadu
Alan Tudor Blaikley: 23/3/1940 – 4/6/2022. So it goes.
I saw in the Guardian that Gary Brooker, the voice (and more besides) of Procol Harum has died.
His voice was certainly distinctive, as was Procol Harum’s output: a rock band, yes, but more. And of course one of the progenitors of Prog Rock.
This was Procol Harum’s fourth hit, if that description can be applied to a song that reached no 44. Despite its downbeat sound and slow pace I’ve always thought it one of their best.
Procol Harum: A Salty Dog
This video contains a very good live version – with accompaniment – and an added bonus of An Old English Dream. (On this occasion I’ll ignore his comment about the Euro.)
Procol Harum and the Danish National Concert Orchestra and Choir: A Salty Dog and An Old English Dream
I was saddened to read in the Guardian of the death of Graeme Edge of the Moody Blues on Armistice Day.
As a drummer he perhaps wasn’t spectacular but he did the job. He was one of the group’s original members (in the days of Denny Laine, Clint Warwick and Go Now) and continued on to the glory days of the late 60s and early 70s. His contribution to the group’s œuvre was not initially musical but spoken word (poetry if you will) starting with the Morning Glory sequence from Days of Future Passed whose first verse,
“Cold hearted orb that rules the night,
Removes the colours from our sight,
Red is grey and yellow white,
But we decide which is right,
And which is an illusion,”
is returned to in Late Lament, the spoken coda which comes after the final song, Nights in White Satin. Unfortunately this clip omits the gong right at the end.
The Moody Blues: Late Lament
Graeme Charles Edge: 30/3/1941 – 11/11/2021. So it goes.
This was Creedence Clearwater Revival’s immediate follow up to their no 1 hit Bad Moon Rising. It failed to chart in the UK. I still have a soft spot for it, though.
The source of that “glorious age of Camelot” quote I linked to in Tuesday’s review post of Lavie Tidhar’s “King Arthur” book By Force Alone.
The song is from The Moody Blues album On the Threshold of a Dream released in April 1969. A languid, ethereal, atmospheric track. Quite unlike the book I might add.
