Jess Davies Band, Mama Told Me 

Tim Curtis, (It’s the) Things She Says

 

Tony Blackburn, whose Sounds of the 60's show eventually generated this ongoing series of mine, was never shy about his unsuccessful attempt to be a Northern Soul singer, as Kenny Gamble, and if you listen to his version of I'll Do Anything (He Wants Me To Do) alongside Doris Troy you can see he has much to be modest about. But at least he plays Doris on the radio rather than himself.

I'm even less likely to let the recording of me playing my own song, Break, out of my sight because if I was a terrible guitar player, my thrashing on the cheap acoustic does at least make me sound as if I've got a vague idea compared to the toneless singing. I defy even the profoudest musicologist to say what key it is in.

But, never mind. It was a fine thing to get lucky once, and to have lightning strike twice, by having two talented musicians and songwriters give me the opportunity to provide some words by way of collaborations. One was a teenage genius in the 1970's who hardly needed my input but we came again circa 1999 with a masterpiece that maybe could have kept Cliff Richard's sequence of number 1's going into the 2000's but it wasn't given the chance. The other was my mate's daughter, who was 'Country'. 

Good Lord. I thought that was the last thing I'd ever be but one can't let such prejudice get in the way at the age of 58 when time is running out.

Wow. Jess Davies took my ordinary words into unforeseen dimensions by re-arranging them and then recording them with some proper session musicians and briefly, however briefly, I saw it at #114, I think it was, in the Amazon download chart, only 90 places below Ed Sheeran.

I don't know if Uncle Tony Blackburn ever got that high in any hit parade. He did get to number 1 with I'm Still Waiting by Diana Ross, as a talent scout and a tipster. However many times I tell you that, he'll never tire of telling you more.

We would all love to be pop stars, wouldn't we. Wouldn't we? 

 

I'd rather have been Burt Bacharach but that's the closest I got. And I was more grateful than I can say.