MUSICALITY OF BART - A NEW ALBUM
Confession time. Some years ago I played a nasty trick on an audiencof pensioners. I played them Vera Lynn singing a ballad, ‘The Day After Tomorrow’. It had all the wistful optimism of the wartime era, a hope that better times await, a touching love song to a sweetheart who with luck will come home. I asked the audience (mostly in their 80s) if they remembered that Battle of Britain-era song during the war. ‘Yes’ they all said, some with a nostalgic tear. Then the reveal: it was written way after war, in 1962, by Lionel Bart for his show, ‘Blitz!’ and Vera had sung it specially for the production.
That song is a typical calling card of Lionel Bart. Everyone knows his masterpiece ‘Oliver!’ (Bart loved exclamation marks and was the living embodiment of the character). But his other shows, few in number, are largely forgotten, his talent, especially for the pitch perfect melodious parody and chutzpah-laden lyrics, overlooked.
So it was with great interest that I heard the new release of ‘The MUSICality of Bart’, just out by Jay Records. It is a pot pourri of Bart’s music theatre songs – some well-known from the aforementioned ‘Oliver!’, others from ‘Blitz!’, ‘Maggie May’ and ‘Twang!’. The album, one of a series on great songwriters, offers a welcome chance to re-assess Bart’s contribution to the British musical stage. But before I go on, I should warn that I am something of a Bart nerd. I attempted, without success, to write a biography in the early 2000s and since then have given several talks on the rise, fall and rise again for this flawed maestro. And so, I approached the new album with great interest but almost inevitably with the odd disappointment.
LIONEL BART …MUSIC AND LYRICS. TWO SIDES OF GENIUS
On the up side, it is really good to hear ‘lost’ songs such as ‘It’s Yourself’ – a song of yearning, a desperate love ballad. Then there’s the wonderful soliloquy ‘So Tell Me Jack’ - a Jewish mum’s family update to her deceased husband including a child who has ‘married out’. Josephine Blake does an excellent job as the distraught mother - she rightly understands that songs like this need to be acted as well as well sung. We are treated to some hits from ‘Oliver!’ such as ‘Consider Yourself’ but the focus is on the Cinderellas of Bart’s output. We don’t get any of his pop chart hits such as ‘Living Doll’ but that’s not the function of this series. The stage is the thing….
On the down side, I found some of the orchestrations of these studio performances a little too rich at times. One of my favourite Bart ballads, ‘Land of Promises’ was sweetly sung but this is meant to be a cry from the heart of a faded street prostitute who has done with the empty dreams of men. In the original recording from ‘Maggie May’, the performance is full of rasping anger and bitter remorse. Here it sounded more like a gentle lullaby.
That said, this new album brings the more obscure Bart to light: the brilliantly conceived ‘Let’s Play Mums and Dads’ in which street kids echo the stand-up rows of their East End parents. I enjoyed Bart’s typical knees-up ditty, ‘Who’s This Geezer Hitler?’ (the chorus cheekily rhyming ‘Hitler’ with ‘Littler’) and we get Helen Hobson singing that ‘Day After Tomorrow’ with its hefty dose of nostalgia and a very pretty tune to boot. For Bartians it was good to hear Long John Baldry (a close mate of Lionel’s) giving his all in ‘Unseen Hands’ from ‘Twang!’ That panto version of Robin Hood was a massive flop in 1965 and brought about Bart’s ruin. In the song, Bart tries to capture the musical signatures of the mid 60s but sadly fails; Baldry’s faithful rendition is more of a throwback to the early 50s rather than a nod to the Beatles. Yet any song from that shambles of a Sherwood show is worth discovering.
Despite my reservations, there are many delights here. A powerful version of ‘Consider Yourself’ with a great kids’ chorus making Bart’s lithe lyrics crystal clear – who cannot but admire the rhyming of ‘uppity’ with ‘cup ‘o tea’? - complements the haunting number, ‘As long as he needs me’.
This is an album to bring a smile to the face, to get the foot a-tapping and, I hope, a desire to go and listen to the full cast albums of his forgotten shows. I confess I am going to do just that.
For details on the new album:
