16 AUGUST 2008:

Welcome to the Must Close Saturday Blog, with regular updates from our base in Norfolk (Poringland, to be exact - sometimes known, as on the welcoming sign into the village which has been amended, presumably by a local, to Boringland).

We have been busy preparing the three exciting new releases which we hope you will enjoy. They are an entertaining bunch, in the usual excellent sound restorations of Alan Bunting. It is good to be reissuing CHRYSANTHEMUM, a somewhat overlooked show of the 1950s which starred Pat Kirkwood and her then husband Hubert Gregg. Its composer was Robb Stewart, an energetic little chap with whom I once spent an afternoon - taken to meet him at his London flat by Ivor Novello's secretary Gordon Duttson. I recall that I had to cover up Gordon's sometimes less than complimentary comments about our host during the visit, but I don't think Robb noticed as he was carried away most of the afternoon playing us songs on his piano. To have someone who had an interest in his music turning up on the doorstep was probably a rarity. I hope this reissue will be some sort of remembrance of this talented man. In fact, there is ANOTHER recording of some of the songs from the show recorded by Robb himself at the piano, but unfortunately we did not have space to use this recording on our disc. I do recall Gordon saying as we left 'Recording his songs? What can the man in the recording booth have been thinking?' We have made room on the CD for the wonderful Frank Loesser Broadway musical of WHERE'S CHARLEY? - a truly glorious cast album with Norman Wisdom at the top of his form and the ever delectable Pip Hinton (remember her as the Crackerjack Girl?) as Amy. This really is a stand-out score from the composer who went on to such triumphs as GUYS AND DOLLS and THE MOST HAPPY FELLA. By the way, the notes for this CD are by a new member of our staff, Truck Havers-Scott, just returned from six months surfing in Australia. Brown as a berry.

Another delight has been the discovery of a rare studio recording of songs from Richard Addinsell's setting of the Lewis Carroll Alice stories. This has David Nixon in charge of proceedings (we shouldn't forget that Nixon, although best known as a TV panellist and magician, was also a good performer who starred successfully in London pantomimes) with Juliet Mills as Alice, Doreen Hume and Mick and Montmorency (one of whom is no less than Charlie Drake, whose girlfriend I used to go out with for fish and chips). I found (to be accurate, Alan Bunting found) both of the Alice EPS in New Zealand and was suprised at the quality of the performances, in many ways preferable to the 1947 Broadway version which we have already issued. We had the advice of the Richard Addinsell Trust, who have also helped us to issue this disc. The lead show of the issue is the Addinsell score for his revue LIVING FOR PLEASURE, starring the irreplaceable Dora Bryan. Always a favourite of ours, it is so good to have this back in the catalogue. Why on earth doesn't someone come up with a really good sophisticated modern old-fashioned revue? There's a challenge! An alternative to alternative comedy! Could they come up with something better than 'I'm The Lady Who Sits In The Loo At The Ritz?' I doubt it!

Apart from preparing the new discs, I have been completing a biography of the British composer William Alwyn which comes out from the Boydell Press in September. Titled THE INNUMERABLE DANCE, this is the first biography of Alwyn, a symphonist, poet, painter and one of the best-known and most prolific of film composers both in the British Documentary Film Movement and in feature films. The book was commissioned from me by the William Alwyn Foundation ten years ago, so it has been a long gestation period!

As if that isn't enough I have also begun an on-line art gallery: ORTOMS. Do have a look at what it has to offer. The gallery may be visited at ortoms.com

Theatre wise, a couple of weeks ago I saw an enjoyable SALAD DAYS at Southwold Summer Theatre. Thoroughly professional, as is all their work, if a little sedentary. One wanted the dancing in the park to the magic piano to be rather more uninhibited. At least the original score seemed to catch the feel of a new Elizabethan age, with the new young Queen on the throne. This week we saw the Southwold company deliver the old farce SEE HOW THEY RUN - absolutely excellent, a model of comedy-writing by the wonderful Philp King who also - perhaps a sometimes forgotten fact - wrote plays about gay issues (HOW ARE YOU JOHNNIE? and SERIOUS CHARGE) during the 1950s, when it was deeply unfashionable to do so. We will soon be visited in the locality by a touring version of THE WITCHES OF EASTWICK.

Not a frightfully exciting thought! Not when (as I am ) you might be listening to Roger Gage and Patricia Moore warbling 'Mary Ann' from CHRYSANTHEMUM!

Adrian Wright