So, Jake Thackray, then. If you know me as a folk singer, you'll hear me do one or two of his songs each week somewhere. If not, you may remember him delivering fiendishly difficult, awesomely literate and dead funny songs, in a laconic style and hunched over a classical guitar in the musical interludes of "Braden's Week" or "That's Life" in the '60's and '70's. Here's a far more erudite description lifted piecemeal (as opposed to wholemeal) from the website of Ian Burdon, fellow Thackray enthusiast and Cosmic Surfer :
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Jake Thackray is the lost genius of British songwriting. Sometimes referred to as a North Country Noel Coward (although Jake disliked that description, calling it lazy journalism) his voice, once heard, is either loved or hated but never forgotten. His jazz inflected nylon strung guitar style is all his own, counterpointing impeccably the lyrical brilliance of his songs. And oh ! the songs. Quintessentially English yet recognisably in the French tradition of George Brassens, they are quirky, bawdy, intelligent, sometimes poignant, mostly funny - uproariously funny. "The Jolly Captain", "Bantam Cock", "The Hair Of The Widow Of Bridlington", "The Blacksmith And The Toffeemaker", "Isobel Makes Love Upon National Monuments", "The Kiss", "Castleford Ladies' Magic Circle" and many, many more - including what ought to be the mantra for all Civil Servants such as myself, "The Bull"… Jake is recognisably his own man and an awkward one at that. He cannot possibly be mistaken for anyone else and expresses dissent simply by being unapologetically and uncompromisingly himself - and he writes approvingly of those who do likewise. Jake's genius lies in control, lyrical control within the musical and comic structure of the songs: the precision of the use of words - "interrupted" in "On Again ! On Again !", "moustache" in "It Was Only A Gypsy", "leap-frog" in "Castleford Ladies' Magic Circle" - and the imagery - the upright cloister toilet seat in "Sister Josephine", "the house was full of clothes pegs" in "It Was Only A Gypsy". And then there are the songs which go off into places where others fear to tread: aphrodisiacs for the decaying aristocracy ("Pass Milord The Rooster Juice"), a scathing attack on inappropriate and insensitive humour in "One Of Them", the pomp, injustice and grim truth about warfare in "The Remembrance", and the powers of sexual healing granted by a ploughman to his desperate paramours (where else could a hunchback get a cuddle...) in "The Ballad Of Billy Kershaw". Of course if you don't know the songs the impact cannot be gleaned from these bare words alone, but visiting Edmund Chattoe's page for the full texts will give more of an idea. Even better seek out the songs and have a listen. |
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Right : this is a page about Jake Thackray, and how over the last three or four years I've become involved with an internet group called The Jake Thackray Project, who aim to make official Jake recordings more widely available, to document Jake's life and works, and to perform Jake's songs to as many people who will listen. I originally encountered Jake Thackray's material while he was the musical interlude on Esther Rantzen's "That's Life" in the '70's and I was greatly amused and impressed enough to buy a 20-track compilation lp called "The Very Best Of Jake Thackray". |
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I wasn't yet playing guitar at the time, but it wasn't long before I knew all the words, and after I'd taken up bass, discovered live folk music and bought myself my classical, I was taken by friends Gay and Ami to see Jake play in the Grimstocks Folk Club in Water Orton. I was so struck by Jake's musical skill and humour that I began to learn how to play some of Jake's songs on my new guitar, eventually leading me to my debut "singing" performance of "The Blacksmith And The Toffeemaker" on Tuesday, 13th September, 1983 in "The Royal Exchange" where I was regularly playing session bass. |
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I eventually saw Jake play another couple of times, and spoke to him at length in the interval of his gig at a folk club in Coventry. By then I was doing a dozen or so of his songs, and was getting some impression of his songwriting greatness and artistry : consequently I was overawed and as nervous as an overawed nervous thing to say the least, but found him an understanding, self-effacing and likeable bloke, as well as 18 feet tall with hands so big that he was clearly designed to play the guitar better than me. Jake seemed oddly honoured that someone else would want to sing his songs and encouraged me to do so. |
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During Jake's
career he was constantly seen performing at town halls and
folk clubs all over the country, and made seven studio and
live albums, containing songs all of the same quality in
terms of humour, wry observation, poetic command of the
English language and downright difficulty to play. And none
of his plastic LPs ever made it to the light of day as CDs
at all, which is pretty criminal really. |
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Edmund's site is a treasure trove of Jake's lyrics, and remains still the definitive repository for album covers, artwork and detailed information about recordings and concerts : there is not a person involved in the events that follow who does not owe Edmund Chattoe an immeasurable debt. There were several song lyrics that Edmund hadn't got round to annotating, and as by then I was regularly singing 30 or so Jake songs, I nailed my colours to the mast by contributing lyrics and chords to the site, and kindly got credited by Edmund as a contributor. It would also have been via Edmund's site that I found there was a small Jake-related chat group on the BBC's "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy" (H2G2) site too. |
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Sarah had been inspired to ask Edmund for his contributors' contact details with a view to setting up a Jake Thackray discussion group. We all had a chat about the aims of the group : we wanted to get Jake's music heard again, either on the radio or performing the songs ourselves, to make the chords and lyrics more widely available , and crucially to contact Jake Thackray or EMI and see if we can pressure or persuade them to get some of Jake's back catalogue released in the way that Pete Atkin's discussion group were so successful. |
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Sarah had been inspired to ask Edmund for his contributors' contact details with a view to setting up a Jake Thackray discussion group. We all had a chat about the aims of the group : we wanted to get Jake's music heard again, either on the radio or performing the songs ourselves, to make the chords and lyrics more widely available , and crucially to contact Jake Thackray or EMI and see if we can pressure or persuade them to get some of Jake's back catalogue released in the way that Pete Atkin's discussion group were so successful. |
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There was by then one solitary EMI/Ideal Jake Thackray Greatest Hits CD called "Lah Di Dah" available (as it is still) with 20 obvious songs on - "The Jolly Captain", "Bantam Cock", "Ulysses", "Isobel Makes Love Upon National Monuments" etc, but there remained more than 50 other songs you'd never have heard unless a) you'd got the original 1970's plastic LPs and a working record deck or b) you'd heard someone like me sing them to you ! At the time, Jake was retired from performing, but still alive and living in Monmouthshire : and the idea was that Jake wouldn't have had any royalties for record sales since 1981 and wouldn't have any regular income from playing any more, and it would have been good for him to get some recognition, some cash, have his songs heard again and (maybe) get his stuff exposed to the wider audience he deserved |
An internet chat group was set up to foster the project's discussion and organisation, on Topica, and we began to annotate, transcribe and tab Jake's songs to allow other people to learn to play them, which were initially stored on a Yahoo file-sharing site. "The Jake Thackray Project" is really all of us - anyone who ventures into the world of Jake at Topica, Yahoo or on this site. The work of The Project is carried out by so many people it would be to difficult to thank them all here, and any one omission would be a dreadful thing for anyone to have been responsible for. There are people who have done much ground-work in the past, and to them we owe a great debt.
We discovered in the course of chatting that several people on the group had lots of interesting contacts and abilities ! There were professional CD mixers and producers, sleeve artists, legal people, people with contacts at EMI, one guy who knew a "Forensic Audiologist", a professional sound man who helps the Home Office clean up surveillance tapes and videos (!) which was later to become an invaluable asset… : and Sarah knew Jake's address and wrote to him to let him know what we were up to, to get his blessing or at least his lack of objection.
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The upshot was that, negotiating with EMI via one of our members, they officially proposed a licence for us to privately manufacture a 2 CD set of almost all of the remaining Jake Thackray songs which were not on the "official" Greatest Hits CD : the only snag being that they didn't have the original masters and we'd have to reclaim them ourselves. So loads of members of the group contributed radio recordings, mint condition original LPs, etc, which were ferried around the country, posted in huge padded envelopes, or passed hand to hand in folk clubs : and we began to assemble "The Jake Thackray Project" CD. |
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And then, of course, it's Christmas Eve 2002, and Jake passes on. It was, after such a year of successes, an unexpected shock to us all. And at the very least, it was tragic and ironic in the extreme that he never saw or benefited from the renewed interest in his work : we have no way of knowing whether he ever heard the copy of his own CD that we gave him, or whether he just looked at it, shook his head with genuine modesty and just popped it on the mantlepiece. |
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However, working closely with Jake's friend Ralph McTell, we are playing an integral part in sorting out Jake's copyright issues which will benefit his widow and children and will, in time, ease the release of new recordings. All profits from the sales of "The Jake Thackray Project" CDs were passed to Jake's estate, and we set up a "Book of Condolence" after Jake's death, which now consists of three volumes. These have all been printed out and sent to Jake's widow, Sheila, and the entries are still coming in - if you would like to contribute, click here. We have also donated many original vinyl recordings to Sheila as she didn't have any of her own. |
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Meanwhile, EMI had already granted us permission to produce 100 more "Project" CD's, seeing the interest in his music we had stirred, and, planned before but eventually following Jake's death, EMI released two more Jake compilation CDs, one of which is still available, and as I type three more CDs of Jake playing live are newly available for purchase too. There has even been a stage musical written, "Sister Josephine Kicks The Habit", based around the bizarre and unusual characters found in Jake's songs, which is touring the country as of 2005. |
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With the aim of consolidating, and maximising storage and public access to the new wealth of Jake-related information, Gordon Tennent set up http://www.jakethackray.co.uk and thus became the latest in a long list of invaluable Project members, enabling more and more people to access Jake's work and thus considerably furthering the aims of the Project. JT(dot)co(dot)uk now comprises regular news from The Jake Thackray Project, Jake's biographical details, an LP and CD discography, song lyrics, guitar tabs, song introductions, a media archive, television and radio appearances, anecdotes and recollections concerning Jake, a discussion forum and a FAQ page. |
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Finally, we began to hold regular musical gatherings and concerts, beginning with an official Jake's Wake at York, April 2003, and continuing with events at the Woolwich Tramshed in November 2003, The Wirral in March 2004, Torrington in September 2004, Knutsford in February 2005, Leeds in June 2005 and Edinburgh in September 2005. Some of these events are aimed at our community - friends having fun and enjoying singing and hearing the songs of Jake, and these usually have non-Jake fans in attendance who are turned on to his songs. Others are aimed at a wider audience and we have introduced many new people to the genius of Jake. |
