London - one of the oldest and greatest cities in the world.
BIG BEN CHIMES
Home of beggars, poets,
queens and kings, where I grew up and learned my music.
But what is the music of London? And what are the songs of London?
And what, if anything, is the sound of London?
Please now join me on a knees-up of discovery of London music.
Let's hear your childhood songs.
Let's hear the dark meaning behind those apparently-harmless nursery rhymes.
BELL CONTINUES TO CHIME
Let's hear the old songs we sang around the piano with Nan.
Let's hear the even older songs that Nan sang at the public executions.
Let's uncover how skiffle, punk
and even the blues have their roots in London.
Now, let's consider, where should we begin?
We could start here.
Miles upstream from the lovely Westminster chimes,
up there at The Nore.
We're now at the Gravesend Reach and anybody who would have invaded,
the Romans, the Danes, the lot, they would have come up to London,
trying to nick our women, nick our jobs and listen to our songs.
So perhaps my first question should be,
what is the earliest recorded music?
Well, an elderly professor at Oxford one night told me
that the earliest recorded music was from the Roman times.
Apparently, the Roman potter,
perhaps in old Londinium, in the marketplace,
would sign his vase when he'd finished it as it was rotating
by scoring the inside of it.
When you placed the vase back together, place it on the machinery,
put the needle in, spin it, Bob's your uncle,
you're hearing the lovely sound of the Londinium Roman market.
Sadly, there's no actual evidence of this working anywhere.
MUSIC: "London Calling" by The Clash
# London calling and I
# I live in the river... #
But the Romans did land here in London 2,000 years ago,
attracted by the low interest rates,
cheap slaves and the narrowness of the river,
because they could cross the river here.
And one of the best-known songs about London,
known throughout the world, is about that crossing.
# London Bridge is falling down
# Falling down, falling down
# London Bridge is falling down
# My fair lady
# Take a key and lock her up
# Lock her up, lock her up
# Take a key and lock her up
# My fair lady
# Build it up with wood and clay
# Wood and clay, wood and clay
# Build it up with wood and clay
# My fair lady
# Build it up with iron and steel
# Iron and steel, iron and steel
# Build it up with iron and steel
# My fair lady
# Iron and steel will bend and bow
# Bend and bow, bend and bow
# Iron and steel will bend and bow
# My fair lady. #
The church of St Magnus the Martyr, rebuilt after the Great Fire,
standing at the portal of Old London Bridge.
Children have innocently sung
London Bridge Is Falling Down for centuries,
blissfully unaware of the sinister suggestion that the "my fair lady"
refers to the body of a young virgin buried in the ancient foundations
to bless what was to become the most famous bridge on earth.
The medieval square mile had almost 100 churches and 80,000 people.
It's hard to know what music they heard
but the thing I am now using to communicate with you
was being invented by them - the English language.
And medieval Londoners would have heard the lot -
tavern songs, Lollard hymns,
but most of all, the ringing of bells.
The oldest bells we've still got in London date to about 1510
but we know there were bells around for several centuries before that
and I think probably easily, from the point of the Battle of Hastings.
BELLS CHIME
You had some bells that were known as saints or holy bells,
and they were used to call people to worship,
but then most towers used to have a collection of bells
that were just rung for celebration.
BELL CHIMES
As I walk through the city today, the one sound that hasn't changed
might well be those bells.
Because the bells, that's the same sound...
would I be right in thinking? That's right. If you think about it,
what other sounds are there in the city of London today
that you would have heard 100 years ago, 200 years ago and 300 years ago?
Bells have been there throughout the centuries.
BELL CHIMES
50 years ago, there's children playing in the street,
occasionally the dog barking,
the whining gearbox of a Wolseley as it cranked its way down the road.
Now, that's gone. No children play in the street.
Everything else has changed, except the bells. Shall I ring the big one?
Yes. That's the one everybody enjoys. It's on the money.
So I'm pulling it off.
BELL CHIMES
Bells told an illiterate population everything -
When there was a coronation, a fire, a plague,
a wedding, a funeral or simply the time of day.
MUSIC: "Parklife" by Blur
I've whipped out my appropriately named Austin Westminster
to visit an artist who's sung about modern life
and is now using bells to evoke an Elizabethan London
for his new song cycle, Dr Dee.
The girls and boys...
You're the only man that I know...
and I have great admiration for any man that has properly cast bells
with the inscriptions... Where did you get the inscriptions from?
I found them in a book I bought down the Portobello Road.
Will you hang them?
At one point I sort of had
delusions of grandeur, and thought I could get
the whole chromatic scale in bells this size.
Oh, my word. You would have to have a girder the size of...
Well, I thought if I could construct them
on the top of the...of this building, you know, and have...
as the Westway is just there and we have ravens,
I thought on stormy nights I could be up there in my cape,
ringing the bells. Yeah. Lovely.
Ravens flying around me, and sirens on the Westway.
But that's the sound of London.
How do you think the sound of London has changed? That is the old sound.
That's one of the ways I channel it.
Through the sounds of the bells of the churches? What I enjoy doing
is being in the past and the present simultaneously.
I like that.
I think that's what I love about London,
is, you know, its monumental history.
# The broken heart
# The blackbird sings
# And the moon, it laughs
# As war begins
# Dance... #
FLUTE PLAYS
I went back to the sort of things
that you would imagine people would have played then,
well, people did play then, like lutes and recorders and sackbuts.
Rackets. Yes.
I've got a few rackets, actually. Nice. Yeah.
# Hurricane spit and tornado
# Growl over London today... #
Going back to the sound of London, where do you think it's all going?
I hear a lot of the sounds of London
in the nether regions around Radio Four, late at night.
There's a lot of pirate activity.
DUBSTEP MUSIC
So the exciting thing is to identify the essence,
which, in its way, is in something like that bell,
and cook something new up. Yes. Yeah.
It is impossible to hear the earliest tunes of London.
They weren't recorded.
So to find out about the first songs to be sung in modern English,
I'm visiting this unassuming building off Primrose Hill, which houses
the world's greatest collection of English folk music and dance.
Chief librarian Malcolm Taylor
has a room full of rare documents
gathered by the Edwardian song collector Cecil Sharp.
Where do I begin, if I'm looking for the music of London?
This is the Folk Music Society, but am I in the right place to start?
The first thing you have to remember about the collectors of folk music
was that they saw the towns and cities as corrupting places.
They wanted to preserve something they thought was dying out
so they wanted to write it down and preserve it and study it.
At the same time, they wanted to use it
to try and create a national identity for the music.
In other words, it's pure when it's in the country, being handed down,
that's unchanged? It's like this rural idyll they were looking for.
But once it gets to the city, people are hearing music-hall songs
and that's all getting mashed up. It's getting mashed up, but also,
the concert halls were being swamped by German and Austrian music
and what have you. Classical music? Classical music.
They did go to some of the workhouses,
like Sharp collected in the Marylebone workhouse in London.
He had over 50, sort of, informants in there
but the people in the workhouses,
they're coming in off the land, a lot of them
and a lot of emigrants coming in ended up in the workhouses,
bringing their traditions with them, so the whole thing is a melting pot.
The songs were clearly in London,
because they were printed in their thousands
and they were all printed in the most dangerous areas
because these were for the voices from below,
these were for the people.
What the poor people of London wanted in their music
wasn't pure or idyllic.
They revelled in songs about sex, love,
crime, corruption, misbehaviour and death.
These graphic tunes were broadside ballads.
A particularly dark spot where these songs were sung
is now the perfectly harmless traffic intersection at Marble Arch,
but was originally the gruesome location of Old Tyburn Gallows,
as early music expert Lucie Skeaping explains.
You'd obviously go to where the crowds were
and there were ballad peddlers at places like Bartholomew Fair,
street markets, all the rest of it,
but one place you would be sure to find a good crowd
who would hopefully listen to you sing and then buy a ballad
would be at a public execution.
A typical kind of song you might sing and indeed sell at a hanging
would be a song about the prisoner...
Yes. ..sometimes purporting to be his last words.
So you could, later that night, go to the pub and sing,
"Oh, this is what...Fred sang just before they hung him"?
Yes, some sort of celebrity, a highwayman or something.
# I am a poor prisoner, condemned to die
# Oh, woe is me for my great folly
# Fast fettered in irons
# In place where I lie
# Be warned, young wantons, hemp passeth green holly
# In honour of my birthday then
# I robbed in bravery 19 men
# Lord Jesus receive me, with mercy relieve me
# Receive, O sweet Saviour, my Spirit to thee. #
Buy one for the little baby. A lovely present for him.
CHOIR SINGS, CROWD CLAMOURS
Here's the spot. Oh, my God! This is the very spot, right?
"The site of Tyburn Tree."
It's an awful idea to think they called it a tree, because of course
it was a triple gallows, I think,
so you're going to get triple your money's worth if you came to watch
because three people could be hanged at once.
Of course, this wasn't London in the old days.
Tyburn was a village some four miles or so outside London,
which of course was the City of London,
so the prisoners from, say, Newgate Jail would be brought in a cart...
It'll be your turn next! Goodbye!
..stopping at various pubs to get more and more drunk,
egged on by people who would maybe follow the cart
and finally end up at Tyburn.
# When on the ladder you do me view
# Think I am nearer Heaven than you
# Lord Jesus receive me, with mercy relieve me
# Receive, O sweet Saviour, my Spirit to thee. #
May God bless all my friends!
And may my enemies be hanged as I am.
# We would go on loving in the same old way... #
The streets of London have always been paved with buskers,
singing for the shiny shillings in your pocket.
# If those lips could only speak
# And those eyes could only see... #
In the 18th century, London was growing fast.
The population was now well over half a million
and the people had a huge appetite for broadside ballads.
I'm meeting Professor Vic Gammon at Seven Dials in Covent Garden,
one of the most dangerous and wicked areas of old London,
where they were printed, sold and sung.
You know, law enforcement people
would be rather trepidacious about coming into this area.
It had that reputation. Lots of Irish immigrants here
as well as people coming in from the countryside
in England and so on. It's full of noises, it's full of workshops,
it's full of people doing things, printing presses, hammering,
people selling their wares on the streets, all sorts of street traders
and the ballad singers.
# Quoth John to Joan, wilt thou have me?
# I prithee thou wilt and I'se marry with thee... #
They would sing the song, and I would go past
and if I liked what they were singing, I'd listen to it,
learn it by ear... Yes. ..and then take the music away,
so that was the way you did it, by ear? You'd take the words away.
It would sometimes say "to the tune of"
and it might be a very popular tune,
Fortune My Foe, Greensleeves, one of those well-known ballad tunes,
so you got lots more sets of words than you ever have tunes, usually.
These sheets are sold in their thousands. They're not minor things.
Some of the most important early printing
in terms of volume are ballad sheets.
# I's under yon broad oak will lie
# Upon my back to see the sky... #
London remains the biggest centre of production, and this part of London,
not just London, this part of London,
the Seven Dials, Monmouth Court, Monmouth Street,
foreign visitors who had come here talk about, you know,
almost every corner, there is a ballad singer on it.
Much more than say, buskers today.
You certainly get writers saying the place is infested,
that's the word they use, infested with ballad singers.
# Then say me Joan, say me Joan, will that not do...
# I've corn and hay in the barn hard by...
# I cannot come every day to woo...
# And three fat hogs pent up in the sty...
# As under yon broad oak I lie... #
Cecil Sharp was the most prolific collector.
He copied down nearly 5,000 tunes in England and North America,
which is a great story in itself, because when he goes to America,
he finds the British ballads, many of which have died out here,
and they're alive in the Appalachian Mountains.
If you thought the roots of the blues were purely African-American,
think again. The blues are sung in English, and extraordinarily,
some of the songs began here in London
before they crossed the Atlantic.
# I went down to St James infirmary
# Saw my baby there
# Decked out on a long white table... #
So here we are in old St James's in London,
and one of the songs I'm very interested in,
which I believe originates in 18th-century London,
is the St James Infirmary Blues.
Tell us about that song, what you know of it.
# To the St James infirmary... #
It started off as an old ballad, a couple of hundred years old,
and then it travelled to Virginia,
where it was collected in 1941 by Alan Lomax
from a woman called Texas Gladden
and then, my particular version,
the version I sing at the moment, went through Mama Cass
and has come back to me and I've sort of,
me and a band called Mawkin from Essex have kind of re-anglicised it
so it's gone full circle. And taken it back to its roots,
which is where the St James Infirmary hospital was, right here.
And here we are. So what was the person in the St James Hospital,
what was he being treated for?
Syphilis. Nice.
Good old folk music disease.
Well, I suppose that's part of folk music. What I think is great
is the way you get a song like that, then you see it and you make it new.
That's what I think is brilliant about you, but what's great is,
it's like it comes from London, it goes to the Appalachians,
it turns into the blues, and then it comes all the way back...
Oh, you've gone. It comes all the way back to here.
So there it is, there's St James's Palace.
There are some modern people in the street
but let's go back to 18th-century London.
# When I was a young girl
# I used to seek pleasure
# When I was a young girl
# I used to drink ale
# Then it was out of the ale house
# And into the jailhouse
# Right out of the barroom
# And into my grave
# And had he but told me
# Before he disowned me
# Had he but told me of it in time
# I could have got pills
# And salt of white mercury
# But now I'm just a young girl
# Cut down in my prime. #
BIG BEN CHIMES
The evocative chimes of Big Ben, the Westminster chimes.
That little tune that I mentioned earlier
which had been written by an incredibly famous German immigrant.
Let's go up to the top of the tower
and meet Paul Roberson and find out more.
Everyone knows that tune,
everybody has grown up with that tune in London. That's right.
Everybody in Britain has grown up with that tune.
It is part of the signature of the sound of London.
But the tune, the chimes, that comes...
really, that's associated with a very famous composer, isn't it?
The chimes were composed on the basis of four notes from Handel's Messiah,
the four notes after the Hallelujah Chorus,
I Know My Redeemer Liveth.
The chime tune is based on that.
So the most famous, really, chimes in the world
were written by Handel in London, and it has a great resonance
for Londoners, doesn't it? And lots of people around the world.
We have had people up in the belfry and they're in tears...
MECHANISM CLATTERS
It's meant to do that. Yeah? Good.
We have had people up in the belfry, virtually in tears
because it just means so much to them.
Did it stop at any point? Have the chimes had to be stopped?
They were stopped all through the First World War
as at the time, they were frightened
that Zeppelins would be able to hear it and would aim for London.
During the Second World War,
they were stopped for a little while
because when the chimes were being transmitted on the radio,
people listening to the radio could hear the bombs being dropped
and air raid sirens going off and this sort of thing,
and they thought that was too distressing,
so they actually transmitted a gramophone record playing.
SOUND OF BIG BEN STRIKING
But it caused such an outroar,
because people thought that Big Ben had actually been destroyed
and that's why they were transmitting this gramophone record,
so in the end, they decided they would carry on transmitting live,
even though you could hear this racket going on in the background.
We are interrupting our programme to bring you a newsflash.
People felt that while Big Ben was still striking,
London was still standing.
Yeah, and the chimes, and the Westminster chimes,
chiming with Handel's tune at the beginning, beautiful little tune.
Composed by a German. Exactly, yes, so there we are. Quite so.
# London pride has been handed down to us
# London pride is a flower that's free
# London pride means our own dear town to us
# And our pride it forever will be. #
Handel wrote The Messiah in London
100 years before one of its phrases was sampled for the bells
of this mighty clock in the 1850s.
Let's take time out for a moment
to reflect that great music wasn't only coming from the streets.
It was also being commissioned for the churches and for the court.
HE PLAYS THE WESTMINSTER CHIMES ON HARPSICHORD
1723.
Not the time, but the year, when Handel made this his home in London.
Yes, 25 Brook Street. So this is were Handel lived.
What a genius he was and what a lovely house for him to live in.
There's fielded panelling, nice walnut furniture,
and portraits here of some of the great musicians that he worked with,
many of whom were, like himself, immigrants into London.
For instance, here - Faustina,
the great Italian opera singer who moved over here,
and over here, a rather strange fellow at the harpsichord.
HE SEGUES INTO A JAZZY TUNE
It's in this room that Handel would have written lots of his music,
and at the same time he was trying to write something for the state
or another opera or something great, there was a constant din going on
in the street out there in 18th-century London.
This picture rather beautifully depicts that type of noise.
Come a little bit closer,
and you can actually hear some of the sounds of 18th-century London
as we observe these Hogarthian grotesques
annoying this poor man here, one of Handel's friends, a violinist.
So the violinist is looking out, getting crosser and crosser
because here, a ballad singer is screaming right under his window.
Her baby is crying. A child is playing with a rattle.
A really annoying child is having a piss right outside the front door.
Another child is playing his drum. Thanks very much, indeed.
A busker is right outside your window with his pipe.
One of the criers of London
is hollering her wares all over the way here.
Another of crier of London with a bell there,
I think this looks like a fishmonger.
There's a man sharpening a knife.
Can you think how annoying that would be? And somebody else here,
a huntsman blowing his horn as he comes through London,
some drunken revellers shouting out,
cats shouting on the roof, and all Handel's trying to do
is write the Messiah, thank you very much. So why don't you shut up!
A few hundred years later... MOTORBIKE PASSES
..still pretty noisy in the streets of London.
Another strange thing is this.
In the house next door to Handel...
..Jimi Hendrix lived for a brief while.
Yes, all the migrant musicians move in around here.
MUSIC: "Hallelujah Chorus"
MUSIC: "Cool For Cats" by Squeeze
The sounds of London have often been made by immigrants as well as locals
and the songs are often wary of the big bad city
inhabited by a sinful people.
By the beginning of the 19th century London was known as
the wickedest city on earth,
and had a population of over a million.
# Up London city I made my way
# Up Cheapside I chanced to stray
# Where a fair pretty maid I there did meet
# And I greeted her with kisses sweet
# I was up to the rigs, down to the jigs
# Up to the rigs of London town
# Up to the rigs, down to the jigs
# Up to the rigs of London town
# She took me to some house of sin
# And boldly then she entered in
# Loudly for supper she did call
# Thinking that I would pay for it all
# I was up to the rigs
# Down to the jigs
# Up to the rigs of London town
# I was up to the rigs
# Down to the jigs
# Up to the rigs
# I searched her pockets and there I found
# A silver snuff-box and ten pound
# A golden watch and a diamond ring
# So I took the lot and locked her in
# Up to the rigs, down to the jigs Up to the rigs of London town
# Up to the rigs, down to the jigs Up to the rigs of London town. #
JOOLS CLAPS
That was top of the range. Spiers and Boden, that was so beautiful.
What a lovely song. Where does that song come from?
Well, it's an old folk song, probably started off as a music hall song,
maybe late 19th-century, and that particular version
was collected from a gentleman called Charger Sammons.
Yes, nice name. Yes, very nice name,
but it was quite widely sung all over the place. I think people like to...
About London and for Londoners? Yeah, people like to hear stories
about how vile and despicable the people of London were
so that was a good one for that.
Great. That's exactly the sort of thing I'm after. Thanks. See you.
By the mid-19th-century, London's great artists and singers
were no longer to be heard on the streets. They'd moved indoors
to fill the newly built palaces for popular entertainment -
the music hall.
'Ladies and gentlemen, I'm delighted to introduce
'the one and only Little Titch.'
Down here, this is one of the great
last bastions of music hall, probably, in the country,
certainly in London.
Wilton's Music Hall.
1858, for crying out loud,
and it's now the oldest music hall, I believe, in the world.
Fantastic. When were the very first music halls? About that time?
Round about 1840 onwards.
In fact, in the 1870's, which was after this place closed,
there were 300 music halls in London alone.
What were the sort of people who came to see the stuff then?
It would have been mostly people connected with the sea,
because the docks is just over there.
And it would be mostly sailors,
who'd been at sea for six months and saved all their money.
They'd come in here, pockets full of money,
where they'd be sung to, drunk to
and their every whim catered for! Yes! You know!
This is the place where Champagne Charlie was first...
George Leybourne is purported to have first sung Champagne Charlie
on this stage,
which is a song really that covers the whole period of music hall.
You just hear that song once -
# Champagne Charlie is my name. #
And you can hear the handsome cab going by, can't you?
It's a great song! And he's purported to have first sung it here.
Let's go and have a look. Shall we see if he's still there?
Let's have a look.
Music hall doyen, Roy Hudd, has introduced me to a fantastic
and rare song of the period, While London's Fast Asleep.
That was a song that was written by a man called Harry Dacre.
Harry Dacre's claim to fame was he wrote great,
happy music hall love songs like Daisy Daisy Give Me Your Answer Do,
I'll Be Your Sweetheart - songs like that.
This was a song, goodness knows what he had seen,
but he had must have come back and had a few one night
and thought, "I'll tell you the truth in the song,"
because they all knocked London.
A lot of the early songs knocked London.
MELODIC PIANO TUNE
# The greatest city of the world is London
# At least that's what the wealthy people say
# It's very nice for some
# What always gets the plum
# I only get what people throw away
# It's very nice for starving boys in winter
# It's very nice the camping out at night
# A doorstep for your bed
# Another for your head
# Because you haven't sold your bloomin' lights
# While London sleeps
# And all the lamps
# Are gleaming
# Millions of her people
# Now lie sweetly dreaming
# Some have no homes
# And all their sorrows weep
# Others laugh and play the game
# While London's fast asleep. #
APPLAUSE
By the early 20th century, the population had swollen
to six million and the city was absorbing its surrounding villages.
Its music hall performers had become the first working-class popstars
and their songs were sung by everyone.
WHISTLING
A lot of the songs I knew from my dad's shaving.
When my dad shaved, it was quite a rigmarole.
In those houses you didn't have bathrooms
and you had to get some hot water.
He'd spend a lot of time and he'd sing.
# We all came into this world
# With nothing no clothes to wear. #
And he'd sing bits and pieces of songs like that would come up.
# Give me a London girl every time. #
In the house, there would be a fair amount of old-time singing.
The old girl who lived on the top floor and her husband,
we used to like having little sings,
while we played cards, for example.
The whole feeling of the music hall is community.
# If you saw our little back yard
# What a pretty spot, you'd cry
# It's a picture of a sunny summer day with the turnip tops
# And cabbages what people doesn't buy well I'll make it on a Sunday
# Look all gay
# Course the neighbours thinks I grows 'em
# And you'd fancy you're in Kent
# Or at Epsom if you gaze into the mews
# It's a wonder that the landlord doesn't want to raise the rent
# Just because we got such nobby distant views
# What views! Cos it really is a very pretty garden
# And Chingford to the eastward might be seen
# With a ladder and some glasses you could see to Hackney Marshes
# If it wasn't for the houses in between. #
That was brilliant, if I may say so! Fantastic rendition!
It's a great song, it's a great song.
Anybody singing it would be...
It really is about the growth of London,
an enormous number of songs were about how London was creeping out.
At the turn-of-the-century, London was expanding enormously.
There used to be the wall went around the city of London
and you looked in and saw St Paul's in the city
and that was it from the hills going around.
Now, I think the M25 is the wall that goes round London,
and you look in and see the great big towers of Canary Wharf and everything.
If we were to update If It Wasn't For The 'Ouses In Between,
how do you think it would go?
# Cos it really is a very pretty garden
# And Hendon to the Northwoods might be seen
# Even if you was a dwarf you could see Canary Wharf
# If it wasn't for the houses in between. #
It's just a little... That's beautiful. Very Good. No!
# Lazy Sunday afternoon
# I've got no mind to worry... #
The great music hall performers of the early 20th century
were among the first artists able to record and sell their songs,
so we can still hear them on the radio...
# Here we all are... #
..with the help of the right person.
Broadcasting House,
built in the 1930's, the iconic home of BBC.
For years music could be broadcast
from London to the whole world from here.
Yes, from London to the whole world. And now in this building,
one of the greatest broadcasters
the BBC has, is making his show.
Danny Baker knows about all kinds of London music...
Here we go!
..but is an expert on the last of the music hall artists,
like Leslie Sarony and Max Miller.
DANNY WHISTLES
BOTH: Oi!
# How you getting on? #
HE WHISTLES
Oi! # How you getting on? #
HE MOUTHS: # God love 'em, crikey, cor blimey
# You'd hear Mrs Mippin remark
# I scrub and I rub and I do not cumbub
# Just to sit in the soot as it's dark. #
# Look at the cawfin
# Bloomin' great handles
# Ain't it grand to be blooming well dead. #
There's so many great lines in this.
# Look at me brother
# Bloomin' cigar on
# Ain't it grand to be bloomin' well dead. #
You know there's a follow-up, it's on here -
Three Cheers For The Undertaker.
RAUCOUS LAUGHTER
Three Cheers For The Undertaker. So funny!
Just as the title! I know!
That is a great title.
Three Cheers For The Undertaker!
# Umper, umper, stick it up your jumper
# Tra-la-la-la-la. #
It was banned by the BBC, Umper Umper Stick It Up Your Jumper.
People say Oompa Oompa Stick It Up Your Jumper, but the original song
which is that, was the first song to get banned by the BBC.
Big Cockney song. Because Umper was like...?
No, stick it up your jumper. You couldn't say things like that!
RAUCOUS LAUGHTER
# You say you cannot sleep at night Your bed is no temptation
# Say the word and marry me
# And I'll be your salvation
# I'll take your Horlicks up to bed
# And stop your night's starvation... #
HE MOUTHS
Bring the band on! Bring the band on!
Great! What joy.
That's beautiful. You better get in and do your radio programme.
I've got ten minutes yet. Literally there's no preparation, none.
LAUGHTER
We're capturing this on film. No, that's all right. Everyone knows it.
Eight minutes and he just couldn't care less.
SONG: "The Lambeth Walk"
Oi! Oi! Beautifully done. Lovely, lovely.
Lovely sound that, John. How would you describe that? Gorgeous.
Well, it's beautiful, beautiful,
but it's not really characteristic of the London I knew.
We didn't have these little organs, we used to have...
The barrel organ we had was really a street piano.
You turn a handle and you activate the equivalent of a piano key
banging the string.
And that had a different sound.
And what sort of other sounds?
The sound on my street? Well, the Salvation Army on a Sunday.
Kids singing, I mean, the street was a playground.
And all the girls in the street would be skipping.
Skipping sounds or the games that were played in the street
had lots of noise.
# Teddy bear teddy bear switch off the light
# Teddy bear teddy bear say good night... #
Cricket, football, we would play in the street. The sounds of kids.
# Our princess
# There was a lovely princess long long ago... #
# Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner.
# That I love London so... #
I've come to a Victorian school in the east end to listen to
a sound that used to be common on the street of London,
but is now only heard in the playground.
# Bunny got shot by the UFO
# Bunny got shot by the UFO. #
# London's burning, London's burning, come quickly, come quickly.
# London's burning, London's burning... #
Children used to play perfectly harmless singing games
on the street, even though the meaning of the old songs
was often about death, destruction, disease and execution.
# It's the end with fire, fire... #
Things like London's Burning, London Bridge Is Falling Down,
Ring A Ring O' Roses, that sort of thing,
they would tend to be done by nursery level now.
The older children like this wouldn't do that sort of thing.
What they do more is clapping rhymes
and sort of dance routines with clapping.
I suppose the sound of the street itself is different so the children
that play in the playground, they don't play on the street so much?
Yeah, that's the major change in the last 50 years.
Children don't play in the street any more. We did, I did as a child.
Nowadays, for various reasons, we don't play in the street.
So the sound of the street has changed, considerably.
After the First World War, many things changed.
London was now home to nearly 8 million people,
many of whom were listening to a music that was more international.
The London dance bands of the 1930S
had their own unique take on American swing.
The swinging London of the 1930s,
that must have been a pretty exciting time.
Who was your favourite singer of that period?
Oh, my favourite singer, there's only one singer from that period,
that was Al Bowlly, the one voice, isn't it?
That everyone immediately recognised.
I'm sure Dennis Potter did him
a big favour in bringing him back with Pennies From Heaven.
# Your poise, your pose, that cute fantastic nose
# You're mighty like a knock out
# You're mighty like a rose.
# I'm sold, I'm hooked... #
When Al Bowlly got up to sing and he was conducting the band,
he'd sing a line and he'd turn away on an ordinary love song
and tears would be streaming down his face.
God, did he know how to sell a song!
Music hall was based totally in London and they were the ones who
sang all the songs about the place where all music halls where.
When it got to the big bands of the '30s it was much more,
from all over America particularly, the songs.
# London is the place for me
# London this lovely city
# You can go to France or America
# India, Asia or Australia... #
Following World War II, another immigrant sound arrived in London
this time on a ship from Jamaica.
It landed at Tilbury Docks on 22nd June 1948.
This is where the Empire Windrush docked with 500 immigrants on board.
The beginning of a process that would change
the soundscape of London forever.
Arrivals at Tilbury, the Empire Windrush brings to Britain
500 Jamaicans, many are ex-servicemen who know England.
They served this country well.
In Jamaica, they couldn't find work.
Discouraged but full of hope, they sailed for Britain.
Citizens of the British Empire
coming to the mother country with good intent.
So the Windrush ship arrives here, everybody's looking forward
to a super new life in lovely London town
and on that ship was one of the great masters of calypso music.
Lord Kitchener.
Lord Kitchener,
now I'm told you are really the king of calypso singers, is that right?
Yes, that's true. Will you sing? Right now? Yes.
# London...is the place for me. Doom doom doom.
# London...this lovely city...
# You can go to France or America, India, Asia or Australia
# but you must come back to London city
# Doom doom doom
# I've been travelling the countries years ago
# But this is the place I wanted to know, darling London
# This is the place for me. #
So, you've just got off the ship, you've arrived,
"Hello, London. Here I am." Hang on a minute, it's the customs.
If you have goods to declare, blah blah blah blah blah
pick up the telephone and await assistance.
Hello, I've just arrived and I want to report,
I think there were some people bringing in
some illicit ska and calypso rhythms
that are likely to influence the London music for years to come.
Thanks.
He said that'd be fine.
# London, that's the place for me... #
I'm off to see Sterling Betancourt, who optimistically arrived
from Trinidad in 1951 to play The Festival Of Britain.
The instrument he played had never been heard, or seen,
in London before.
We tried to give them a surprise
because we didn't paint the drums.
We had it all rustic and rusty like garbage.
Yeah, yeah?
As...a surprise. You know?
So when the people saw us...
taking all these rusty old drums
they were laughing.
They were saying,
where are they going with these dustbins?
They called us dustbin boys.
But when we finished playing our first tune,
everybody was applauding and it was such a surprise.
They even said it was black magic because they couldn't understand
how you can get music from these old rusty drums.
When you first got to England, what was England like when you arrived?
Was it how you expected it was going to be,
or what did you think it was going to be and what was it like?
No, no, I thought, "England is such a bright lovely place,"
but when we arrived, it was all dark and gloomy and grey.
And all the bombed out sites.
I suppose all the musicians are drawn to London
because there's the work and everything's there... That's right.
And in Archer Street every Monday,
they used to have a big crowd of musicians there.
Anybody who wants to get a musician for a job,
you go there on a Monday afternoon and the place is crowded.
People used to say, "What's happening there with all this crowd?"
But they see the people with the notebook, the musicians,
and say "I'm looking for a trumpeter." "I want a bass guitar,"
and everybody's going around. But now that don't happen.
Sterling was lucky. Like the rest of the country,
London was looking for some post-war fun and games.
Soho was now dancing to its own version of jazz, calypso
and Latin American rhythms.
This is one of the historically most important floors in London.
What is it, you're wondering? Is it part of Roman London? No.
Is it, perhaps, a very special part of Newgate Prison floor
that's been perfectly preserved? No.
Is it a parlour from Bluegate Fields
that's been perfectly cut out and kept?
No, it's none of these things. If we look carefully,
we will see that it is in fact a maple herringbone parquet floor,
beautifully laid here, and it's a dancefloor.
And it's the dancefloor of a place
that has particular significance for me - the 100 Club.
In the spring of 1957,
Humphrey Lyttelton was playing here at the 100 Club on this stage,
and the dancefloor was packed with young Londoners
all excited by the blues and jazz music.
It's a well-known fact that that music
can certainly arouse feelings in a person, perhaps of love and desire,
and that evening was no different.
Two young Londoners left this club,
aroused by the music and the dancing.
They went home, one thing led to another,
and then, nine months later, in January 1958,
I was born.
Thanks, Humph.
'It's London's Tin Pan Alley. Birthplace of melodies
'which have kept Britain singing in good times and in bad.
'Just 60 yards of plate glass windows,
'behind which a million new songs are being heard.'
For years, the centre of London song publishing had been Tin Pan Alley,
a short street within shouting distance of Seven Dials,
and the selling of Broadside Ballads hundreds of years before.
MUSIC: "Halfway to Paradise" by Bobby Vinton
In the late 1950s, its cosy atmosphere was shattered
by teenagers with addictions to skiffle, Cliff Richard,
coffee bars and American rock and roll.
Suddenly there was a new breed of young British talent
hoping to make it as pop stars
with the help of agents like Larry Parnes.
One true London voice in this new Americanised youth market
was Joe Brown.
This was the real hub of the music industry, really, in London.
And how about when you were with Larry Parnes and all those, sort of,
those first British London, the first London pop stars, isn't it?
I guess so, yeah.
# Let's go Let's go again, boys, yeah
# Ohh, guitar! #
So what about the sound of London?
How would you think of the sound of a London street? How was it then?
Was it different back then, the street?
I mean, I used to push a barrow round the East End of London.
You were a proper barrow boy? Yeah.
And so, would you have a call that you shouted out? What was it?
Er...
"All fresh winkles! Winkles all fresh!" Things like that.
Any other cries you'd have?
Can you remember any other ones that people would shout out?
Yeah, things like, "Shift that bloody barrow!"
And the newspaper sellers, I never knew what they...
what did they shout? I don't know what it was. Depends on the paper.
I remember it was, "Star News and Standard!"
Yeah, and there was... JOOLS SHOUTS INCOMPREHENSIBLY
Oh yeah, nobody knew what that was.
JOE SHOUTS INCOMPREHENSIBLY
Exactly! Better get one quick.
After you.
'Joe was one of the first British pop stars,
'but he'd grown up on the songs of the music hall.'
Yeah, that's a good 'un, yeah.
Yeah, OK, yeah.
# Oh, wotcher All the neighbours cry
# Who you going to meet, Bill? 'Ave you bought the street, Bill?
# Laugh, I thought I would have died
# I knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road. #
What a beautiful song. I love that song.
Where did you first hear the song? In your mum's pub?
Yeah, I lived in a pub in Plaistow, which is in the East End
and, I mean, we used to have a piano player come in there.
There was a whole family of 'em,
and they used to sing all them old songs.
And when I first started recording, that's the only music I knew.
So I was recording stuff that I'd heard in the pub, you know.
Only I didn't do the verses, just the choruses.
What sort of songs were they doing though, then?
For instance, this one.
You might not guess the song, but this is the verse.
# Well, you don't know who you're looking at
# Until you look at me
# I'm a bit of a nob, I am
# Belong to royalty
# And I shan't forget the day I married
# Dear old Widow Birch
# I was King of England as I toddled from the church
# Outside, the people all shouted "Hip hooray!" #
Hooray! Thank you.
# Said I, "Get down upon your knees"
# "It's Coronation Day"
# I'm Hen-er-ey the Eighth, I am
# Hen-er-ey the Eighth, I am, I am
# I got married to the widow next door
# She's been married seven times before
# Well, every one was an 'En-er-ey En-er-ey!
# Wouldn't have a Willie or a Sam
# I'm her eighth old man named Hen-er-ey
# Hen-er-ey the Eighth, I am. #
And it goes on and on, up and up and up, till only dogs can hear it.
We have revealed how some of the words of the old London songs
worked their way into the blues, and after the war in London,
it was going to work the other way around,
and the blues was going to work its way into London music.
People like Chris Barber, Humphrey Lyttelton, George Melly,
Ken Colyer, Alexis Korner, John Mayall, Stan Greig,
Cyril Davies, Jeff Beck, Eric Clapton,
Long John Baldry, the Rolling Stones,
would take the blues into London and make it into their own thing.
MUSIC: "Smokestack Lightning" by Manfred Mann
One of the many British blues bands formed in '60s London
was Manfred Mann, fronted by singer Paul Jones.
The band formed under various different names,
but in 1963 it was called the Blues Brothers.
And, there's another story,
we went to, we auditioned for EMI Records,
and they said, "We like the band but the name's stupid.
You'll never get anywhere with a name like the Blues Brothers."
# Smokestack lightning
# Shining just like gold... #
And what sort of places did you use to go in London
to hear or to perform in those early days?
The short answer to that question is the 100 Club. Yes.
It was still mostly jazz, but then most places were.
But they all began to have blues nights.
What are we talking, sort of early 1960s?
We're talking deep fog, actually.
I had a band in Oxford at the time,
and I actually thought I had the only blues band in England.
As London grows, I seem to be learning, people come to London
because it's the centre, so all the musicians come here
because they've got to find a gig,
they've got to find a recording contract.
Whatever they've got to do, they're going to find it here. Absolutely.
There was nowhere else.
I mean, I met people from the Spencer Davis Group from Birmingham,
from the Animals from Newcastle, you know, various people.
# If you see my little red rooster
# Please drive him home
# If you see my little red rooster
# Please drive him home... #
Their sound wasn't the same
as the American people they'd been listening to.
They created their own thing by hearing it
and it comes out in a different way, and then it becomes great pop music.
Exactly right.
'With their top hit, You Really Got Me Going," The Kinks!'
# Girl, you really got me going
# You got me so I don't know what I'm doing, now
# Yeah, you really got me now
# You got me so I can't sleep at night. #
You write about London quite distinctly. No.
You don't?
My influences were the blues, Dixieland...
and when I wrote You Really Got Me,
it was my attempt to write a blues song.
I wanted it to be for John Lee Hooker
or Howlin' Wolf, someone like that.
But it ended up, I have this theory, "I'm a honky from North London."
That's the way my blues sounds.
MUSIC: "Waterloo Sunset" by the Kinks
'Ray Davies became a great poet,
'and a beautiful ornament in the landscape of London.'
# Dirty old river must you keep rolling
# Flowing into the night
# People so busy make me feel dizzy
# Taxi lights shine so bright... #
What's the first music you can remember hearing in your world?
You know when you make a movie, you have an atmos track?
The sound of where the person lived.
And it wasn't music, it was a sound.
A cacophony, people walking, talking, traffic, trains.
I could hear trains in the distance.
The subway train coming out.
I could hear that, it was all one sound, it was no song.
There is something about delivery, good old-fashioned barrow boys.
It's like, the other thing about musical people, like barrow boys,
you had to grab an audience,
and pop songs were a bit like that.
You've got a minute to say what you've got to say.
Here you go, girls, chat to us. I don't charge a lot!
That's what's called a Piccadilly cumber.
Whether it's a street trader, the people in the capital
have always admired the verbal linguist.
Someone like Arthur English, "I was in Trafalgar Square
"a woman went down, ace, Jack, King, Queen, on the deck.
"She come round, she said, 'Where am I?' I said,
"Map of London, Lady, half a crown."
That is just ludicrous, but it's get as many words into that space as you can,
because I know you've got other things to do,
because you live in London.
By the mid-1960s,
what had started with the Empire Windrush was in full swing.
Jamaican music in the form of Bluebeat,
ska, and later reggae,
became an important fixture in the city's soundscape.
London had become the musical centre of the world,
with The Beatles now its most famous residents.
The world and his wife wanted to record their sound
in the nation's capital,
at studios like Abbey Road, immortalised by The Fab Four
themselves and the home of bands like Pink Floyd and The Hollies.
Now, regrettably, covered with graffiti.
# Oi! How you getting on..? #
Earlier on you said to me you didn't think there was London music.
I thought it was a specious concept because I don't think you could ever
hear a record and say that sounds like a London record.
So, I think the idea of a London SOUND is too nebulous,
you can't pin that down. A London rhythm, yes,
there's definitely a London rhythm.
And what is that London rhythm? Attack.
In 1976, this noisy city gave birth to a new music once again.
This time punk.
Now get this...
# London calling, yes, I was there, too
# An' you know what they said?
# Well, some of it was true
# London calling at the top of the dial
# And after all this
# Won't you give me a smile..? #
Londoners are brash, extraordinarily confident,
and it is a brash confident city.
Because London, you've got to get heard.
And I do think it is entirely related to traffic noise
and just the populous, and the noise of it.
The thing that Ian Dury adapted, which is as old as the hills,
the "oi," is literally being heard to someone over there.
CROWD: Oi, oi!
Well, actually, the name's Dury, and I come from Upminster,
and Hornchurch, and Romford, and Walthamstow, and Harrow,
and other places.
The impeccable attack of Ian Dury.
# Just cos I ain't never had, no, nothing worth having
# Never ever, never, ever... #
Oi, oi.
CROWD: Oi, oi!
Hello, playmates.
Here's a little song about a young man's adventures in London.
# Billy Bentley, go to London early in the day
# Half a quid, mate
# Stands to reason
# Hold your horses
# Move along there
# See the show, sir
# Hello, cheeky
# First time, ducky
# You'll be lucky
# Billy Bentley he's a caution, have a pleasant stay... #
Just capturing those little, it's a verbal you get,
"Mind your back, please move along there, see the show, sir.
"Nice time, ducky, you'll be lucky," and things like that.
# Hold very tight, please... #
We loved dear Ian,
so Suggs and I wrote this song as a tribute
to a great and proper London poet.
# Oh it's the crooked leg, the crooked mile
# The hotel lift and the menacing smile
# The energy of an itinerant child
# To catch a glimpse of Mr Oscar Wilde
# Waterborn, Southend on Sea
# Twisted, bent, disability
# Lord Upminster, Bo Diddley and Richard III
# With the most unroyal mouth that you've ever heard
# He's never gonna do it, oh, he has and all
# They're smiling politely, but they're really appalled
# And it's turned out oranges and lemons again
# All three bells in a row
# We're in and out of the Eagle
# And up and down the City Road... #
I wonder if Ian would have been singing at Tyburn
if he'd been alive in the 17th century,
or perhaps hanging there?
But then he wouldn't have been such an influence on every proud
Londoner who's followed so closely in his footsteps.
# Our house, in the middle of our street
# Our house, in the middle of our
# I remember way back then when everything was true
# And when we would have such a very good time
# Such a fine time... #
So, where does the music of London start for you?
What is your first memories of London music in London?
Being in this area, in Camden, it was a very strange mixture,
actually, because it was mainly Irish and Greek Cypriot.
So, the sort of music you'd find
wafting out of the windows here would be mostly Irish,
and, indeed, the occasional zither.
Yes, nice mix.
I mean, my earliest memory is really of hearing live music,
would be hearing my mum sing, my mum sang in bars and clubs around Soho.
So, I'd be travelled around after her,
like most red-blooded young London kids,
hanging out on the doorsteps of pubs,
looking through the letterbox
trying to see your dad's trousers, if they're still in there.
There were always pianos in pubs, and you would always get one
of those old dolls playing a funny old London sounding tunes of old.
That do seem to really evoke old London, I don't really know why.
I remember a chap who used to come in with his mum,
he was a big camp fellow, and he had an enormous head, and curly hair,
and he would sing Don't Laugh At Me, I'm Just A Fool,
and it had such pathos about it the whole pub would be crying.
You'd have those sort of tears, and then the next minute,
you turn around, and he shouted to the pub,
"Fish Song," and they would all go, "Fish Song,"
and he would say, "There's a lot of lovely fish in the sea,
"but there is only one fish for me."
And then all the pub together would sing, "Our souls, our soul."
Then they would howl with laughter.
So babyish, but what a marvellous atmosphere was created.
The biggest influence on the band when we got started was Ian Dury,
and then this really keen interest in Jamaican reggae and ska,
and literally just fusing the two things, quite naturally.
I think it was Elvis Costello, or somebody, who said,
one of the great things about London bands is that they're trying to appropriate black music,
and get it slightly wrong.
I always thought that was a compliment to us.
Yes, that is right.
But the whole ethos of it, meant, in fact we are right in the place
we got our break, The Dublin Castle, here in Camden Town.
And the governor started to realise that these young Herberts
might attract a few customers, and sell a few more pints.
And when seven skinny teenagers started leaping about,
playing Jamaican ska, the Irish regulars were somewhat bemused.
One step beyond...
Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner that I know
London isn't even one place - it's a collection of
villages, communities and neighbourhoods.
That's how it continues to inspire different kinds of music
and remain at the heart of many of popular music's
greatest players and poets.
I never thought I was growing up in London, London was the world.
London is the world to me.
William Blake never left London.
He left for one day and got sort of anxiety and came back.
London's glory and its curse is that the roads are inaccessible,
and they are too small, it's not the grid system.
As long as we keep away from the grid system,
London will be confusing and have neighbourhoods,
and have idiosyncratic, sort of, communities...
..pockets of communities, which makes London great, I think.
# A foggy day
# In London town
# Had me low... #
It's nearly the end of my investigation
into the sounds and songs of this great city.
We've seen London's sound constantly growing and evolving,
as its population has gone from thousands to millions.
But in this world of change, let's go to a reassuring constant -
the changing the Guard at Buckingham Palace.
The lovely sound of the Welsh Guards.
Superb musicians, playing away.
If we started at the beginning of our programme, and look back,
we've heard the music of all the different centuries,
and in the last 300 years, this has been playing all the time,
not this particular song,
but the changing of the Guard at Buckingham Palace.
# Knocked 'em in the Old Kent Road... #
But what of the future?
I trust the people of London can sleep soundly in their beds
knowing that somewhere in the city
someone will always come up with something new and great,
which will go on to dazzle the world.
Thank you. Be seeing you.
And that's jazz!
# Round my hometown
# Memories are fresh
# Round my hometown
# Ooh, the people I've met
# Are the wonders of my world
# Are the wonders of this world... #
Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd