Who remembers Michael Flanders and Donald Swann? They wrote and sang comic songs and appeared as guests on TV shows in the 1960s. Flanders sat in a wheelchair due to Poliomyelitis, and Swann sat at the piano.
Their best remembered song has to be “The Hippopotamus”, with its chorus “Mud, mud, glorious mud”. They had great fun with words. The lengthened ‘a’ in “the Hippopotamus” to rhyme with “was no ignoramus” still amuses me. Another song I remember is “The Gnu” (with a hard ‘g’), “spelt G-N-U-”.
Michael Flanders wrote and sang most of the words and delivered comic monologues, and Donald Swann wrote the music and played piano. You could easily assume that Flanders, a large, impressive, bearded man with a rich voice, was the act, and the slighter and quieter Swann was merely the accompanist, but the music was every bit as important as the words. Donald Swann wrote catchy tunes and was an accomplished musician.
I especially like “The Slow Train” about the 1963 Beeching cuts, and its litany of quirky station names: Blandford Forum, Mortehoe, Littleton Badsey, Dog Dyke, .... The way the halting rhythm of the music captures the halting rhythm of a labouring steam locomotive is delightful. Not only that, the song mentions a certain Yorkshire town.
https://youtu.be/U6OHD2uCpfU
Kirby Muxloe ...
Mow Cop and Scholar Green ...
No more will I go to Blandford Forum and Mortehoe
On the slow train from Midsomer Norton and Mumby Road
No churns, no porter, no cat on a seat
At Chorlton-cum-Hardy or Chester-le-Street
We won't be meeting again
On the Slow Train.
I'll travel no more from Littleton Badsey to Openshaw
At Long Stanton I'll stand well clear of the doors no more
No whitewashed pebbles, no up and no down
From Formby Four Crosses to Dunstable Town
I won't be going again
On the Slow Train.
On the Main Line and the goods′ siding
The grass grows high
At High Dog Dyke, Tumby Woodside
And Trouble House Halt, the sleepers sleep.
On Chittening platform or Cheslyn Hay
No one departs, no one arrives
From Selby to Goole, from St Erth to St Ives
They′ve all passed out of our lives
On the Slow Train, on the Slow Train.
Cockermouth for Buttermere ...
On the Slow Train, Armley Moor Arram ...
Pye Hill and Somercotes ...
On the Slow Train
Windmill End.
I loved Flanders and Swann. We went to see Donald Swann but he had died just before the performance, so it was a strangely sober experience.
ReplyDeleteMy father used to sing Flanders & Swan songs to amuse us as kids. The Slow Train never made it to this side of the planet. THhe place names would have amused us. I'm surprised how many I recognize now.
ReplyDeleteI saw them in the first show they presenter, in s small theater. They were wonderfully funny. Swann was a comic as well as an accomplished musician.
ReplyDeleteIt won't surprise you to read that I don't know Flanders & Swann, or any of their songs. In Germany, we had our own comic musicians / actors / comedians who were not only good singers but had great fun with words. You have probably never heard of Heinz Erhard - he was a true gem, very clever and very witty, often underestimated because he was chubby and not at all meeting the ideal of a good-looking man of his time.
ReplyDeleteI well remember Flanders and Swann, all of those tracks, and the one about the big six-wheeler diesel-engined bus...
ReplyDeleteVery much of an era, along with Tom Lerher (The Periodic Table, Poisoning Pigeons in the Park) and Bob Newhart (The Driving Instructor, Walter Raleigh and Tobacco from the New World).
i know the names of Flanders and Swann but i couldn't have told you what they did.... bit i DO know the Gnu and the Hippo songs...... the train journey song instantly evoked memories of two other songs for me.....
ReplyDeleteJohn Shuttleworth - You're like Manchester (in which he weaves all the local placenames, cleverly into lyrics...... "you're like manchester, you've got strange ways!")
The Justified Ancients of Mu Mu - It's Grim up North (Part 1) - basically it's a list of northern towns..... I. personally love this tune but it's not for everyone ("harrogate, huddersfield, oldhams, lancs - grimsby, glossop, hebden bridge")
I recommend googling either of those for some fun
Thank you sharing "On The Slow Train". Very evocative. The station that means the most to me is Miller's Dale for Tideswell. As for Flanders and Swann, they boarded their last trains in 1975 and 1994 respectively.
ReplyDeleteI do remember 'Mud, mud. Glorious mud', but not the performers.
ReplyDeleteI wonder if Midsomer Norton was near the murder town Midsomer?
The fictitious murder "town" Midsomer is not a town, but a county, where "Midsomer Murders" take place, with Causton as its county capital... some great fictitious place names there as well, such as Badger's Drift and many, many more.
DeleteThey were from another era. Every time I or my friend get a central heating service, we always refer to the Flanders and Swan song The Gas Man Cometh
ReplyDeleteDelightful and heartfelt. We have the train at Cheslyn Hay once more, though the station buildings were demolished. The line stayed open for coal trains, then we got new platforms, a rain shelter and passenger trains, and recently it was electrified.
ReplyDeleteI just about remember them. Mud, mud , glorious mud we sang as children happily. As I type I can hear the train going through, Halifax or Huddersfield, Rochdale to Manchester.
ReplyDelete