Words & Music : Jake Thackray

Recorded at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, London, in 1971

Side One:

Family Tree
The Hole
Isobel
Miss World
Pass Milord the Rooster Juice
Remember Bethlehem
Ladies Basic Freedoms Polka

Side Two:

The Cactus
Lah-Di-Dah
Leopold Alcox
The Lodger
The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray
Grandad
Romance

Production: Norman Newell

Recording Engineer: Peter Bown

Editing & Compilation: Gil King

Sleeve Notes

Who said teachers can't be amusing? Jake Thackray was once a teacher, and he is very amusing indeed.

But he's more than just a Funny Man. In the above songs - recorded before a very responsive audience at London's Queen Elizabeth Hall - there is wit, nay, downright sauce (Family Tree, The Lodger), but compassion too (Remember Bethlehem) and genuine unsticky tenderness - Lah-Di-Dah, perhaps his best known composition, is a love song straight from the heart.

As you will hear in his between-song chat, Jake was once in the position of having to provide topical songs for a weekly television programme (he sings some of them on the record). Such a task requires, besides speed of writing, a super-sharp eye for detail and acute powers of perception; these Jake certainly has, plus a vocabulary that raises his lyrics to a supremely entertaining level. He also has a strong sense of the absurd (The Hole, Leopold Alcox), and he does not flinch from dealing with such subjects as personal gaucheries (Isobel) or death - even his own (The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray).

You hold, in this record, a ticket to an enjoyable evening in the company of an exceptional entertainer. There goes the warning A sounding through the Hall foyer; shall we take our seats?

Hazel Morgan

Sleeve Note Quotes

"Jake takes Salisbury by storm" - Salisbury Journal

"Jake was the hit of the week of recitals at the Playhouse" - Oxford Mail

"Enthralling Thackray. Sheer personality and professionalism" - Birmingham Evening Mail

"Shouts of 'More, more' from a full house" - Cheshire Observer

"A special kind of poet - a unique sort of humour" - Yorkshire Evening Post

"The audience at Fairfield Hall revelled in his genius" - Croydon Advertiser