''The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray'' is the debut

album An album is a collection of audio recordings issued on compact disc (CD), Phonograph record, vinyl, audio tape, or another medium such as Digital distribution#Music, digital distribution. Albums of recorded sound were developed in the early ...

Jake Thackray John Philip "Jake" Thackray (27 February 1938 – 24 December 2002) was an English singer-songwriter, poet, humourist and journalist. Best known in the late 1960s and early 1970s for his topical comedy songs performed on British television, hi ...

. It was produced by

Norman Newell Norman Newell (25 January 1919 – 1 December 2004) was an English record producer, who was mainly active in the 1950s and 1960s. He was also the songwriter, co-writer of many notable songs. As an A&R manager for EMI, he worked with musicians su ...

in August 1967 and released on LP that year by

EMI EMI Group Limited (originally an initialism for Electric and Musical Industries, also referred to as EMI Records Ltd. or simply EMI) was a British transnational conglomerate founded in March 1931 in London. At the time of its break-up in 201 ...

in the UK and

Philips Records Philips Records is a record label founded by the Dutch electronics company Philips. It was founded as Philips Phonographische Industrie in 1950. In 1946, Philips acquired the company which pressed records for British Decca's Dutch outlet in A ...

in the USA. The record company, unsure of how the public would respond to Thackray's lugubrious voice accompanied only by his guitar, added orchestral arrangements by

Roger Webb Roger Webb (7 April 1934 – 19 December 2002) was a British songwriter and jazz pianist best known for leading Roger Webb's Trio (1963-1965) for television series and club performances, and Roger Webb's Orchestra. The Roger Webb Trio appear ...

and

Geoff Love Geoffrey Love (4 September 1917 – 8 July 1991) was a prolific British arranger and composer of easy listening and pop versions of film themes. He became famous in the late 1950s, playing under the pseudonym of Manuel and The Music of The Mo ...

to many of the songs. The album is now out of print, but its songs, digitally remastered, are included in the four- CD retrospective '' Jake in a Box''. The fourth CD of the set also contains 26 songs recorded in April 1967, including the earlier version of the album (originally mono) and 13 other tracks. They include unreleased solo (vocal and guitar) versions of all the songs that are recorded with orchestral arrangements on the album, with the exception of "The Black Swan". The song "Lah-Di-Dah" has been covered as a duet by

Petula Clark Petula Sally Olwen Clark, CBE (born 15 November 1932) is an English singer, actress, and composer. She has one of the longest serving careers of a British singer, spanning more than seven decades. Clark's professional career began during the ...

and

Rod McKuen Rodney Marvin McKuen (; April 29, 1933 – January 29, 2015) was an American poet, singer-songwriter, and actor. He was one of the best-selling poets in the United States during the late 1960s. Throughout his career, McKuen produced a wide range ...

, and by the band

Sky Larkin Sky Larkin is an English indie rock band from Leeds, West Yorkshire, England, who formed in 2005. Early history In common with many bands from Leeds, Sky Larkin released two singles on the Leeds-based label Dance To The Radio. Songs of theirs ...

Musical style

The album differs from Thackray's subsequent albums in that many of its songs feature lush orchestral accompaniment. In their book ''Beware of the Bull - The Enigmatic Genius of Jake Thackray'', Thompson and Watterson write that the use of orchestra on "Ulysses" and "The Statues" adds appropriate touches of colour and drama, and that "The Black Swan" evokes the romantic balladry of

Jacques Brel Jacques Romain Georges Brel (, ; 8 April 1929 – 9 October 1978) was a Belgian singer and actor who composed and performed literate, thoughtful, and theatrical songs that generated a large, devoted following—initially in Belgium and France, l ...

, whom Thackray admired. However, they write that other songs lose the “charming intimacy” of Thackray's original demos, and call "Jumble Sale" a “brash and busy

rumba The term rumba may refer to a variety of unrelated music styles. Originally, "rumba" was used as a synonym for "party" in northern Cuba, and by the late 19th century it was used to denote the complex of secular music styles known as Cuban rumba ...

”. The rich accompaniment meant that Thackray had to

overdub Overdubbing (also known as layering) is a technique used in audio recording in which audio tracks that have been pre-recorded are then played back and monitored, while simultaneously recording new, doubled, or augmented tracks onto one or more av ...

his vocals, which felt unnatural to him as a solo folk singer who would commonly use a flexible tempo in his songs for dramatic or comedic effect. Future albums would feature only Thackray's voice with little more than upright bass and guitar accompaniment, allowing him a less metrically rigid and more expressive vocal approach.

Track listing

References

External links

Track listing and sleeve notes at jakethackray.com
{{DEFAULTSORT:Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray, The Jake Thackray albums 1967 debut albums EMI Records albums Albums produced by Norman Newell