Jake Thackray on the Web
Back when I was in single figures my mum and dad used to be into a singer-songwriter called Jake Thackray. He came from Leeds and died in 2002. Not long ago, on a whim, I bought his 4-CD box set Jake in a Box and his double live CD Live Performance, and it turns out the guy was a genius. One of the great lyricists. Probably best known for his comedy songs (and some of them are very funny), there’s a whole lot more to him than that. He fancied himself a chansonnier in the French tradition, and was particularly inspired by Georges Brassens. They also used to call him the “north country Noel Coward”, although he didn’t like that very much. Anyway, for my own convenience as much as anything else, here’s a collection of links. If you follow any of them and enjoy what you hear, the box set and the live double album can be downloaded from iTunes for not an exorbitant price.
First, here’s the Jake Thackray tribute site.
Videos
Jake performing
- Brother Gorilla
- The Bull
- The Hair of the Widow of Bridlington
- The Kirkstall Road Girl
- Lah-Di-Dah
- The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray
- Old Molly Metcalfe
- On Again! On Again!
- The Remembrance
- Sister Josephine
Fan videos
- The Ballad of Billy Kershaw
- The Brigadier
- Caroline Diggeby-Pratte
- Famous People
- The Gravedigger
- The Hair of the Widow of Bridlington
- Isabel Makes Love Upon National Monuments
- The Lodger
- Miss World
- Ulysees
Covers
Jake has many devoted fans who perform his songs and put them on YouTube. The quality is variable, but some of these songs were never actually recorded by the man himself, and one or two of them actually improve on his performances.
- Bantam Cock (Joe Bethancourt)
- Bantam Cock (Jasper Carrott)
- The Blacksmith and the Toffee-Maker
- The Black Swan
- The Bull (John Wesley Harding)
- The Castleford Ladies’ Magic Circle
- The Cenotaph
- Family Grave
- Freda
- The Gypsy
- Isabel Makes Love Upon National Monuments
- The Kiss
- Lullaby My Daddio
- Miss World
- Our Dog
- Over to Isobel
- Personal Column
- The Policeman’s Jig
- Remember Bethlehem
- The Statues
- To Do With You
Audio
Other stuff
- Jake Thackray tribute site (includes lyrics and chords)
- Bio on Wikipedia
[...] I’ve added a page collecting links to videos of Jake Thackray songs, and other Thackray related links, largely for my own convenience, but hopefully my readers’ll enjoy them too. Apologies to those following via rss – I accidentally posted the page as a blog post, then deleted and did it as a page like I meant to. [...]
Hi Paddy
I’d PM you or e-mail you if I knew how.
You’ve possibly noticed that I’m the junior admin on the jake thackray site. I’ve seen what you’ve done in sorting out the Jake page on Wikipedia and pointed it out to the members of the erstwhile committee and the other couple of active souls who organise Jakefests and performances. Responses are very favourable: we really like what you’ve done. Just one request: when we produced the original Project CD, one of the committee members did all the cleaning up of the vinyl, the conversion to digital and the assembly of the CD masters, and also copied the 600 CDs (it was a double) one by one. We think it would be appropriate to recognise that in the Wikipedia article and suggest the addition of the words “led by record producer David Harris” in this sentence: “With Thackray’s cooperation, the project team, led by record producer David Harris, received permission from EMI to produce a double CD of 42 songs not on any then-available release, limited to 200 copies, which was released in November 2002 with cover art by Bill Tidy. After Thackray’s death the following month EMI consented to a further edition of 100 copies.” Citation if needed is the attribution on the Project CD label.
I know I could just do it myself, but I would far rather you did it, if you’re happy to.
Please e-mail me if you want to discuss this further.
Done. I’d like to include more about the qualities of his songs, but you know what Wikipedia is like about citing sources and “orginal research”.
Awwwwwwwwwwww
You guys !!!!!
:)
DH