loading
reading
writing
saving
searching
Moon Above Malaya
QR Code Link to This Post
Frank Chacksfield And His Orchestra
"In The Mystic East"
"If you've 'eard the East a-callin', you won't never 'eed naught else"... as Rudyard Kipling once wrote, not in the purest of English. (We hope, incidentally, that Frank Chacksfield doesn't take this to extremes as the West doesn't want to lose him just yet). But, on this record at least, the callin' was obviously very strong; and even those who have never been further East than New York's Chinatown will enjoy this venture into the mystic half of the world, in an up-to-date and vigorous Western manner, in the safety of an armchair.
Song-writers have ignored the same Mr. Kipling's grim epitaph: "A Fool lies here who tried to hustle the East" — and have hustled with enthusiasm. Witness the songs on this record and how Tin Pan Alley has orientated the Orient into modern music. Frank Chacksfield would probably agree that the 'mystic' is not to be taken too seriously; that, rather than the dank, dirty, opium-den sort of East, we are invited here to a light-hearted, musical-comedy, under new-management kind of East. Even so, it doesn't greatly lessen the impassive mysticism of a world so remote from our own.
We fit graciously from Japan, meeting that hepped old gent the Japanese Sandman who has had many a tribute from the jazz fraternity, to find the Moon Above Malaya, then to India to find the Moonlight on the Ganges, travelling round at just about the same rate as a Russian satellite moon. On the way through China we pass By an Old Pagoda where we find a group of ex-Indian Army officers, now working for a big cereal firm in Peking, singing a Song of India, followed by an instrumental interlude, the March of the Siamese Children from Rodgers and Hammerstein's "The King and I" which a travelling company had just brought to Hong Kong.
The reason for not going back to India is that we still have, on this side of the record, that plaintive little Chinese ditty, Rose, Rose, I Love You.
On the second side we have the suave and sophisticated Tizal-Ellington epic of the desert, Caravan, flitting to a charming scene, On a Little Street in Singapore. We take a Rickshaw Ride and do a Danse Chinoise with La Petite Tonkinoise who asks us if we have heard the Katsumi Theme ... She forgets what it came from. San has been around for a long time.
The pleasure of these armchair, by-the-phonograph travels is that they require no passports, no money, apart from the negligible outlay on the record and a pipe of opium, and, moreover, by not actually going to the steaming countries East of Suez, we are in no danger of destroying the mystique. Come then to the mystic East with Frank Chacksfield and his Orchestra. Frank has one of the best light orchestras recording today and he himself is one of the finest conductors of this kind of music. His many London LP's have taught us to expect a fine feast of tastefully arranged, elegantly played music-in fact light music at its very best.
Frank Chacksfield has been practicing the art of presenting music like this since he formed his first band at the age of fifteen. The first recording in 1948 led to the highly successful Limelight which he recorded in 1953, and since then he has gone from success to success. It is as it should be when Frank says that his most recent TV series has given him as much pleasure as anything. He move with the times and each new venture becomes the most important.
Now hold tight to your armchair as we take off at a speed of thirty-three and one-third revolutions per minute for our evening in the mystic East ...
-- PETER GAMMOND
(album notes)
-----
Francis Charles Chacksfield (9 May 1914 – 9 June 1995) was an English pianist, organist, composer, arranger, and conductor of popular light orchestral easy listening music, who had great success in Britain and internationally in the 1950s and early 1960s.
Chacksfield was born in Battle, East Sussex, and as a child learned to play the piano and organ. His organ teacher was J. R. Sheehan-Dare (1857–1934). He had appeared at Hastings Music Festivals by the time he was 14, and then became deputy church organist at Salehurst. After working for a short period in a solicitor's office he decided on a career in music, and by the late 1930s, led a small band at Tonbridge in Kent. ...
After the war, he worked with Chester and on BBC Radio as an arranger and conductor. ...
Chacksfield signed a recording contract with Decca Records in 1953, and formed a 40-piece orchestra with a large string section, the "Singing Strings". ... -- Wikipedia
---/
Another version of the greatest song of all time here! G.I.M.