The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #78564   Message #1414548
Posted By: Richard Bridge
18-Feb-05 - 10:12 PM
Thread Name: Loudest singers
Subject: RE: Loudest singers
I would have expected Dave Bryant to be on anyone's list.

John Barden can really run it on when so intending.

Paul Hurst, with whom JB used to work, also had plenty of power.

Johnny Silvo used to include some very very loud bits, too.

I'm not as loud as I'd like to be (thanks all the same DT): mostly it was that Jacqui used to keep telling me that I had to be louder or she couldn't hear me at all when she was herself singing. The really loud bits I do are only a few milliseconds in a couple of songs - Captain Captain, and my protest song about the Licensing Act, where I rhymed Howells, and Jowell with "bowels" - and in those cases it was just a short shout.

I think the loudest I know of (save as follows) is our daughter Rachel. One Rochester Sweeps, when she would have been about 15 or 16, before the Eagle went electric, the pub was noisy, and she did Rickety-Tin. DB was almost nose to nose with her singing harmony. She took umbrage and turned it on, and he was almost inaudible. Keith Pearson at the old Oast, where they had a small PA rig, used to say she was the only person who ever lit all the lights on it up, and when she did Whip Jamboree, even with the mics almost right off, people who were in the know used to get well away from the speakers.

But at the end of the day, I think Triality have to take it - all three of them play (not all the time) brass instruments - from trombone to cornet - and to get the voices up to the equivalent level really does take some doing. It is said a cornet can reach 130 Db at the mouth of the bell.