Yes, that does help, thank you, Cpt Colin - so the idea of borrowing that form at that time was new, and the directness of the lyrics certainly was.

Alan Klein is a neglected and, I believe, underrated songwriter. As well as the musical What a Crazy World (commissioned by Theatre Workshop's Gerry Raffles, who saw Joe Brown sing the original song on TV), he recorded a solo album, Well At Least Its British, in 1964.

This has a range of music styles, but what unites the album is what one might call its "British" sensibility: diffidence and uncertainty expressed in the lyrics, plus some wicked sendups of more hackneyed approaches. That too was a conscious reaction against what he saw as the Americanisation of popular music. There's not much info on wikipedia but I've written about him on my blog here and elsewhere.

Coincidentally, I have just come back from seeing Joe Brown play live tonight - a very interesting mix of styles and periods and quite a few of the hits but alas, no What a Crazy World. Not that I was really expecting it as he said in 1996: "I don't mind playing the old songs although it's hard to sing 'Dad's gone down the dogtrack' now. If my dad were alive, he'd be 103."