The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #55035 Message #855866
Posted By: McGrath of Harlow
31-Dec-02 - 08:36 AM
Thread Name: Obit: Jake Thackray (1938-2002)
Subject: RE: Obit: Jake Thackray
God, it's been a year for deaths hasn't it? Some you expected, like Spike Milligan and even Lonnie Donegan, but this one came out of the blue.
It's infuriating the way England - or rather the small bunch of timeservers who monopolise the media and are taken as speaking for England - fails to appreciate great writers and performers, and lavishes attention on rubbish instead.
Jake Thackray, I'd say, was quite the most adroit wordsmith in song that we are ever likely to have in our lifetime. And that's just a small part of it.
If you compare the attention and respect rightly paid in France to the songwriter who Jake emulated and admired, Georges Brassens, it's absurd, and shameful. It's impossible to get hold of most of Jake's songs. Maybe something can be done about that, retrospectively.