Pete and Alan and Georgie

John Peel's fifteenth favorite single of 1975, that!

Always liked Peter Skellern's breathy yearning way with a melody



His voice has a Horlicks - Ovaltine quality

Now this next one won an award from the Music Trades Association for Best Middle of the Road song of 1978!



He also did the theme song for a TV version of Billy Liar, which seems very appropriate. Not on YouTube though



In my memory I jumble Skellern stuff up with this song



My mum liked Alan Price's twinkling ways -  well-combed, clean-cut Northern nice young man vibes a la Rodney Bewes or indeed Bill Nelson - but I can never shake the memory of his sycophancy to Dylan in Don't Look Back  - that scene where they bully that poor student journalist

This next clip seems  dodgy on multiple levels



This next one was a little bit of an anthem / nursery rhyme in our household, on account of the word "Simon" being in it



He's kind of annoyingly smarmy in O Lucky Man!, although the sort of brownish, smoky sound emitted by his combo in those interludes could not be more 1971





"Brownish" reminds me I meant to buy this compilation - Bob Stanley and Pete Wiggs present English Weather

Full of tunes like this from the deadzone between end of Sixties and before the Seventies really got going



But back to the subject at hand.... here Alan attempts a sort of Northern Ray Davies vibe with his score to a stage play based on the Daily Mirror cartoon about a cloth capped Hartlepool rascal



The third of this Brit trio of singing piano men is old Georgie Fame, partnering here with cheesy Alan



I do think this song is some kind of perfection



This too



So echt-BritSixties it's almost inaudible - in the sense of actual listening to it as music qua music - because of all the mental pictures of kids frugging away in some smoky Soho cellar

Did have some G. Fame best-of on a tape that gotta lotta play that year (82 i think) I "discovered the Sixties" i.e. other echt-BritSixties things like Manfred Man, Dusty Springfield, Sandy Shaw, Dave Clark Five, "For Your Love" etc





Zaki-tastic

Here the hair is getting a bit shaggy