One of the great joys of that long-running TV series from my youth, Juke Box Jury, was the occasional record that would outrage panellists like Lady Katie Boyle. The normal consensus of the panel, to whom were played portions of a few new single releases each week, was that everything had gone downhill since the glory days of the big bands and crooners of the 1940s.
This idea was so noxious to the immature - ie my generation - that it didn't matter that Freddie Cannon's ‘The Urge' was not a very good record; what mattered was that these weary old numbed professionals on the panel found it “shocking" and “disgusting" and, their ultimate put-down, “not like Frank Sinatra".
Naturally the records they hated most were disrespectful revivals by rock'n'rollers and R&B singers of Classic Songs. The Mel Tormés interpreted; these barbarians trashed. How they loathed The Marcels' ‘Blue Moon', the double offence of Little Richard's ‘Baby Face' and ‘By the Light of the Silvery Moon', Bobby Rydell's ‘Bye Bye Blackbird' and Bobby Darin's ‘Nature Boy'.
But there was one record that left them spluttering more effectively than any other - the edited-down single by Billy Stewart of ‘Summertime'. The full track ran to five minutes, and you can hear it here on The Music's Over, which has reminded me that Stewart died on this day in 1970. But someone did a fine edit to bring the single in at 2.51, and it still has the power to make any reasonable person smile. Here it is:
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