Terry's Holiday and the Poor People of Paris

The Twenty-Fourth of June Two Thousand and Twelve. Sunday.

Yes, I've heard the theme music to Pot Black. But until today I didn't know who Winifred Atwell was.

I was giving my flat its quarterly tidy/half-arsed clean with Paul O'Grady on Radio 2 on in the background. He played a tune from the 50s that I immediately recognised. It was the Man With a Stick singing about his holiday!

Funny story there: A friend of mine held a 'hat party' where everybody was encouraged to wear an humorous hat. I elected to stretch the definition somewhat and made my own version of the Man With a Stick's helmet, complete with drawings of interesting things I had seen that week (wish I could remember what those things were. Ah well.) Unfortunately, I got the impression that people thought I had come as a member of the Ku Klux Klan as I was getting disgusted looks from all and sundry. This despite the fact I had a big stick (as in 'Man With a Stick') which had, under the prerequisite bag, a roll-on deodorant with a skull sellotaped to it stuck on the end. I'm not really a party person.

Anyway, turns out the track Paul was playing was actually No1 for a couple of weeks in 1956. It was The Poor People of Paris by the aforementioned Winifred Atwell. It was brilliant. Here she is in full effect:

Bit odd the timing of that last caption.

Another of her hits was The Black and White Rag and that was the one that was used as the theme to Pot Black. Honestly, read her Wikipedia entry, she's brilliant. I can't believe I'd never heard of her. She discovered Matt Monro for goodness' sake!

As for The Poor People of Paris, a little while before Winifred's version it was also a chart topper in the US for Les Baxter and his orchestra (good ol' Les). Apparently, it's based on a French song called La goualante du pauvre Jean (The Ballad of Poor John) and it's a mistranslation of pauvre Jean as pauvre gens (poor people) that gave the song its English name.

What's that? You want to hear Les' version? Go on, then:

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