Haunting Melodies

What pieces of music do you find haunting? I’m sure this is very personal, dependent on what Jeeves called the psychology of the individual. I was trying to think of what music particularly haunts me recently, and how my choices would have changed as I have aged.

I first became aware of popular music in the early 1960’s, when we lived in Kinglassie, a coalmining village in central Fife. I think we moved there in 1960 or early 1961, and we had previously lived in Malta, of which I have plenty of memories, but none of music. We had this big chunky radio, which had at one time had a glass panel with the usual stations of the time on it: Luxembourg, Kalundborg, Moscow, Hilversum, and so on. You twiddled the knob, and the needle moved along behind the glass panel. However, four children of lively and active personalities had meant that the glass panel had long since been smashed. One of my parents had inserted a bit of cardboard cut from a shoe box behind the needle and drawn two lines on it in biro, Beside one line was written ‘Home’ and beside the other, ‘Light’, representing the tuning frequencies of the BBC Home Service (now Radio 4) and the BBC Light Programme (now Radio 2). My mum and dad had no reason to listen to any other station.

So my introduction to popular music was what was playing on the Light Programme around that time. And what a lot of drivel it was. Numbers which come to mind include You’ll Have to Speak Up, I’ve Got Beans in my Ears, by the Serendipity Singers, and The Railroad Comes Through the Middle of the House, by Alma Cogan (or alternatively by Rusty Draper). Presumably there were back-stories to these ditties, but it is difficult to imagine what they were. In addition, various numbers from the musical Oliver seemed to be played on an hourly basis. Food, Glorious Food was a particular favourite of the Light Programme. Even at the tender age of six or seven, I was pretty unimpressed with the music on offer.

However, there were a couple of numbers which made an impression on me and which I did find haunting. One was Roy Orbison’s Borne on the Wind, and another Ghost Riders in the Sky, by Burl Ives. The first of these is an unrequited love song, but I did not realise this at the time. It was just the one line, ‘Borne on the wind’, sung in Orbison’s passionate Texas voice and evoking loneliness and rootlessness, that sent shivers down my spine.

Incidentally, plenty of people I know still think that Roy Orbison was blind, because he wore dark glasses. As I understand it, he wore dark glasses because he was shy and self-effacing. He was no more blind than my arse. Indeed, less so, since my arse can’t see a blessed thing.

Ghost Riders in the Sky tells of how a cowboy sees a band of ghost cowboys, eternally doomed to chase a herd of cattle across the sky, presumably as a consequence of their sins in life. The song is justly considered very corny, and has inspired a number of parodies, none of them particularly funny. These include Borscht Riders in the Sky by Mickey Katz and his Kosherjammers, and The Portree Kid (the teuchtar that came from Skye) by the Corries. Yes, it is corny, but to a little kid having the life terrified out of him by tales of Hell and Purgatory by his mad primary school teacher, it certainly struck a chord. And Burl Ives’ voice was magnificent.

I still have a fondness for these songs, but the music which I would now describe as haunting is different and is rather an eclectic mix. These include:

Invitation to the Blues, by Tom Waits. Another evocation of alienation and rootlessness, with overtones of romance, disappointment, resignation and a film noir feel. But I guess the reason it haunts me is that I played and played the LP on which it features when I lived in Singapore in 1985, recovering from a brief but emotionally catastrophic love affair. I would bawl along with it, tears of pure Anchor Beer pouring down my cheeks.

Moon River, sung by anybody. The song just has something. Incidentally, one day ages ago, I was strumming it on the piano. I can’t read music, and there was some sheet music for another song set up on the stand. My son Tom, then aged around eleven, said, ‘Music for As Time Goes By, and you’re playing Moon River. That takes transposing to a new level.’

Timgad, by Moishe’s Bagel. This is a magnificent instrumental tour de force. The band are all highly accomplished (show-offs!), but the violin playing by Gregory Lawson is just stunning.

A Walk in the Night, by Junior Walker and the All Stars. This is a beautiful melody, difficult to place in a genre, and the sax playing is brilliant. There is a Youtube video of the Christmas decorations at night in (I think) Crewe, with this tune playing, and the combination of the haunting melody and the humdrum evening in a provincial town in the north west of England is compelling.

So some of the haunting is due to the quality of the music and some to the period in your life when you listened to it. Let me go back to my early childhood for a minute. One more song which haunted me then and haunts me still is Volare, by Domenico Modugno. When the family came home from Malta, when I was about four years old, we travelled overland, sailing from Malta to somewhere in Sicily, then to somewhere around the heel of Italy, then in my dad’s Morris Traveller, mum and dad in the front, four kids in the back, from Southern Italy up to Boulogne for the ferry to Dover. I don’t know when I first heard Volare, I suspect sometime when we lived in Kinglassie, but still, when I hear it now, I think of the harbour lights glinting on the water as we boarded that night ferry in Valletta.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Uea5C9ASBeg

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2klh2cTa_Q

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qivzSaALee8

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nymys2rIako

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L_jgIezosVA

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DIDEeaow-qc

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2rVWHGoa-pw