Sunday 13 December 2009

Sunday night is.... The Inkspots




Ivory 'Deek' Watson, Charles Fuqua, Orville "Hoppy" Jones (singing bass) and Bill Kenny (singing high tenor) who, in 1932, made up The Inkspots: perfect enunciation, the respectability, the suits, the tie, the slight raffishness when the pretty girl passes, the touch of humour and self send-up. This is 1939 and the record sells 19 million copies. The sound is as dated as Al Bowlly and as sweet. But the context is quite other.



4 comments:

Mark Granier said...

Lovely, and great to see they are still up and running. I've known of The Ink Spots for quite awhile now, ever since I heard the following song on an Ella Fitzgerald album (which prompted me to buy an Ink spots compilation):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MLr0onQ-dUE&feature=related

George S said...

We used to listen to them on the car cassette on long drives - I remember one five hour drag to Edinburgh with the Ink Spots (you are right to split the name), the Mills Brothers and the Andrews Sisters. Not straight after each other perhaps.

Unknown said...

Al Bowlly is not dated, and if he'd still been playing in Al Ferguson's Win Kids Syncopators night after night at the Charlton Club that would have been him up there and not Ryan Giggs.

Who was genuinely and disarmingly shocked. The delight of his uncle - sitting next to him in the audience - was a delight to see.

George S said...

Deeply delighted for Master Giggs, of course. I haven't watched the programme for about twenty years but saw the acceptance speech later, and it was indeed charming and shocked.

Once Jenson Button has been world champion five times he can compete with Giggs. In any case the car is always so important in F1 it often seems more important than the driver.

Is there a developing analogy between Al Bowlly and Ryan Giggs there? Would you care to take it further? (Down the Rio Ferdinand sings Marcel Marceau line, perhaps...)