Stranger on the Shore - Mr Acker Bilk
Stranger on the Shore Notes
Stranger on the Shore
is a piece for clarinet written by
Acker Bilk whilst travelling in a taxicab
for his young daughter and originally named
Jenny after her.
During 1961 it was selected as the theme tune of a
BBC TV drama serial for young people called: Stranger on the Shore
.
The song was then recorded in the summer of 1961 under its new title for a track on the LP
Sentimental Journey with the tune of the same name as the lead track.
When the first of five 30 Minute episodes of the
BBC Series: Stranger on the Shorewas broadcast at 1645 on the 21st
September 1961 in Black & White, Columbia Records was preparing to release
Stranger on the Shore
as a single with
Take My Lips as the B Side.
Reaching the stores in October 1961, the single became a phenomenal success, topping the NME
singles chart and spending nearly a year on the Record Retailer Top 50. It was the UK's
biggest-selling single of 1962,
On 26th May 26 1962,
Stranger on the Shore
became the first British recording to reach number one on the
U.S. Billboard Hot 100
after it was issued by Atlantic Records on the Atco label.
Whilst it eventually faded from the Radio play lists it remained in peoples consciousness and in
May 1969, the crew of
Apollo 10 took
Stranger on the Shore
on their mission to the moon.
Gene Cernan, a member of the crew, included the tune on a cassette tape used in the command
module of the Apollo spacecraft.
The composition has been covered by many other artists, most prominently a
vocal version
by
Andy Williams,
a
group vocal version
by
The Drifters,
and a
soprano sax smooth jazz adaptation
by
Kenny G.
It was also sampled (with a writer's credit for Bilk) on
The song was also featured in the soundtrack to
Mr. Holland's Opus (1885), as well as in the 1988 film,
Red Heat, the 1998 romantic comedy
The song was playing in the scene in the
In a nice twist, the song is used as the theme tune to BBC Radio 4
sketch show
That Mitchell and Webb Sound.
As a final accolade it appears fifty-eighth in the Official UK list of best-selling singles issued
in 2002, to mark the 50th Anniversary of the Music Charts.
Link:
Much of the above was extracted from:
Stranger On the Shore - Wikipedia Entry
with additional material from various Internet Sources.
Acker Bilk Notes
Acker Bilk MBE MA (born 28 January 1929), born Bernard Stanley Bilk (known more familiarly as Mr.
Acker Bilk), is a clarinetist. He is known for his trademark goatee, bowler hat, striped waistcoat
and his breathy, vibrato-rich, lower-register clarinet style. He was born in Pensford, Somerset,
United Kingdom.
Bilk earned the nickname Acker from the Somerset slang for 'friend' or 'mate'. His parents tried
to have him learn the piano, but Bilk as a boy found it restricting upon his love of outdoor
activities including football. He also lost two front teeth in a school fight and half a finger in
a sledging accident, both of which Bilk has claimed to have affected his eventual clarinet style.
He learned the clarinet while serving in the Royal Engineers in the Suez Canal Zone, and by the
mid-1950s he was playing professionally.
Bilk was part of the boom in traditional jazz that swept the United Kingdom in the late 1950s.
He first joined Ken Colyer's band in 1954, and then formed his own ensemble, The Paramount Jazz
Band, in 1956. Four years later, his single "Summer Set" (a pun on his home county) hit the
British charts and it began a run of eleven top 50 hit singles.
Whilst a star in Britain, international fame only arrived in 1962 when
Stranger on the Shore
was released in the United States.
Bilk recorded a series of albums in Britain that were also released successfully in the United
States (on the Atlantic Records subsidiary Atco), including a memorable collaboration (Together)
with Danish jazz pianist-composer Bent Fabric ("The Alley Cat"). At the height of this successful
period Bilk's public relations workers were known as the "Bilk Marketing Board", a play on the then
Milk Marketing Board.
But his success tapered off when British rock and roll made its big international explosion
beginning in 1964, and Bilk shifted direction to the cabaret circuit.
He finally had another chart success in 1976, with "Aria," which went to number five in the
United Kingdom.
Most of his classic albums with the Paramount Jazz Band have been reissued and are available on the
UK based Lake Records label.
In 2000, throat cancer forced Bilk's semi-retirement and he took up painting as a hobby, but he still
appears with contemporaries, Chris Barber and Kenny Ball (both of whom were born in 1930) as the
3B's and with the Paramount Jazz Band.
One of his recordings is with the Chris Barber band, sharing the clarinet spot with the band's regular
reedsmen, John Crocker and Ian Wheeler. He made a CD with another legend of British Jazz Wally Fawkes
for the Lake Records label in 2002. He has appeared on two recent albums by Van Morrison,
Down the Road and What's Wrong With This Picture?.
In 2001 he was awarded an MBE for Services to Music. Although this could equally been given for his
Charity Work, or his successful efforts to obtain recognition for those who served in the Suez
Campaign of 1956. In 2005 hew received an Honorary Master of Arts Degree from the University of Bristol.
Links:
Much of the above was extracted from:
Acker Bilk - Wikipedia Entry
with additional material from various Internet Sources, most notably:
Acker's Music Agency
