Bob's Your Uncle...

 

It is not often I can write about a musician who worked with Duke Ellington and who was born about twenty minutes' walk away from where I am writing this.

The photograph above is Heap Bridge, Bury, Lancashire, as it looks today. It is the birthplace of conductor, composer and bandleader Robert Sharples who was born there on 2 July, 1913 under the name Robert Standish. 

Having studied composition, orchestration and conducting in Manchester, he moved to London and worked with such dance bands of the time as Ambrose, Roy Fox and Carroll Gibbons.

Quoting from Wikipedia:

 In the early 1960s Sharples became Musical Director for ABC Television based at Manchester's Didsbury Studios, where (with help from Ronnie Taylor and Johnny Roadhouse) he formed The ABC Television Orchestra.[10] This was used to supply music for all the ABC shows of the period, including Big Night Out (1961–1965),[11] Saturday Bandbox (1962) and the long-running talent show Opportunity Knocks.

It is in his capacity as Musical Director for ABC Television that Bob Sharples (as he was better known - of which more anon) that he came within the orbit of Duke Ellington.

In February 1966, Ellington performed excerpts from his Sacred Concert at Coventry Cathedral. Whilst it was the practice of Ellington, of course, to bring his own Orchestra to perform the music of the Sacred Concerts, he relied upon local talent to provide the choral elements. In the case of the performance at Coventry Cathedral, the choral parts were sung by The Cliff Adams Singers and the baritone singer George Webb.

In an interview conducted with Les Tomkins of Crescendo magazine which took place just before he went on stage in eastbourne in 1973, Ellington was discussing his recently performed Third sacred Concert. of the choral aspects of his Sacred music, Ellington said:

"... when you’ve got a new work, you’ve got to co–ordinate the choir and everything; the band had never played any of it before, you know. It was brand new—I did it specially for Westminster Abbey.

"Oh, the choir was wonderful—absolutely magnificent, yeah. I’ve been very lucky with choirs. We had this beautiful choir down in Barcelona, Spain, about two or three years ago—boy, they were wonderful.

"And, of course, over in France we have the Double Six Of Paris. Then Roscoe, the kid who was conducting—he’s got a very fine choir in Philadelphia, too."

As the Musical Director for the television company producing the programme, it seems not an unreasonable assumption, then, that Bob Sharples was responsible for the choral aspects of the production. Unfortunately, his input is mentioned not at all in the liner notes for the Storyville CD nor in coverage generally of the concert at Coventry Cathedral.

From where did the soubriquet 'Uncle Bob' originate? Well, to inhabitants of the UK of a certain age, the name Bob Sharples is most closely associated with the amateur talent show Opportunity Knocks which ran from 1964 to 1978. The host of the programme was  Hughie Green who having spent many years in Canada, brought something of the brio of North American presenting style to British television and who regularly referred to Sharples as 'Uncle Bob'.

The connection between Hughie Green and Duke Ellington will be explored in tomorrow's post...

That a copy of the broadcast of Celebration survives at all and was located is aminor miracle of sorts in itself. Here is the Easter Day 1966 broadcast of the concert, performed on 21 February, 1966...