From Leeds With Love

Ok to back to something approaching normality.

I spent the weekend up visiting my folks to mark my Dad’s birthday on Saturday. As I’ve mentioned on these pages before, although I probably – no, undoubtedly – would never have admitted it at the time, his record collection has proved to be a massive influence on my own musical tastes over the years.

Pretty much every country record I’ve ever posted here, and in particular most of the stuff I’ve posted recently in my Sunday Morning thread, I first heard via my Dad’s record collection. But there’s another chap, non-country, who my Dad loves, who I previously wrote about here: one Lonnie Donegan.

There was a fairly decent documentary on ITV, of all places, the other week which if you didn’t catch I’d urge you to see if it’s still available on their On Demand service. I mean, you can tell it was an ITV production because they felt the need to have it presented by one of the actors from Downton Abbey, but he makes a pretty good fist of it, including interviews with both the remaining Beatles (including one with Ringo Starr which he manages to get through whilst preventing Starr from waffling on about peace and love), Roger Daltrey and, surprisingly, Jack White. Now if that’s not a recommendation…

White explains how many of Donegan’s songs were American folk songs, and, as proof if proof were needed, today’s selection was first recorded back in 1924, and in between then and Donegan recording it in 1957, such luminaries as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, to name just two, cut versions of it too.

Lonnie Donegan – Cumberland Gap

In 1992, to mark the 40th anniversary of their first publication, the NME released a three-CD compilation album, “Ruby Trax” where they invited current bands featuring on their pages to record a cover version of a record which had reached Number One in the UK charts during those 40 years.

Ruby Trax is probably best know for having spawned this, by the Manic Street Preachers, a balls-out rock version of “Suicide is Painless (Theme from M*A*S*H*)”, which became the bands first Top 10 hit:

The song was released as a double ‘A’ side in the UK, with Fatima Mansions’ frankly rather weird version of Bryan Adams chart-clogger  “(Everything I Do) I Do it for You” on t’other side:

Fatima Mansions – (Everything I Do) I Do it for You

If you’re hearing that for the first time, you’ll not be overly surprised to learn that was the only time that Fatima Mansions came even close to bothering the UK Top 10 (although they did release a few belters, which I’ll deal with some other time).

But elsewhere on the Ruby Trax album, was this version of “Cumberland Gap”, provided by stalwarts of this section The Wedding Present:

The Wedding Present – Cumberland Gap

And, just to make this all nice and circular, it was Wedding Present main man David Gedge’s birthday on Saturday, the same day as my Dad’s. Coincidence? Well, yes, obviously. What are you suggesting….?

More soon.