THREE CHEERS FOR POOH!

Whether or not you remember – even hold as beloved – those childhood immortals Winnie-the-Pooh and Christopher Robin before they were appropriated by Walt Disney back in 1966, I think you'll enjoy Enchanted Places, a double-CD recording of A. A. Milne's verses (and Pooh's inimitable 'Hums') from the quartet of nursery classics: When We Were Very Young, Winnie-the-Pooh, Now We Are Six and The House at Pooh Corner – all of them accompanied by irreplaceable decorations by the magnificent Ernest H. Shepard.

 

Today, however, I guess there many Pooh-lovers who will be unfamiliar with the musical settings that were composed during the height of Mr. Milne's public popularity; although if you mention titles like 'They're Changing Guard at Buckingham Palace', 'Hush, Hush, Whisper Who Dares (Christopher Robin is Saying His Prayers)', 'Halfway Down the Stairs' and 'Cottleston Pie', then you may recall having heard them sung by performers as diverse as Gracie Fields, Robert Tear, David Tomlinson and Burl Ives – not to mention Robin and Rowlf from The Muppets!

 

The music was the work of H. Fraser-Simson, a popular composer of British light music and the long-running operetta, The Maid of the Mountains, and these delightful settings that have endured for almost 100 years and are now available on this new double-CD – the first-ever complete recording of the Milne/Fraser-Simson collaboration – released by EM Records.

 

The songs are performed by baritone Grant Major, accompanied at the piano by John Kember and singer and pianist deftly present the songs with considerable wit and a lightness of touch that is perfectly suited to the verses’ delightful mix of humour, sentiment, nostalgia and nonsense.

 

I might, immodestly, add that there's a cameo appearance by Yours Truly on Disc 2, narrating Milne's amusing introduction to his song, 'The King's Breakfast', and I also wrote the liner notes telling the story of Mr. Milne and Mr. Fraser-Simson and their enchanting collaboration, illustrated with rare Milne family photos from my persoanl collection.

 

This recording will certainly please all lovers of light verse and light music and will delight the young and the young-at-heart.

 

Enchanted Places is available from Amazon HERE

CRACKING FUN

The other week I was giving a talk to a bunch of American students visiting Britain on a course devoted to Children's Literature. My subject was talking animals in literature (from the serpent in the Garden of Eden to manifestations of Parseltongue in the Harry Potter books) and coincidentally – while I was in the midst of my researches – David and I were looking out items from our collection for a new exhibition at The Cartoon Museum entitled...

Animal Crackers is a celebration of an amazing ark-load of creatures who, across many generations, have been put to work by cartoonists, illustrators and film-makers in the interests of humour and satire.

There are cartoons featuring animals as national types or political groups across several centuries from John Tenniel and David Low (whose Coalition Ass is, surely, ripe for revival!) to today's satirists, Steve Bell and Martin Rowson.

But best of all are those animals simply horsing around or monkeying about for the sheer fun of it or, as in these two cartoons, re-defining the term 'bird brain'...

 

There are people behaving like animals and animals dressed up like people, as in this example, 'Hare Dressing', by one of Dickens' illustrators, John Leech...

Among the more than 140 exhibits by 60 artists you'll find, cheek by jowl, Korky the Kat...

...and Simon's Cat...

There are perennial favourites like Fred Basset, Rupert Bear, Flook and one of Thelwell's endearingly obstreperous ponies...

There are also a number of rabbits in evidence from this literary imagining (from our collection) by Michael fflokes...

...to the black humour of Andy Riley's Bunny Suicides...

From the nation's comics you'll meet a range of amusing animals from Pip, Squeak and Wilfred (a bizarre vintage menage featuring a dog, a penguin and a rabbit) and, from the Beano, The Three Bears...

And from animated films there's the Pink Panther, Gromit (and Wallace) and assorted Disney folk from Max Hare and Toby Tortoise from the 1934 Silly Symphony, The Tortoise and the Hare...

...to that king of the swingers, The Jungle Book's King Louie...

This wonderfully entertaining exhibition remains on show until 21 October.

The Cartoon Museum
35 Little Russell Street
London WC1A 2HH

Telephone 0207 580 8155

OPENING TIMES:
Tuesdays-Saturdays 10:30-17:30
Sunday 12:-17:30 Closed Mondays (including Bank Holidays)

ADMISSION:
£5.50 Adults; £4.00; Concessions; £3 Students Free to Under-18s
Art Fund Members and Friends of the Cartoon Museum
Children 12 or under must be accompanied by an adult

There are occasional special events arranged to coincide with exhibitions: check the Cartoon Museum website for up-to-date details and how to book.

***

Finally, these two characters...

...prompt me to let you know that the recent radio programme, The Songs of Milne that features the settings written by H Fraser-Simson for A A Milne's Christopher Robin verses and Hums of Pooh (in which I made an appearance) gets a repeat airing tomorrow (Saturday) on BBC Radio 4 at 13:30.


Image credits:
Penguin and Polar Bear © Royston Roberton
Ian Baker, Readers' Digest  200
'A Nasty Tern' from Ralph Steadman’s Extinct Boids with Ceri Levy (October 2012)
Korky the Cat, James Crighton, Dandy 1949 © D C Thomson & Co Ltd.
Simon's Cat © Simon Tofield
'You Can Talk to Your Horse' © Norman Thelwell
'For Services to Literature' © the estate of Michael ffolkes (Brian Davis)
Bunny Suicides © Andy Riley
The Three Bears (detail), Leo Baxendale, Beano1963 © D C Thomson & Co Ltd
Disney images © The Walt Disney Studio

HUM–ALONG–A-POOH

Do you remember this..

The year: 1977... A record made by a small green frog reaches No.7 in the UK Top Ten and earns him an appearance on the BBC's weekly TV show, Top of the Pops.

The frog was Robin, nephew of Kermit, Master of Ceremonies of The Muppet Show and the lyrics – by A A Milne (left) author, playwright and essayist and Assistant Editor of the humorous magazine Punch – had originally been published in 1924 in Milne's celebrated collection of children's verses, with illustrations by E H Shepard, When We Were Very Young.

The wistful melody was the work of Harold Fraser-Simson (right), a close neighbour of Milne's in Chelsea and a fellow member of the Garrick Club.

He had also earned a reputation as a successful composer of light music with his score for the phenomenal West End triumph, The Maid of the Mountains, an operetta that played for 1,352 performances: a record run second only, at the time, to that of Chu Chin Chow.

The partnership between Fraser-Simson and Milne began with a volume of Fourteen Songs from 'When We Were Very Young', which instantly capitalised on the huge success achieved by the book of verses, many of which were 'fictionally' based on the juvenile doings of Milne's son, Christopher Robin: going to see the changing of the guard at Buckingham Palace ('with Alice') or being careful not to treads on the lines of the street – especially whenever he went 'Hoppity-hoppity-hoppity-hoppity-hop'!

One of the most famous songs to come out of this collaboration was Milne's first 'children's verse', published two years before When We Were Very Young in 1923, in the American magazine, Vanity Fair. It's formal title was 'Vespers' but most people know it as...

Some may think it is a tad too sentimental (and they'd probably be right!) but, in it's defence, I would point out that the writer later said that if you read the words carefully you'll see that it is, in fact, about a little boy NOT saying his prayers!

Many recordings of the song have been made over the years, from 'Belfast's Own Boy Soprano', Billy Neely...

...via Gracie Fields and Webster Booth to the New York Met's great Wagnerian soprano, Helen Traubel...

In addition to the verses in When We Were Very Young and Now We Are Six, Fraser-Simson provided musical settings for the Hums of Pooh, the ditties extemporised by Christopher Robin's 'bear of very little brain' in the books, Winnie-the-Pooh and The House at Pooh Corner.

Anyway, what all this is leading up to is that there is a 30-minute feature tomorrow (Tuesday) morning on BBC Radio 4 at 11:30 am about the MIlne/Fraser-Simson partnership.  

The Songs of Milne is presented by pianist John Kember (below right with baritone Richard Burkhard), who first came across the music on a friend's piano and set about collecting the scores for all of Fraser-Simson's sixty-seven settings of Milne's verses and Pooh's Hums. It is John's ambition that he and Richard might produce a complete recording of these delightful songs.

In the programme, John tells the story of this, now largely forgotten, partnership and explores the relationship between the words and the music, their rise and decline in popularity and ponders the question of whether they have any currency in today's world that is so very different to that of the 1920s era of nannies, nursery teas and prayers at bedtime...

Also taking part in the broadcast are Andrew Lamb, authority on musical theatre, Dr Clare Rose, Honorary Research Fellow at the Centre for the Study of Childhood and Youth –– and the author of Three Cheers for Pooh, viz... Me! 

Following the broadcast, the programme can be heard via the BBC iPlayer for the next seven days.

I began by mentioning the Muppets and I think the late Jim Henson must have had an affection for these songs because, over the years, a number of them were featured on The Muppet Show. I'll leave you with Rowlf's rendition of one of Pooh's best hums, 'Cottleston Pie'...