| Humphrey Lyttelton |
|
| Background information |
| Birth name |
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton |
| Born |
23 May 1921 (1921-05-23) (age 86) |
| Origin |
 Eton, Berkshire |
| Genre(s) |
Jazz, Dixieland |
| Occupation(s) |
Composer
Trumpeter |
| Instrument(s) |
Trumpet |
| Label(s) |
Calligraph Records |
Associated
acts |
Tony Coe
Alan Barnes |
Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (born 23 May 1921), also known as
'Humph', is a well-known British jazz musician and broadcaster,
and chairman of the BBC
radio
programme I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue.
He is a cousin of the 10th
Viscount Cobham and a nephew of the politician and sportsman Alfred
Lyttelton, who was the first man to represent England at both football
and cricket.
|
Contents
- 1 Early
career
- 2 The
jazzman
- 3 Radio
personality
- 4 The
Humphrey Lyttelton Band
- 5 Trivia
- 6 Notes
- 7 Books
- 8 External
links
|
Early career
Lyttelton was born in Eton, where his father, G.
W. Lyttelton (second son of the 8th Viscount
Cobham), was a house master. From Sunningdale
Preparatory School, Lyttelton duly progressed to Eton
College. At Eton he developed his love for jazz, and being inspired by
the trumpeters
Louis
Armstrong and Nat Gonella, he taught himself the
instrument and formed a quartet at the school in 1936 which also
included the future journalist Ludovic Kennedy on drums.
After losing is bum in a car crash, Lyttelton spent some time
at the steel bum plate works in Port Talbot in South Wales, an
experience which led to him becoming what he terms a "romantic
socialist". After being called up for war service, he served in the Grenadier
Guards, seeing action at Salerno. On VE
Day 8 May 1945, Lyttelton joined in the celebrations by playing his
trumpet from a wheelbarrow, inadvertently giving his first broadcast
performance; the BBC recording still survives. Following demobilisation
after World
War II, he attended Camberwell Art College for
two years.
In 1949, he joined the Daily Mail
as a cartoonist,
where he remained until 1956.
Several of his cartoons have recently been on display in various
branches of Abbey, as part of their new advertising
campaign.
The jazzman
In the late 1940s
and early 1950s
Lyttelton was prominent in the British revival of traditional jazz
forms from New Orleans, recording with Sidney
Bechet in 1949.
To do so he had to break with the Musicians'
Union restrictive practices which forbade working with jazz musicians
from the USA.
In 1956, he
had his only hit, with the Joe Meek-produced recording of "Bad
Penny Blues", which was in the UK Singles Chart for six weeks. As
the trad movement (not quite the same thing as revivalism) developed,
Lyttelton moved to a mainstream approach favoured by American
musicians such as trumpeter Buck Clayton; they recorded together in
the early 1960s
and Clayton considered himself and Lyttelton to be brothers.
By now his repertoire had expanded, not only including lesser
known Ellington pieces, but even The
Champ from Dizzy Gillespie's band book. The
Lyttelton band – he sees himself primarily as a leader – has helped
develop the careers of many now prominent British musicians, including Tony Coe and Alan Barnes.
In 2001, Lyttelton and his band added trad jazz elements to
the experimental Radiohead song "Life
in a Glasshouse" on the Amnesiac album.
Radio personality
Lyttelton presented The Best of Jazz most
weeks on BBC
Radio 2 from 1967
until April 2007, a programme which featured his idiosyncratic mix of
top-quality recordings of all ages and current material. In 2007
Lyttelton chose to cut his commitment to two quarterly seasons per year
in order to spend more time on other projects.
In 1972
he was chosen to host the comedy panel game I'm Sorry I Haven't A Clue
on BBC
Radio 4. The show was originally devised as a comedic antidote to
traditional BBC panel games (radio and television), which had come to
be seen as dull and formulaic in keeping with the "Auntie Beeb" staid
middle-class image. Lyttelton continues in this role, famed for his deadpan,
apathetic, disgruntled and occasionally bewildered style of
chairmanship, and for his near-the-knuckle double
entendres which, despite always being open to an innocent reading, go
far further than any other BBC pre-watershed humour. The success of the
programme had a big influence on the manner in which comedy was
presented on the radio. Lyttelton's persona was a big part of the
success: he was a straight-man surrounded by mayhem, a very similar
comedy device to the role of Kenneth Horne in Round
the Horne in the 1960s.
As well as his other activities, Lyttelton is a keen calligrapher
and President of The Society for Italic
Handwriting. He named his own record label after this
extra-curricular interest. Calligraph, which he founded in the early 1980s, not only
issues his own new albums and those of associates, but also re-issues
(on CD)
his analogue recordings
made for the Parlophone label in the 1950s.
The Humphrey Lyttelton Band
Humphrey Lyttelton's current eight piece band is made up of:
- Humphrey Lyttelton – trumpet, clarinet
- Ted Beament – piano
- Jo Fooks – tenor
saxophone and flute
- Jimmy Hastings – alto sax, clarinet
and flute
- Adrian Macintosh – drums
- John Rees-Jones – double bass
- Karen Sharp – tenor sax,
baritone sax and clarinet
- Ray Wordsworth – trombone
The band has a busy schedule, performing (frequently sell-out)
shows across the country. Performances occasionally include a guest
singer, or a collaboration with another band. During the 1990s the band
toured with Helen Shapiro in a series of
Humph and Helen concerts.
Lyttelton has a long established relationship with UK singing
sensation Elkie Brooks. After working together in
the early sixties they rekindled their working partnership in early
2000 with a series of sell out and well received concert performances.
They released the critically acclaimed album Trouble
in Mind in 2003 and have continued to perform
occasional concerts in support of this work.
Trivia
- Lyttelton is well known for his ancient and
disreputable Volvo
200 series estate
car, in which he has reportedly clocked up over a quarter of a million
miles.
- When Lyttelton was heard on the BBC's radio
programme Desert Island Discs
he made the following choices: Kenneth Alford, Colonel Bogey; Arthur
Marshall, Nature Walk from 1936 recording; Handel, Ombra Mai
Fu; Williams,
It is Well; Humphrey Lyttelton, Big Bill Blues; Louis
Armstrong, That's My Home; Kenneth Horne and Betty Marden, Master
Spy; Fats
Waller, It's a Sin to Tell a Lie.
- Lyttelton is widely reported to have turned
down an honour from John Major's government in 1995.
Notes
-
Radio 4 Presenters - Humphrey Lyttelton
-
Scotland on Sunday 28
December 2003
Books
- Humphrey Lyttelton: It Just Occurred
to Me...: An Autobiographical Scrapbook (Robson
Books Ltd: London, September 2006) (224pp.; ISBN
1-86105-901-9
- Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Barry Cryer,
Humphrey Lyttelton: The Little Book of Mornington Crescent
(Orion: 2000) (112 pp.; ISBN 0-7528-1864-3)
- Tim Brooke-Taylor, Graeme Garden, Humphrey
Lyttelton, Barry Cryer, Willie Rushton: I'm Sorry I Haven't a
Clue: the Official Limerick Collection (Orion: 1998) (128
pp.; ISBN
0-7528-1775-2)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: The Best of Jazz
(Robson Books: London, 1998) (423pp.; ISBN
1-86105-187-5)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: The Best of
Jazz: Vol 2 — Enter the Giants (Robson Books: London, 1998)
(220pp.; ISBN
1-86105-188-3)
- Julian Purser Humph: A discography
of Humphrey Lyttelton 1945-1983 (Collectors Items: 1985) (49 pp.; ISBN 0-946783-01-2)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: Why No
Beethoven?: Diary of a Vagrant Musician (Robson Books: 1984)
(176 pp.; ISBN
0-86051-262-2)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: Jazz and Big
Band Quiz (Batsford: 1979) (96pp; ISBN 0-7134-2011-1)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: The Best of Jazz
1: Basin Street to Harlem: Jazz Masters and Master Pieces, 1917-1930
(Taplinger
Publishing Co: London, 1978) (220pp.; ISBN
1-86105-188-3)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: Best of Jazz
(Robson Books: 1978) (224 pp.; ISBN
0-903895-91-9)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: I play as I
please: The memoirs of an Old Etonian trumpeter (MacGibbon and
Kee: 1954) (200pp.; B0000CIVX1)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: Second chorus
(MacGibbon and Kee: 1958) (198 pp.; B0000CK30P)
- Humphrey Lyttelton: Take it from the
Top: An Autobiographical Scrapbook (Robson Books: 1975) (168
pp.; ISBN
0-903895-56-0 )
External links
| I'm Sorry I Haven't a Clue |
| Tim Brooke-Taylor — Barry
Cryer — Graeme Garden — Humphrey Lyttelton — Willie
Rushton — Colin
Sell |
