Jump to content

Humphrey Lyttelton

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Clive Jones (talk | contribs) at 13:25, 17 April 2008 (Added reference). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Humphrey Lyttelton

Humphrey Richard Adeane Lyttelton (born 23 May 1921), also known as 'Humph', is a well-known English 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 great-nephew of the politician and sportsman Alfred Lyttelton, who was the first man to represent England at both football and cricket.

Early life and career

Lyttelton was born in Eton, where his father, G. W. Lyttelton (second son of the 8th Viscount Cobham), was a house master. (As a male-line descendent of 8th Viscount Cobham, Lyttelton is in remainder to both the Viscounty Cobham and the Barony Lyttelton.) From Sunningdale Preparatory School, Lyttelton duly progressed to Eton College. At Eton Lyttelton fagged for Lord Carrington but also developed his love for jazz. He was 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 leaving school, Lyttelton spent some time at the steel 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 the Abbey bank, as part of their new advertising campaign.

He was one of the collaborators with Wally Fawkes on the long running cartoon strip Flook.

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 United States. 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 traditional jazz elements to the Radiohead song "Life in a Glasshouse" on the Amnesiac album.

He is the Honorary President of The Duke Ellington Society (UK)[citation needed]

On March 11 2008, he announced his intention to cease presenting BBC Radio 2's "Best of Jazz", after 40 years.[1]

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. Lyttelton is the oldest current panel/game show host in the UK, being two and a half years older than his closest rival, Nicholas Parsons. [1]

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 extracurricular 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:

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 sold 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

Notes

  1. ^ Lyttelton to end radio jazz show
  2. ^ Radio 4 Presenters - Humphrey Lyttelton
  3. ^ 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 )
Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/enwiki/w/index.php?title=Humphrey_Lyttelton&oldid=206237285"