Photo: John Stillwell/AP
Jill Lawless Associated Press
POSTED: 11/02/2014 01:25:58 PM MST
LONDON (AP) — English clarinet player Acker Bilk, who beat the Beatles and other British rockers to the top of the U.S. music charts with the instrumental "Stranger on the Shore," has died at the age of 85.
Manager Pamela Sutton said Bilk died Sunday at a hospital in Bath, southwestern England. The cause of death was not announced.
Born Bernard Stanley Bilk in 1929 in the southwestern English county of Somerset, Bilk adopted the name Acker from a local slang term for friend.
He learned the clarinet as a bored army conscript, stationed in Egypt after World War II, and became one of the stars of Britain's 1950s "trad jazz" scene.
Before the British rock invasion, he was the first U.K act to top the Billboard music chart in the 1960s, with "Stranger on the Shore." The wistful 1961 instrumental also spent more than a year in the British charts and became his signature tune.
He was on the select list of artists who have been played in space. Along with tracks by Frank Sinatra, the Kingston Trio and others, three of Bilk's tunes were included on a cassette that accompanied the Apollo 10 astronauts on their mission around the moon in 1969.
Bilk attributed his distinctive vibrato sound to a pair of childhood accidents. He lost part of a finger in a sledding accident, and two teeth in fight at school.
read more: http://www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/opinion/ci_26850340/jazz-clarinetist-acker-bilk-dead-at-85
Photograph: CHRIS CAPSTICK/REX/CHRIS CAPSTICK/REX
Bob Stanley
theguardian.com, Tuesday 4 November 2014 15.30 GMT
On 25 January 1963, Alexandra Palace in north London played host to an all nighter, or a “rave” as music lovers of the day would have it. It was called the All Night Carnival of Jazz, and ran from 10pm til seven the next morning. That week’s NME described it as the biggest trad jazz event ever to be staged in Britain and an advert inside, from clarinet makers Boosey & Hawkes, paid tribute to one of the headliner – “Well done, Acker! Congratulations on your phenomenal success as a recording star, and as leader of Britain’s favourite Traditional Jazz Band.”
Though a huge deal at the time, it’s safe to say that the All Night Carnival of Jazz has not been as well remembered or as documented as Ally Pally’s Fourteen Hour Technicolor Dream event of 1967, or the Stone Roses’ Christmas show in 1989. The performers included George Melly, Ken Colyer, and the three biggest names in British jazz – Kenny Ball, Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. Their names always appeared in that order, as if the only fair way to bill these giants was to list them alphabetically.
Bilk separated himself from the crowd with a strong image. Like Lord Kitchener and Lord Beginner, calypso singers who were also making waves along with the trad jazzers in 50s Britain, Bilk gave himself a title, albeit a title with great modesty – he was always credited as Mr Acker Bilk. His beard, bowler and waistcoat were his calling card. Ball, Barber and Bilk shared the credit on a No 1 album in 1962: each had a string of hits in Britain, as well one huge hit in America: Midnight In Moscow for Ball, Petite Fleur for Barber, and Bilk’s self-written Stranger on the Shorein 1962.
read more: http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/nov/04/acker-bilk-the-hitmaker-who-symbolised-the-generation-gap
