Clare Teal talks about the inspiration behind her tour (From Bournemouth Echo)

Clare Teal talks about the inspiration behind her tour

9:30am Sunday 14th March 2010 in

• Skip social links
• Print
• Email
• Comments(0)

SO many singers on both sides of the Atlantic have paid deserved tribute to the Great American Songbook over the years that it would be easy for Brits to develop something of an inferiority complex.

Which is partly what prompted jazz singer Clare Teal to put together her new show, The Great British Songbook Tour, which arrives at the Tivoli Theatre, Wimborne on Thursday.

“I’ve always been fascinated by the music of the 1930s and ’40s in particular. But it came as a bit of a surprise to me that some of the songs we assume were American were, in fact, written or collaborated on by people born in the UK,” says the chatty Clare on the phone from her office in Bath.

“What has gripped me is the fact that people from here were working with Americans in an age when travel really wasn’t that easy because America is quite a long way away, I understand!”

The show features gems such as Try A Little Tenderness, a big hit for Otis Redding in the 1960s, of course, but written by British songwriting team James Campbell and Reginald Connelly in the 1930s under their pseudonym Irving King.

Others songs include Smile, by comic legend Charlie Chaplin; Spread A Little Happiness, by Vivian Ellis; and Ewan MacColl’s The First Time Ever I Saw Your Face.

“I always think of the Great American Songbook as being from about 1900 to 1960, but I’ve been digging back even further,” says Claire, also well known as a Radio 2 presenter.

“I’ve only had about four singing lessons in my life, and my musical director suggested a song to me, Down By The Salley Gardens, that I sang at one of them – that goes back to the 1880s.”

More surprising than that, though, is Clare’s revelation she’s not a natural singer, but trained as a clarinettist.

According to that popular vestiary of misinformation, Wikipedia, she only started singing because she turned up to a clarinet exam without her instrument.

“Yes, Wikipedia. I tried to change my page on that, but was told I couldn’t – although there is a grain of truth in that story.

“I did one of these very modern modular courses, so we were learning a new instrument twice a year, which is great for me, as I have the attention span of a goldfish – but the clarinet was my main instrument.

“I’m a bit of a scatterbrain, and what happened was that I was in the music block and the lecturer reminded me I had an exam in 20 minutes, which I’d forgotten about, of course. I didn’t have my instrument, so I found these two lads I’d played around with as a trio – a bassist, who had to mark the frets in pencil, and Weasel, a thrash metal drummer who played a single snare – and we cobbled our way through Angel Eyes.

“But I got really good marks for my singing, which was a shock to me, as I was terribly selfconscious and would hardly talk to anyone.”

Clare’s discovery of her singing voice was the making of her.

After college she found work in a variety of bands before landing a three-album deal with the specialist jazz label Candid in 2001, attracting the attention of Radio 2 presenter Michael Parkinson.

Then came a contract with Sony that was the biggest deal ever signed by a British jazz singer.

She now presents Radio 2’s Big Band Special and Friday Night Is Music Night, as well as performing regularly with her band.

Her one-time mentor, the late great bandleader, arranger and composer Johnny Dankworth, would be delighted for her.

“John’s passing was such a big loss to us all – there’s not a jazzer, or musician of any kind, for that matter, who doesn’t owe him a huge debt.

“We were in Germany when he died, and I was terribly sad.

“John’s was one of the first big bands that I sang with, and he always made a special point of saying to me,‘Come on Clare, you’re one of us, you’re a clarinettist,’ because he also played clarinet, and he considered me a musician, not only a singer.

“One of the songs I do in this show is He Was Beautiful, which has lyrics by (Dankworth’s widow) Dame Cleo Laine, so it gives us the chance to remember him.

“He was a great man and it must have been very hard for Cleo and (their daughter) Jacqui to perform the night he died, but that’s typical of the way they are.

“He passed away that afternoon, and they didn’t announce it until after the show that night.

“Jacqui said he’d slipped away because he wanted to be there that night, which I thought was a lovely way to see it.”

Teal talk

• Clare lives in Bath with her partner/manager Muddy Field and her teenage son.

• Last month she toured Germany with Pee Wee Ellis, James Brown’s former saxophonist and co-writer of hits like Cold Sweat and Say It Loud I’m Black and I’m Proud.

• Clare once earned a crust writing and singing jingles for commercial radio adverts.

• She came second in a national contest to find the UK’s best Billie Holiday soundalike.

• Clare has a weekly lifestyle column in the Yorkshire Post – she was born near Skipton.