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| About this release |
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Keith Roberts |
For most of his musical career Keith Roberts plied his trade a long way away from the glare of the spotlight, gradually building a reputation in the industry throughout the 1960's and then concentrating on composing and arranging a vast array of music destined never to find release to the wider public, other than perhaps a chance encounter on an in-flight sound system, in a hotel lobby or a supermarket, in the medium of what is termed 'background music'-a great source of income for many composers and publishing companies, even today. However, Keith also achieved success in the pop world, with Gun's smash hit 'Race With The Devil' in 1968, and then had a hand in realising an album which many hold up of one of the best musical achievements of the era, and one possessing of a lasting appeal; by arranging four of Scott Walker's compositions for inclusion on his masterpiece 'Scott 4' album. Up to now the only clues have been the scant sleeve notes on the original LP's, but now we can reveal the truth, having been granted this exclusive interview with Keith Roberts himself! |
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| LS: How did you start out in the business? |
| KR: That would have been in 1958. I started out working as a copyist for a big music publisher called Campbell Connelly. I got a job there through my brother who was eleven years older than me and was already in the business. He did a lot of work with The Cliff Adams Singers later on. When an arranger does a score it might be on one manuscript and of course all of the musicians for a session would need just their own part, so they had people transcribing each part for entire orchestras of ten to fifty or even more. I would sit there copying out all of the individual parts of an arrangement for each of the four trumpets in the brass section and so on. I would have been about 18 at the time. My father had kind of pushed me into music, starting with the piano and early on he'd have me write out parts for TV orchestras, just to make me do it. I'm sure they didn't actually use them; it was just to get me into it. I was with Campbell Connelly only for a couple of years. My brother, who was an arranger, and two other copyist who were also self-employed, were working from an office in Denmark Street, and so I joined them and did the same, going self-employed from the age of 19 up until now really. I've always been free-lance. All through the 60's I was a copyist, in particular working on films. I did a lot of the copying for the James Bond films. |
| LS: Were you working with John Barry? |
| KR: Yes, I used to have to go round to his flat and collect manuscripts. One day I bumped into his then wife, Jane Birkin while picking up a score at his flat down near Sloan Square. |
| LS: Nice! Did you work with any pop artists at that time? |
| KR: The arranger usually corresponded with the artists, I was only a copyist in those days of course, but I handled scores for Sandy Shaw early on. |
| LS: How did you develop your own arrangement skills? |
| KR: Well, I just gave Rediffusion a ring one day; Charles Berman was the head producer there, and he got me interested in doing pop songs for background music, rather than just the light-orchestral muzak type of thing that they had been doing for years. They couldn't just compile the original tracks in those days; they had to re-record them for their own use. I did a lot of that kind of work at the end of the 60's. |
| LS: How did the Birds 'n' Brass album come about? |
| KR: I was thinking of a new type of combo to use for a project to pitch to Rediffusion and I thought about using two trumpets, two girl singers, baritone sax and a trivox. |
| LS: What on earth is a trivox? |
| KR: It's played by an accordion player, but instead of using bellows, it's purely electrical. They have it strapped around their shoulders and it's all connected to an amp. You can hear the trivox in the solo of 'Sort of Soul'. It was much easier to bring into the studio compared to an organ, where it would take two guys to carry the cabinet in! Then there were drums, bass and guitar and a percussionist who played vibes, marimba, congas, maracas or tambourine. |
| LS: Where did you come across such an odd instrument? |
| KR: I'd seen them around. It was played by a fellow called Jackie Emblow who was the best known accordion player in the session world. So I was thinking about using this combo; either playing together or as a counter melody between the girls and the trumpet. |
| LS: Were you specifically searching for something different? |
| KR: That's right. The two girls singing along with the trumpets would make quite a sharp sound, and the trivox gave it a kind of edginess. Although for 'Sort of Soul', the tension there is from the guitar part at the start. What made that was the wah-wah pedal really. I did an arrangement of that tune to be used on a BBC broadcast by Johnny Howard; I wrote the guitar figure out, but it didn't sound the same as on the recording session-that figure with the wah-wah pedal just clicked that day. 'Shaft' was the thing that really got the wah-wah used much more. |
| LS: You reworked that track on the second LP. |
| KR: Yes. That was along the same lines as it was on the original version. When the song first came out I heard it and wondered what the sound was on the guitar; found out it was a wah-wah and decided to use it; but on single notes instead of chords. |
| LS: Can you remember who were the players on the LP? |
| KR: Jackie Emblow on the trivox, on drums was a fellow called John Dean, bass was Dave Richmond, guitar was Clive Hicks and Barbara Moore did both voices. What happened was that Barbara was originally booked for the session and something came up and she couldn't make it so she sent down two subs. But unfortunately they couldn't handle it, so she came in for an extra session the next day and did both of the voices by herself. |
| LS: Was the record successful when it was released? |
| KR: I don't think it ever really took off. Being an instrumental album it wasn't going to be really big anyway, but it got picked up in the odd place. ITV were covering the world ice skating championships one year and they used it for the opening and closing titles. Rediffusion was connected with independent television, so they would speak to the producers of various shows and so on, trying to get their music used as much as possible. |
| LS: Was the entire LP done in just those two days? |
| KR: Yes, and that was a day longer than usual. We used to do a 16 track recording for safety, but usually we didn't do any mixing-it was straight as it came down to 2 track. The multi-track was there, but usually they were happy with the initial live recording and they didn't want further mixing. I don't think I ever attended a mixing session, so I don't believe it was mixed further. I was conducting in the live room and it was done at Chappell Studios on Bond Street with John Timperley as the recording engineer. |
| LS: What about the rest of the LP-how did you decide on the other tunes? |
| KR: I think Charles Berman would have suggested them, and 'Return To Montana' was his composition. |
| LS: What about the rest of the LP-how did you decide on the other tunes? |
| KR: Well, I was working on lots and lots of music, but none of it ever came out commercially. Mostly with Rediffusion for their background music catalogue, but I also did some library work for Bruton and Southern Music. I wrote a tune for Peer International (part of Southern Music) called 'Sporting Soul' - I liked the use of the word 'Soul' in the titles - that the independent radio station LBC used for their sports program for about 10 years or so. It had a big build up with brass and then a few bars where it went a bit quiet where they used to talk over it-announcing the afternoon's sport. As well as the compositions I was doing a lot of arranging. My first 'hit' as an arranger was with a group called Gun, who had this track 'Race With The Devil'. That had lots of really high trumpets on it-bit of a one-hit-wonder I think. That was for CBS. I was also getting a good bit of work for Philips. Johnny Franz used to be the chief A&R man there and through him I did some arrangements on a Scott Walker album-I forget which one it was now [turns out it's the landmark 'Scot 4', where Keith arranged four songs, including the sumptuous 'The Worlds Strongest Man']. I used to do a lot of his cabaret arrangements. He used to love the music of Jacques Brel, so I'd do those for him for the shows. At around the same time I worked for John Walker who had been in the Walker Brothers as well. |
| LS: What was Scott like to work with? Legend has it that he was a bit strange! |
| KR: Well, as everybody knows, he went off talking to the trees at quite an early stage! He was lovely though-nothing pretentious about him or anything. |
| LS: Then it was time for another Birds 'n' Brass album! |
| KR: Yes. I spoke to Rediffusion and they said that they were thinking of doing another Birds 'n' Brass LP and I was happy to oblige. With tracks like 'Fritzy Baby' it was a bit of a different idea where we used the flute predominately as the melody instrument, with lots of what they call 'tonguing', rather than with a clean crisp sound. |
| LS: Did you use the same players? |
| KR: The voices were Barbara Moore: you can easily identify her voice, so it had to be her again. I think it was the same guitarist, Clive Hicks, and maybe a few other players from the first one…almost the same combo really. |
| LS: What have you been up to since then? |
| KR: Around that time I was doing a lot of albums covering stage shows and musicals with people like Aimi MacDonald. I continued doing stuff with Rediffusion in a variety of styles; some of it in the manner of the Birds 'n' Brass tracks and some orchestral, all the way to Richard Claiderman stuff, very little of which was available outside of the background music catalogues, and continued all the way up until the early 80's when it all changed in the industry as a whole. A lot of my stuff is still used regularly; four times a year you receive a distribution sheet from the PRS with all of the details on, but they don't tell you exactly where its being used, and very often you are curious to find out. After that I went back to doing some transcribing and nightclub work. I had a regular gig in a nightclub in Maidenhead called the Silver Skillet…it was one of those cabaret clubs and I played piano there for about 10 years. We'd back all the cabaret singers like Joe Longthorne and you'd have comedians like Mike Reed and all those. Then it went over to doing all those bands like The Bootleg Beatles and stuff. For the last 8 years I've been teaching music classes for kids and one at an adult education center. |
| LS: What did you think when you discovered that contemporary artists were sampling your work? |
| KR: At first I wondered how they'd ever managed to get hold of it! I wrote 'Sort of Soul' in 1970 and its still being used as background music today. In 1998 my publishers contacted me and said that it had been sampled by Fuzz Townsend on something called 'Smash It' and it was a big hit - he must have found the Birds 'n' Brass album in a charity shop or at a car boot sale! |
| LS: We believe he's not the only one to have used elements of 'Sort of Soul'-it must be a nice little earner for you! |
| KR: Ever since the 1970's, when I get the payments, its always on there somewhere! Then in 2001 it was picked up for the film 'Blow' with Johnny Depp and Penelope Cruz. Right out of the blue my publisher told me they wanted it for the film. The story is that the producer heard it on an airplane and he thought it would be good for a particular scene. Somehow they managed to trace it from the airline-asked them who they bought the music from and so on, and then back to the publishers. |
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