Friday Night Jukebox, Vol. LXXI--Mr. Acker Bilk: Stranger on the Shore

As we're nearing the anniversary of my father's birth, it's once again time to pay homage to one of his favorite tunes--which hit #1 (with a bullet!) on the Billboard Hot 100.  That it was immediately followed at #1 by my Dad's favorite artist of all time, Ray Charles, with his hit "I Can't Stop Loving You," is probably about as much karma as can be fit into pop music.

Bonus Points 1:  As if the name Acker Bilk wasn't distinctive enough, Bilk added a Mr. to his name for the single's release.  I mean even Sinatra never released a song by Mr. Frank Sinatra.  Bonus Points 2:  Bilk was the first Brit to top the Hot 100--and the second was a band you may have heard of:  The Beatles.  Bonus Points 3:  The crew of Apollo 10 added the song to a cassette they played while traveling in space.  It's not "Johnny B. Goode" (which was sent into space aboard the Voyager spacecraft for alien civilizations to enjoy), but it's not sliced bologna either.

Mr. Acker Bilk had a long career in the music business as a clarinettist (lest we forget, Big Band great Benny Goodman was a clarinettist, too), most of it with his trademark goatee, bowler hat, and striped vest in place (you can see it in the video below).  While he never again reached the success he had in 1962 (best selling single in both the U.S. and the U. K.), he managed to keep at it until his death in 2014 (though he admitted near the end of his life that he pretty much hated "Stranger on the Shore" after 50 years of playing it).  He was known for his vibrato style of playing the clarinet (caused somewhat by the loss of part of a finger in a childhood accident), and on the semi-coolness quotient, he gains a few extra points for playing on three Van Morrison albums.

"Stranger on the Shore" is an instrumental which features Bilk on the clarinet and some old fart, easy listening strings in the background.  Now when most people think of a clarinettist, they think of a young woman in a high school band who looks a lot like Joan Cusack's character in Sixteen Candles and for whom life would be perfect if only N'Sync would reunite, but Bilk actually takes it to another level. His playing is downright emotive and understandably so as he actually wrote the song for his young daughter.  It was originally titled "Jenny" after her (Bilk was persuaded to change the title so it could be used as the theme song for a same titled British television show).

Alas there isn't much that can be said about an instrumental--suffice it to say that "Stranger on the Shore" is the most hopeful melancholy tune ever written (Bilk wrote it himself).  I've often thought that life is a constant battle between expectations and acceptance, and every time I hear this song it reminds me of that battle--and how you eventually learn that acceptance is a fine place to be.  And "Stranger on the Shore" is two minutes and fifty-five seconds of being in just such a happy place.

Surprise, surprise--no lyrics this week!

Enjoy:

Peace,
emaycee