Signature change - PeachParts Mercedes-Benz Forum

Botnst · #1 02-23-2009, 11:18 AM

FROM THE GOONS TO THE COLBYS

Ave atque vale

Saturday, 24 January 2009

Angela Morley, 1924-2009

I doubt many Americans would recognize the name Angela Morley, but if you watched TV in the Eighties you surely heard her music, on "Dallas", "Dynasty", "The Colbys", "Wonder Woman", "Falcon Crest", "Cagney & Lacey", and on and on. Thirty years earlier, she'd been a household name in Britain, although not as "Angela Morley". Back then, she was Wally Stott, and the house conductor for the BBC's most popular radio comedy, "The Goons", with Peter Sellers, Harry Secombe, Spike Milligan and Michael Bentine. It was the Prince of Wales' favorite show when he was a boy, and he can still do all the silly voices. A little of it goes a long way with me, but Wally Stott's music was very adroit. He was a very deft comical composer in those days: The tuba theme he wrote for the lugubrious comedian Tony Hancock on "Hancock's Half Hour" is ingenious: It says that character, which is what the best themes do.

The telly and radio stuff was a small part of his repertoire: Stott had started his musical career at the age of 15 when Archie's Juvenile Band took him on for ten shillings a week. After the war, he became a protege of Robert Farnon, the greatest of all Canadian arrangers and one of the first to encourage Stott to start writing. He made some terrific albums both instrumentally and with singers from Rosie Clooney to Scott Walker.

The sex change happened in 1972, and shortly thereafter Angela moved to America. She was one of the earliest celebrity transsexuals in Britain, and in her case it sometimes seemed more like an entire lifestyle upgrade, as thorough as the Cinderella transformation in the film she scored so beautifully, The Slipper And The Rose. You can't ask for a better name for a jobbing musician in northern England grubbing around with Bert Clegg's orchestra at the Empress Ballroom in Mexborough than stolid working-class "Wally Stott". Conversely, "Angela Morley" is perfumed with the glamorous whirl of Oscar and Emmy ceremonies and Hollywood parties with Larry Hagman and Henry Mancini. It wasn't quite that instant a transformation. She was the conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra at the time of her operation, and there was a lot of tittering about Wally losing his baton. The boys in the band weren't entirely sure what to make of it when Wally Stott conducted his last session and then Peter Knight filled in until their conductor returned in her new guise as Angela Morley. Studio musicians are among my favorite people but it has to be said they're not always the most sensitive, so things were a bit awkward when their old boss walked in and took the podium but this time with a stylish silk skirt swishing against his hosiery. Eventually, Stan Roderick, the BBC's marvelous first trumpet, broke the silence. "Fancy a shag?" he asked. She didn't, but the session proceeded smoothly.

She was a first-class arranger and a fine composer (I'm very fond of A Canadian In Mayfair, written for Farnon). John (Mister Inaugural) Williams recorded her music, Lerner & Loewe had her score their last picture, and the lyrical sweep of The Slipper And The Rose, with Gemma Craven at her loveliest, is worthy of MGM in its heyday. She died last week in Arizona. It was a full life, right to the end, but I'm sad to think I'll never hear another new Angela Morley arrangement.