Mr. Acker Bilk, C/D?

First number one song on the U.S. Billboard charts by a British artist, "Stranger on the Shore".

That's my stock archane trivia answer.

This is a bloke who, years after Parker, Coltrane, Davis, Coleman et al had released albums, was wearing a bowler hat and playing watered down Ragtime.

Dud to infinity.

Yeah, but god I love saying or writing "Mr. Acker Bilk."

Hi lives near me - I've bumped into him in the shops in Bristol. I wouldn't say I was a fan per se, but Stranger on the Shore used to be my party piece when I was a kid (Dad backed me on the piano). Another single was Aria; neither were trad. jazz - just easy listening intrumentals. I like the sound he gets out of a clarinet - very 'early Carry On film'/Bernard Cribbins..if you see what I mean.

"Stranger On The Shore" = CLASSIC. Don't know anything else by him.

Fact: the first gig I ever attended was Mr Bilk (kinda... he played some summer function at my dad's workplace... I was aged 3 or 4).

He's on Van Morrison's (rather poor) recent Blue Note album, and he's one of the best things on it which isn't saying much.

My parents went to see him at the Colston Hall recently with Kenny Ball and Chris Barber - they are all getting on a bit now so they do 40 minutes each with a lot of talking during the sets. Acker told a feeble joke about old people losing their memory which my dad has now made it his mission to tell everybody in the entire world. Several times.

40 minutes of Mr. Acker Bilk and Chris Barber is abt right.

after 42 years "Stranger On The Shore" remains, i think, the best-selling single in the UK by an artist from the West Country, a fact i often cite as proof of the sheer scale of West Coast Main Line corridor domination of British pop music (although, as i've written elsewhere of late, that is clearly declining now, it's just that singles don't sell in the numbers they once did ...)

i'd like to read Tico on "Stranger On The Shore", which i also love - a pity that he's following the charts used by British Hit Singles and other Guinness books, because out of the five UK charts of the time, the Record Retailer chart used by Guinness in 1961/62 was the only one where "Stranger On The Shore" never hit #1. which reminds me; i'm seriously thinking of augmenting "Popular" by writing about the songs which hit #1 in other charts from 1955 until the Record Retailer chart became the "official" chart, compiled by the British Market Research Bureau, in 1969 ...

The end of "Chill Out" by the KLF, where it goes into Mr. Acker Bilk, is the most perfect moment in all of ambient music.

I'm not God's natural choice to have an Acker Bilk track in my collection, but here's the truth. On "Who Knows Where The Time Goes", the three CD Sandy Denny retrospective, there's a track called "Full Moon", and, lo, there pipes Acker up - the mishmash lugubriously, luxuriantly lush.

"Everybody else has gone
But you're still here with me
And the world is sleeping by and by.
Through the window pane
The frosted light is streaming in,
Full moon sailing high across the sky . . . ."

Tootle tootle toot.