YouSaid · the spoken record

Humphrey Lyttelton

lines on the record: 31
first: 2006-11-05
most recent: 2006-11-05
sittings or episodes: 1
sources: podcast

Every line below is reproduced as it was said and linked to the record it came from. Nothing here is summarised or generated. Directory · Search · Corrections

“A seventh record arises from something that I discovered. People have said to me and I don't have never recognised it myself, that there's something about my timing. But in point of fact, somebody sent me an LP of one of the old Kenneth Horn shows round the horn, and I always used to listen to that when it was a regular broadcast, and then I'd forgotten about it. I suddenly realized that I recognized in Kenneth Horn's approach of the thing something of what I do, and so I've realized that he was a huge influence on me. It may be due to the fact he was alleged to be on the posh side, and he was also posh, and so he was doing much the same thing that I was doing, you know, slumming.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's just such fun to do because we all get on well together because I got my persona on the program from how I felt when they'd run me up and said it's going ahead back in nineteen seventy two and it's going on the air And I drove in for the first recording then, thinking what the hell am I doing? You know, I've got a perfectly good career. I'm not strapped for money particularly, and I just don't know what I'm doing here. And I've kept that thought to the forefront of my mind all the way through.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd done quite a few pilots over the years, because anybody who ever spoke for any length of time on radio eventually asked to do a pilot, and he got paid a studio fee, and you went home and never heard anything about it forever.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Yes, indeed, and it will recollect one of those moments when we saw him off at I think it was King's Cross Station, and we set up on one of those huge great baggage trucks. So we set up outside his carriage. He got into his seat. We played one tune, Another and another tune after that, and it went on the train was fifteen or twenty minutes late in pulling out of the station, and I remember I played this number that's my home as part of that farewell. And he hopped across the carriage and he opened those little windows that you could open on one of those carriages, and he cut his head half out and he sang the words of this song. And that would be a fantastic memory to keep.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I have to say that it affected me more than did my own father's death. In the emotional sense, because of course there was music attached to it as well, and I've talked about the emotion of music. And it was one of the worst experiences of my life. I was absolutely knocked by it. Louis Armstrong's death because it was such a complete part of one's life. Affected people All over the place, not just myself.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“And he once said to me on one occasion that we were sitting about because I could go into his dressing room and sit down and have a chat while we were doing the show with him. He said I'm doing a recording of my musical autobiography, and I'm going to tell the people that you play this number for me. And I thought, well, this is something that he says to everybody.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm not making this up. He was a one-legged tapped answer called Peg Leg Bates. who was quite famous in America because he danced. I bet he was. He tap danced with a wooden leg.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well he referred to me I have to say at this point that any trumpet player in any country that he ever met he referred to as a top trumpet player So I don't pretend that I was one of my rosettes. But on this occasion we were in London's Empress Hall. We were brought in a little bit late after the first concert because he came over with a variety show, including a one legged tap dancer.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“My fifth record is it's a little bit of a narcissistic entry because it's also nostalgic because I used to know and listen to one of the Mississippi blues singers called Big Bill Brunsy, who is a fabulous guitar player and singer. And we heard the deed got throat cancer and it had to have the whole of his voice box taken out. Terrible thing for a performer of any kind. And so I wrote a piece which was based loosely on a melody that I associated with Big Bill Blues.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I actually had quite a long depression through the process of sloughing off, as you might say, all the preparatory education that I'd had, not necessarily what I'd learned, but all that sort of how you behaved and what you were aiming for to get rid of all of that, it took a long time. I mean, I've become what I call a romantic socialist during my time in Wales. I'd had my battle dress dye blue, and wore it with a turtleneck sweater coming out underneath the battle dress, which was sort of waist thing. My father once said to me in that he was a bit sour about the way I was turning out, and he once said to me, I don't quite know what the association was. He said, I hope you're not turning into one of these French socialists all beard and belly.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“So I'm Well, I grew a beard for one thing. I had a rather handsome Auburn beard. didn't have any money at that time. They used to tip you for taking part in the war, you had a tip and a suit. They gave you a suit, a blue suit with a red pin stripe, and went along to the art school in the daytimes and then went down to Barnhurst on Monday nights, I think it was, and played in the band”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, it was a choice I had to make. When I came out of the army, my father, I think, expected me to become a schoolmaster in his footsteps. So I went to my father, and in trepidations, because I thought you might be very disappointed, and then he asked me what do you think you will do? So I said, Well, I have two natural talents. One of them is for drawing. And the other is for music. So I went to Cambuel Art School to get a diploma in illustration. And at the same time joined a band called George Webb's Dixielanders.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It's a gospel number sung by one of the greatest of all gospel singers, Marion Williams, who has absolute tornado of passion, and I love it.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I heard about that when I was immediately back home when the news came through. My father came up. I remember him coming up into my bedroom and he was very fond of Antony. He could barely sort of, he just sort of blurted out that Anthony had been killed. He gave me a sort of comforting, you know. went out and he was very overcome by it.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“until the beach head was full and then they started raining down the shells and things like that. And it was gruesome, you know, there's no doubt about it. On the other hand, I used to jazz up the last post. In those days it was simply a bugle call and the words that went with it were lights out So people come up to me at gigs now and they say I remember you at Salerno and you think oh we're going to have some sort of horrific memories and they say you used to jazz up the last post.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Very briefly as I went to North Africa in nineteen forty three and trained to take part in the landing at Salerno. We went on a stinking old troop ship, and we heard on the way over there that Italy had surrendered. So there was a general air of celebration I had my trumpet with me, I took it wherever I went, but we didn't realise that the Germans had moved in immediately that the Italians surrendered. We landed on the beach head, and Germans cunningly allowed most of the ships to discover.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I had a double cousin, Anthony, who was like a brother to me. His mother was my mother's sister, and his father was my father's brother. So we always did everything together in those days.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Indeed, yes. And it's got that cadence at the end. And I come over all ghost pimples from head to foot with that particular sequence of things. I first came over funny when that was played in the nursery. When we used to listen to Who Kill Robin? And when it gets to all the birds in fellow crying in a sobbing fellow crying in a sobbing I was right there with him blubbing like a maniac”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“This is part of that emotional thing. It's a recording of Benomino Gili in nineteen thirty six singing what I call Handel's Largo, and after leaving school, leaving Eton, I went to South Wales with a cousin of mine to Port Talbot. And I suppose we were saved from utter boredom in the evenings by the fact we had a blind up gramophone.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“On the surface of it it was just fun. You know the music was just good fun but underneath it all I think it was the fact that jazz music always contains a hint of pain and it was that emotional side I think underneath that I liked because most of the music that I go for is highly emotional. And the dead of night I be known to sit there with not exactly in floods but with an obtrickle from time to time listening to music.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I'd had a band playing the harmonica, but then I heard Louis Armstrong and wanted to play the trumpet, so I got my mother to buy me a trumpet, and I walked into Charing Cross Road, wearing, I may tell you, at the age of what, fifteen, a top hat, a tailcoat, a silver waistcoat, I don't know what they thought of the apparition coming in. My mother trailed round behind me saying, Wouldn't a clarinet be nicer?”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“It was the headmaster. It was a complete difference in style, and one of the things I did for him was doing cartoons on the stage. It was known then as lightning cartoons. He had a huge layout pad. That must have looked a right idiot. I stood up there, you know, doing these things and reading this patter about people like Hatma Gandhi, Charlie Chaplin, and people like that.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was eight years old. My parents took me there, and I was full of apprehension. We were met by the headmaster, Mr Crabtree, sons Dickensian, isn't he? And there were a lot of bunches boys already there who made friends already Oh dreadful and then my parents I think thought the best thing to do was to hand me over to Mr Crabtree and then get in the car and head off for the gate without saying goodbye or anything else they thought that would be the best thing and I can imagine my father saying to my mother who was probably very upset. Don't worry, he's probably made a lot of friends already. Well, in fact, I hadn't.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Second record goes to a love that I shared with my father of the monologues that were recorded in the mid thirties by Arthur Marshall, and my father and I used to love this. It was one of the meeting points, you know, and we both played golf and so that we had quite a lot of time together. A lot of it was heaving with laughter at Arthur Marshall's description, for example, in the role of school mysteries, taking the children on a nature walk.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Well, I was wondering about the house at the age of, I don't know what, five, six or something. One of the parents wandered in, and he was a vicar. And I was suddenly confronted in the hallway of the house by this total stranger and didn't know what to do at all. So in desperation, I lowered my head and butted him in the mid reef, and he burst into flames. which might have been some evidence that I had some kind of satanic influence in my early days, but the truth was that he had a packet of swan vestis non-safety matches in his waistcoat, and I'd ignited the whole audit with one punch. But that's what Chinese does for you”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“When I was learning the drama with Mr Glass, and he first of all took me up to the Victoria Baron. waiting for the band. and lead the guard, the new guard, up to Windsor Castle, where they do the Remember still the thrill of hearing the command. Much and then you'd have the five beat Have a record by one of my heroes. Section of it”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I'm rather hasn't. I still wake up in the morning with Ideas sometimes they keep me awake at the crack of dawn, ideas for things to do with the band. I've just done a recording session. We did nineteen tracks in four days, and every morning I've been waking up with tunes. As long as that goes on, I”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Rather taken by the sight of Louis Armstrong playing the trumpet because there werealic posture with the trumpet pointing”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“I fiddle about with that for a while and my mother thought as mothers do. promise so she answered an advert in the local paper for a drum teacher. Anchor Mr Glass came down, and I can remember the moment when he came into the room and my mother said of course lot on the drums to which Mr”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Fascinated by music from a very, very early age, the trumpet came quite late. I had a love affair with the harmonica for a long time.”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source
“Sometimes people ask me what's the most important thing? And I say, Well, if ever I slump forward, it's not going to be on a computer keyboard. Be trumpet”
2006-11-05 · Desert Island Discs · Humphrey Lyttelton · IDENTIFIED FROM THE TRANSCRIPT · source