![]() ![]() When Jack and June meet at the foot of The Lonesome Pine, a fine friendship springs up that rapidly ripens into love. Handsome young Jack Hale, a northerner, comes down to the mountain region to survey its land and act as head of a small band of policemen who strive to establish law and order. Lovely June Tolliver, born and reared in the heart of the Blue Ridge Mountains, is ignorant of the great outside world. Listen to the best of Queen on Apple Music and Spotify.John Fox, Jr.'s most celebrated novel made into a grand and glorious play. He was the first DJ in the world to play Queen,” said drummer Roger Taylor. “John Peel’s contribution to music was pivotal. John Peel, who died in 2004, had a lasting impact on a generation of music fans – and he championed Queen long before anyone else, too. (It, of course, also serves as the title for the hit biopic starring Rami Malek as lead singer Mercury.) Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” written by Freddie Mercury for the band’s 1975 album, A Night At The Opera, was a six-minute tour de force and is deemed one of the greatest songs of the 20th Century. 1 was the phenomenal selling power of Queen. The only thing that stopped the single from being No. “Lonesome Pine” ended up selling over a quarter of a million records. The charming clip was shown on BBC Television’s Top Of The Pops and the record’s momentum continued to grow. ![]() A startled Laurel carries on for a short spell before singing the final chorus in a high falsetto voice (sung, also off camera, by Rosina Lawrence). Laurel is actually lip-synching to the voice of actor Chill Wills, who was singing live just out of shot.Īn irritated Hardy asks the barman for a mallet and then thumps Laurel over the head. The joke is that he sings normally and then ruins the song with a startlingly deep tenor voice. Laurel, who had taken piano and violin lessons as a kid but freely admitted he wasn’t “the type for a musical career”, then joins in. ![]() Hardy, who had studied at the Conservatory Of Music in Atlanta as a teenager, had a mellifluous tenor voice and sings along sweetly. All goes well until Laurel And Hardy join in. Laurel And Hardy’s song follows a glorious dance sequence in Way Out West: a scene set on the steps of a saloon bar (the dance is recreated in the biopic Stan And Ollie, which stars Steve Coogan and John C Reilly) when they move inside Mickey Finn’s bar, the saloon’s cowboy band – Walter Trask And The Avalon Boys – sing the ballad “The Blue Ridge Mountains Of Virginia,” which had been written by Ballard MacDonald and Harry Carroll in the early 1900s. In a 1974 song for Wings, “Junior’s Farm,” Paul McCartney included the lyric, “Olly Hardy should have had more sense.” The comedy duo appears on the iconic cover of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band album, while Harry Nilsson used to imitate Laurel scratching his head to make John Lennon laugh. Peel wasn’t the only Laurel And Hardy fan in the music industry. “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine” also turned up on a list of Peel’s 15 favorite singles from 1975, alongside John Lennon’s “Imagine” and Bob Marley’s “No Woman, No Cry.” When he curated the 1988 Meltdown festival, Peel included a Dutch revivalist ensemble called Beau Hunks playing Laurel And Hardy film music.Ĭlick to load video Laurel and Hardy’s musical influence and roots In the autumn of 1975, he played “The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine” every night of the week on his influential Radio 1 show (he even regularly played the B-side, “Honolulu Baby”) and it gained traction in the charts. He told Warner that it seemed “a DJ called John Peel liked ‘The Trail Of The Lonesome Pine’” and had promised to give it some air time. “Well old boy, I’ve got some really good news for you,” he reported back to United Artists executive Alan Warner. United Artists Records sent their promotions manager, a jolly ex-Royal Navy man who was famed for his outlandish toupée (and would not have looked out of place in a Laurel And Hardy film), to the BBC to drum up interest in the single they had picked from the album. The album, mastered at Abbey Road Studios, included a number of Laurel And Hardy’s film songs. In the mid-70s, Laurel And Hardy’s films were shown regularly on the BBC – the feature-length black-and-white movie Way Out West had been watched by millions on BBC One on Christmas Day 1974 – and a record company decided to release an LP called The Golden Age Of Hollywood Comedy. So how did a novelty song, taken from the 1937 comedy Way Out West, come close to challenging one of rock music’s greatest songs, recorded by one of the 20th Century’s most popular bands? The strange story involves John Peel and the power of the radio DJ. ![]()
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