Oldies Music

[Michele Monro]

The Singer's Singer: Posted by Ron Smith

Occasionally, I feel like expanding on my selection of the book I spotlight on the opening page with a review. This is one of those times:

In these days of competition over who will be the artist to sing the theme song from the newest James Bond film, here’s a trivia question for you: Who was the first artist to do so? (Hint: There was no song from “Dr. No” other than the iconic “James Bond Theme” used in all the films. And the first Bond title song never charted in the U.S., though it made the top 20 in Britain.)

The answer is “From Russia With Love” by Matt Monro, who’s known in the U.S. for a couple of soft top 40 hits— “My Kind Of Girl” (#18-1961) and “Walk Away” (#23-1965). Matt fared much better in his native England, where he rang up eleven top 40 hits, five of which made the top ten.

So why are we now blessed with an exhaustive 600+ page book on the life of a singer who died back in 1985 (“The Singer’s Singer: The Life And Music Of Matt Monro” by Michele Monro; Titan Books; ISBN: 9781848566187)?

The answer is, because the Matt Monro story has never really been told until now. In doing research for my countdown radio show years ago, I was able to dig up little about his background. I knew he had been a bus driver whose big break came when George Martin needed a Frank Sinatra stylist for a Peter Sellers project he was working on. But beyond that surface, there was little else.

(That comparison as the “British Sinatra,” by the way, would haunt Matt for much of his career. Who needs a British Sinatra when the American one was alive and well and recording, too? However, it was the Chairman of the Board himself who said after Matt’s death, “His pitch was right on the nose; his word enunciation letter perfect; his understanding of a song thorough. He will be missed very much, not only by myself, but by his fans all over the world.”)

“The Singer’s Singer” is written by Michele Monro, Matt’s daughter, who studiously avoids putting herself into the story. As she says in the introduction, “It is not about my life with my father.” As administrator of his estate, she had access to interviews and photos that other authors would have found blocked to them. And yet, there seems to be no attempt to lionize her father or whitewash any faults (in describing Matt’s joining the post-war British army at age seventeen, for example, she quotes him as saying, “I had somebody’s husband after me.”) Perhaps, twenty-five years after his death, there’s no need to tell anything but the truth.

From his days as a child escaping the bombing of London in World War II to his first performances at the age of fourteen, entertaining while in the army in Hong Kong, struggling as a big band singer while holding down “real” jobs as a milkman and bus driver, BBC broadcasts with Cyril Stapleton’s Orchestra, demo-ing other’s songs while his own floundered, the Peter Sellers project and subsequent success with George Martin in the studio through the dénouement of a long career and health problems, including the liver cancer that eventually took his life, Matt’s story— as told by Michele— is detailed enough to serve as his legacy but not so much as to ever get boring.

It’s easy to dismiss Matt Monro (especially in the U.S.) as just another anachronistic easy listening singer in an age of rock ‘n’ roll. But he was far more than that. And his story deserves to be told in this manner. Michele admits the book was written for her son, who never knew his grandfather. But we’re fortunate to gain the same insights into the singer that Max will.

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[Marian]

GOOD ONE Michele! and we are so pleased to see the book is now on sale from Amazon.com

[Michele Monro]

Thanks for the feedback and I am delighted to see the book is now on the American Amazon website prior to it's American release later this week. Obviously sales over there are very important and if any of you have the time or inclination I would be grateful if you could post a review. Reviews are extremely important, especially if a potential reader is unsure of whether to make the purchase, a few written words can make all the difference.

[dennyelvis]

There is a varied assortment of dealers on AMAZON UK, their price is a nice £11.19 & this item Delivered FREE, UK of course, a bit worrying though seeing the top price coming in at a whopping £42.57 + £2.75 deliverey [Seller: BookMill ] i will certainly recommend this masterpiece on my Elvis sites, any promo pics i could use ?

Amazon link to sellers

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/offer-listin ... dition=new