CD REVIEW – EDDIE CALVERT
THE MAN WITH THE GOLDEN TRUMPET
A Centenary Tribute - his 29 finest
Retrospective RTR4392 [78’]

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The Retrospective label, with its expert collector and compiler Ray Crick, is a rich repository of our kind of music and I feel sure this release will be of interest to many readers.

Albert Edward "Eddie" Calvert was born at Preston, Lancs. in 1922 and died at his Johannesburg home in 1978. He played in northern brass bands before working with the Billy Ternent and Geraldo orchestras in the 1940s.

In the 1950s he was a popular variety artist and had No.1 hits with O, My Papa and Cherry Pink and Apple Blossom White, making him the first British instrumentalist to top the chart twice and the first to earn a golden disc, thus becoming known as "The Man with the Golden Trumpet."

He played on movie sound-tracks and produced several more hit recordings – Stranger in Paradise (No.14), the John and Julie film theme (6), Zambesi (13), Mandy (La Panse) (9) and Little Serenade (28) – before, somewhat disillusioned with life in the UK, moving to South Africa in 1968.

All the above are here together with such favourites as Some Enchanted Evening, Summertime, Tenderly, Hora Staccato, My Son My Son!, Roses of Picardy, Stranger in Paradise, Love is a Many Splendoured Thing, O My Beloved Daddy and Forgotten Dreams.

If you are new to this music or back in the day never enjoyed your Calvert singles in a long-playing form, then this cheerful well-filled album comes highly commended.

Listening to it is quite like old times when I was a reviewer and then editor for the Keeping Track feature in Journal into Melody (the excellent Robert Farnon Society printed magazine last published in December 2013) and similar albums were available in abundance.

© Peter Burt 2022

Footnote:

In his booklet notes, Peter Dempsey mentions Eddie Calvert’s version of Little Serenade, which he attributes to Ernest Tomlinson.
However, the actual track is in fact a totally different piece with the same name, by Gianni Ferrio; this was a minor hit for Calvert in 1958.

Tony Clayden