Beautiful Thing is quite possibly the most beloved of all gay-themed movies. Made in the UK by Channel Four Films, and first broadcast back in 1996, there is a certain bizarre logic that the only blu-ray available has to be imported from France. Queer films, especially those from the past, are criminally under-represented on blu-ray, and the situation with Beautiful Thing underlines that.
It’s twenty-seven years since I first saw it, on Channel 4 on June 21st, 1996. I was 22 and still living at home (I moved out a few months later). I was still in the closet, and so I’m guessing my parents were out that night for some reason or other. Viewed now, in 2023, the film retains its power to warm the heart.
Adapted by Jonathan Harvey from his own play, the film tells the simple story of Jamie and Ste, two teenagers living next door to each other on a London housing estate, and who fall for each other both because of, and despite, the rather brutal realities of their lives. Jamie and Ste are played by Glen Barry and Scott Neal. Their performances are surprisingly low-key and natural, and in quiet contrast with the somewhat showier supporting cast of Linda Henry, Ben Daniels, and Tameka Empson as Jamie’s Mum, her boyfriend, and Mama Cass-obsessed neighbour. Despite the rather disparate group of performances, everything and everyone gels together beautifully.
It’s not a particularly dramatic tale, and one could guess from the first ten minutes or so exactly what the few twists and turns in the plot are going to be. So why is it so beloved? Well, in the first instance, you have to travel back to the mid-1990s, with the harsh realities of the LGBTQ community in the UK at the time. The Tory government had done everything it could to try to row back the steps forward towards acceptance that the community had made in the decade or so before HIV reared its ugly head. The hated section 28 legislation was very much in place. Hate crime was high, but few bothered to report it. What was the point? And, just three years after the film was first broadcast, the Admiral Duncan gay pub in London was nail-bombed, killing three people and injuring scores more.
In the middle of all this, came Beautiful Thing. It wasn’t the first British gay film – in fact, there had been several over the previous decade or so from My Beautiful Laundrette through to Maurice, Another Country, and Edward II. But Beautiful Thing was different. It wasn’t based on a centuries-old play, or centred on the rich. Instead, it told the story of a couple of ordinary young lads on a housing estate, and, at the same-time, had something of a fairytale quality about it – which is perhaps most obvious in the final few minutes, as the two boys dance together in the middle of the concrete jungle in which they live. It is a beautiful thing, but it’s also subtly defiant.
For many gay males, especially gay teenagers, this was a hopeful movie. A movie that told them “you can get through this,” and by “this” it meant both coming out and the way that the gay community was being treated by the government. “It’s Getting Better,” the soundtrack tells us and, although perhaps we didn’t know it at the time, it was about to get better – and Beautiful Thing reassured us of that. Scotland knocked Section 28 on the head in 2000, and England and Wales did the same in 2003. The 2000s turned out to be the era in which openly-gay Graham Norton rose to enormous popularity on TV; the openly-gay Brian Dowling won Big Brother in 2001; Will Young won the first series of Pop Idol, and the first civil partnership took place in 2005, after the law was passed in 2004. “It’s getting better,” indeed.
Anyone watching Beautiful Thing now could easily dismiss it as a relatively flimsy piece of entertainment that passes the time nicely. On the face of it, that’s exactly what it is. But we forget at our peril what it meant to young men like myself at the time, and how quietly political the movie really was/is. That message that you could be accepted, and that things would turn out OK eventually, was essential at that time. We really needed that. And I would suggest we need it now, too, in a country where hate crime is rising, there’s a possibility the UK will leave the European Court of Human Rights, and I hear more homophobic slurs outside my city centre flat than I did a decade ago. But we have to remember that final image of the movie of Jamie and Ste dancing outside their block of flats, while a growing crowd of people watch on – some bemused, but some utterly appalled by what they are seeing. That slow dance was basically a two-finger sign at mid-1990s Britain, and a two-finger sign at section 28…and, in 2023, it’s saying the same things to the internet trolls, those committing hate crimes towards us, and the threat that the extreme right-wing presents to us.
For mainstream jazz artists, and for jazz and pop vocalists from Sinatra to Julie London, the mid-1960s and early 1970s were a period of turmoil. Artists like Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Oscar Peterson, Ella Fitzgerald, and Dizzy Gillespie had spent the last decade making the most of the wonders of the long-playing record, allowing them to record tracks that didn’t have to fit on one side of a three-minute 78rpm record, and, even more importantly, to make album-length musical statements. Their popularity had soared, their music had matured, and labels such as Verve, Prestige, Riverside, and Pacific Jazz had allowed them to experiment while, at the same time, throwing their backing behind each disc and giving it the publicity it deserved.
However, with the arrival of The Beatles, and the changes to society and culture through such things as the Civil Rights Movement, everything began to change, and even spiral out of control in the jazz world by the end of the decade. By 1970, singers still at their vocal peak like Doris Day, Julie London, and Jo Stafford would hang up their microphones and record no more albums. Sinatra was about to head into retirement, and wouldn’t record another album of standards for a decade. Dean Martin’s recording career slowly ground to a halt during the 1970s. Sammy Davis Jr got funky and groovy and, after 1974, would only make three more albums before his death in 1990. Bobby Darin turned his back on the Great American Songbook in 1966. Count Basie and his Orchestra would spend much of the second half of the 1960s recording three minute tracks with little room for improvisation, and these would include two albums of Beatles songs, as well as such delights as Oh, Pretty Woman and Do Wah Diddy Diddy. Duke Ellington would record an album of songs from Mary Poppins, as well as the likes of Blowin’ in the Wind and Alfie. Oscar Peterson would try his hand at Ode to Billy Joe and By the Time I Get to Phoenix. Not all artists suffered in the same way. Some would turn their back on the mainstream, and shift their focus into the likes of acid jazz, with various degrees of commercial and artistic success.
It is, perhaps, a little too easy to blame the problems of mainstream jazz artists totally on the change in the pop music field. The LP has been around for well over a decade by the mid-1960s, and one could argue that the songs of the Great American Songbook had been exhausted through the hundreds of albums centring on them that had been produced during that time. Even the likes of Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald could run out of such songs eventually.
Sinatra appears to have made a concerted effort to try to return to the singles chart somewhere around 1964, perhaps buoyed somewhat by the chart success of a song like Hello Dolly by Louis Armstrong or Everybody Loves Somebody by Dean Martin. Certainly, there was success for Sinatra in the pop charts for Strangers in the Night, Something Stupid, and That’s Life. Each of these successes had an album built around them, with the Strangers in the Night LP still sticking to standards for the most part, arranged by Nelson Riddle, albeit in more contemporary-sounding arrangements. That’s Life, on the other hand, was one of Sinatra’s most disappointing albums, consisting of uninspired covers of current tunes in arrangements by Ernie Freeman. The World We Knew, whose big selling point was the inclusion of Something Stupid, was even worse – a couple of good tracks buried among Matt Monro and Petula Clark covers, and the worst version of Some Enchanted Evening you are ever likely to hear.
Sinatra spent the next couple of years “searching” (to use the title of a song he recorded in the early 1980s). He recorded fine albums with Antonio Carlos Jobim and Duke Ellington, an album of country-pop called Cycles, a similar disc built around My Way, an album of songs and poetry by Rod McKuen, and a song cycle called Watertown. For the most part, consumers at the time didn’t get excited over anything other than the Jobim album, despite the fact that there is some excellent work on each of the discs I have mentioned. He continued a series of annual TV specials, but, even here, he could be seen wearing love beads, and trying to duet with the likes of the Fifth Dimension. The retirement of 1971 might well have come about through desperation more than a real desire to quit. When he returned in 1973, the emphasis was more on live shows than on recording. During the next twenty-one years, he recorded just seven albums – and two of those were the uninspiring Duets albums.
Meanwhile, other singers were trying to “get down and with it” with varying results. Julie London, just prior to hanging up her microphone, recorded such gems as the Mickey Mouse March, Yummy Yummy Yummy, and Quinn the Eskimo – all in her trademark “come hither” sultry style. Mel Torme recorded a disc called A Time for Us, which included Midnight Swinger, Games People Play, and Willie and Laura Mae Jones. He didn’t record another studio album until the mid-1970s. That said, A Time For Us has aged somewhat better than some of the similar efforts by Torme’s contemporaries. Never issued on domestic CD, it is available for streaming at the time of writing, and isn’t half as bad as its reputation might lead us to believe.
Despite making three of his very best albums in the mid-1960s (The Sounds of ’66, Dr Dolittle, and a guitar and vocal album with Laurino Almeida), Sammy Davis got involved in the counter-culture, but got lost musically. There was some success with I Gotta Be Me, Mr Bojangles, and The Candy Man, but his albums (and clothes) got more and more over-the-top, and he treated his fans to such execrable offerings as his cover of In the Ghetto. Meanwhile, Bobby Darin turned his back on standards following the In a Broadway Bag album in 1966 – unless you want to count the following year’s Dr Dolittle disc. After that, he went into singer-songwriter mode, writing and recording social commentary material – although it’s fair to say that those two albums are actually excellent, and now have a kind of cult following.
Count Basie spent the second half of the 1960s recording albums of standards, and albums dedicated to a particular film soundtrack. But in each case, the tracks lasted just a couple of minutes, and didn’t show off the band to their full potential. The great musicians didn’t have a chance to solo, and the results were easy listening discs instead of jazz ones. He even recorded a number of songs from the pop charts, mostly in poor arrangements, and, it seems now, out of sheer desperation. Duke Ellington also went through that phase during 1965 and 1966, but then seemed to give up trying to be relevant, and so went back to the material he did best. There was a lengthy world tour with Ella Fitzgerald, which would yield several albums, and then he returned to writing and recording long suites, and evenings of sacred music that brought considerable acclaim, even if they didn’t set sales records.
Chet Baker was in a steep decline during the period, and recorded some utterly appalling discs during the second half of the 1960. These included covers of Speedy Gonzales, You Don’t Have to Say You Love Me, Ring of Fire, and Twenty-Four Hours to Tulsa. These albums with the Mariachi Brass and Carmel Strings weren’t the worst of it, though. In 1968, his teeth were knocked out, and his comeback album was Albert’s House, one of the worst albums you are ever likely to hear, and he followed this up with Blood, Chet and Tears, which featured a pointless (and depressing) version of Sugar Sugar.
Another legendary trumpeter stooped to even lower levels. Louis Armstrong had recorded an album entitled Louis Armstrong & Friends, a rather likeable mix of old and new songs that featured Satchmo working his way through Give Peace a Chance and Everybody’s Talkin’. It might not have been great music, but it was utterly charming. The same couldn’t be said for his next, final album, one which consisted of him mumbling his way through country songs such as Crystal Chandelier and Running Bear. It was probably the most horrible final album in a sparkling career that anyone could think of.
At the same time that all of this was going on, Ella Fitzgerald found herself without a long term recording contract. In the space of six years, she went from Verve to Capitol to Reprise to MPS and on to Atlantic. Despite this, Ella was one of the few jazz musicians that actually thrived when turning her attention to pop songs of the day – perhaps because she had always done it. In the 1950s, she had put in credible versions of Walkin’ My Baby Back Home, Singin’ the Blues, Soldier Boy, and Crying in the Chapel. She was one of the first major jazz artists to include Beatles songs in her repertoire, with Can’t Buy Me Love and A Hard Day’s Night both on Ella albums by the end of 1965. In a period of about seven years after that, she recorded a country album, Christmas album, gospel album, and a rock album. Songs likes Sunshine of Your Love, Spinning Wheel, You’ve Got a Friend, What’s Goin’ On, Hey Jude, Something, Close to You, and Raindrops Keep Fallin’ On My Head were all added to her live performances, despite not being recorded in the studio. Somehow, Ella took it all in her stride and, instead of rebelling against the new music and begrudgingly trying to include it in her work, she embraced it. She didn’t view it as being beneath her, and it’s clear that she thoroughly enjoyed what she called the “now” sounds. Her inclusion of current pop records would slowly fade out during the late 1970s, but she still had time for You Are the Sunshine of My Life and Nobody Does It Better, and a single release of two songs from Chicago.
In the end, it was Ella’s manager, Norman Granz, that came to the rescue of the mainstream jazz musicians. In 1972-3, he set up a label that he called Pablo, which would feature a roster of greats that included Ella, Oscar Peterson, Dizzy Gillespie, Count Basie, Duke Ellington, Eddie Lockjaw Davis, Roy Eldridge, Joe Pass, Milt Jackson, Sarah Vaughan, and more. Pablo didn’t have the commercial clout that Verve or Impulse had, but it was a home for great jazz musicians to make as much or as little music as they wanted, on their own terms, and without any real concerns about how many people bought the albums. This allowed Ella to turn almost exclusively to jazz, rather than mixing it up with pop vocal albums, as she had at Verve.
Also Granz was very keen on mixing things up – putting two unlikely musicians in a room together to see what happened. Ella teamed up with Joe Pass in this way, and Oscar Peterson and Count Basie recorded a series of piano duet albums, despite the fact that their styles were wildly different to each other. Basie thrived at Pablo. For the first time in twenty years, he allowed himself to be recorded regularly in jam session environments (although the big band dates also continued), thus throwing the spotlight on his own piano playing more than had ever happened before. Sadly, Duke Ellington passed away in 1974, but one can only imagine what he would have achieved at Pablo had he lived.
Pablo’s budget was small – the artwork for many albums was atrocious – but if I had to choose the recordings of any one jazz label to take to a desert island, it would be Pablo’s. It was a wonderful home for so many artists entering the final phase of their careers, but who were still producing great music, and it must have seemed like a sanctuary to them after the turmoil of the previous seven or eight years.
Suggested discography:
The following albums are not necessarily recommended, but are examples of the type of output discussed in the article.
Louis Armstrong and his Friends (Flying Dutchman)
Chet Baker: Blood, Chet and Tears (Verve)
Count Basie: Basie’s in the Bag (Brunswick)
Bobby Darin: Commitment (Direction. Under the name “Bob Darin”)
Last week around this time, I uploaded a blog post highlighting ten jazz and pop vocal albums that generally fly under the radar. Some people said some nice things about it, and so I thought I would add a second volume, this time featuring a dozen albums. Here goes:
Ethel Ennis: Change of Scenery
I confess that my knowledge of Ethel Ennis just a couple of months ago was zero, but I now realise what I have been missing. Change of Scenery was the first of two albums she recorded for Capitol, and, listening to it, one has to wonder how and why she didn’t have a more high profile career than she did. With beautiful arrangements by Neal Hefti, Ennis performs ten songs, starting with the most beautiful version of My Foolish Heart that you have never heard. Other highlights include Ev’ry Time We Say Goodbye and Happiness is Just a Thing Called Joe. Relatively hard to find, this disc is available in Europe via a double disc of Ennis’s early work released by the Fresh Sounds label.
Ella Fitzgerald: Dream Dancing/Ella Loves Cole
In 1972, in an album for Atlantic, Ella Fitzgerald returned to the songs of Cole Porter for an album called Ella Loves Cole. It was withdrawn quite quickly, and then re-released on Pablo in 1978 as Dream Dancing, complete with two extra tracks. There is a huge difference between the classy Nelson Riddle arrangements here and the rather square ones by Buddy Bregman for The Cole Porter Songbook back in 1956. Riddle had updated his sound by this point, and the tracks are a mix of big band music with a sense of rock added to them. Ella takes to them like a duck takes to water and, by this point, she was fully at home with the songs, and she delivers killer versions of My Heart Belongs to Daddy, At Long Last Love, and Love for Sale. Worth seeking out.
Nina Simone: Live at Ronnie Scott’s
This album was recorded in 1984 at the legendary London jazz venue, at the same time as a video recording was made of Nina’s performances. The album has been in and out of print ever since, but never been widely available. It is easily Nina’s best set of recordings from the 1980s – far better than Let It Be Me, a live album from 1987. Nina is in superlative form on this disc recorded in 1984. She covers some of her earlier career highlights, including If You Knew, I Loves You Porgy and Mississippi Goddam, but there is also some newer material here. She had recorded Fodder On Her Wings a couple of years earlier for a minor studio album, but the version here is the definitive one. We also get to hear Brecht’s Moon Over Alabama, and even a cover of For a While, originally from Sinatra’s then-obscure album Watertown.
Mel Torme & George Shearing: Top Drawer
During his later years, Mel Torme made a whole run of albums with George Shearing, and this one might well be the best. Torme won a Grammy for his effort on this beautiful disc, with tracks ranging from Away in a Manger through to How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehen, a song that might well be the apex of his recordings for Concorde in the final decades of his career. Torme wrings every emotion out of Johnny Mercer’s poignant lyric, and good luck to anyone who gets through it without shedding a tear.
Frank Sinatra: Francis A & Ellington K
Sinatra’s two studio albums with Count Basie and his orchestra are well-known highlights of his career, but the album he made with Duke Ellington in 1967 is far lesser known. Here, the unusual decision was made to include just eight songs. There are some wonderful arrangements here by Billy May, and Sinatra delivers fine vocals on All I Need is the Girl and Indian Summer. Meanwhile, Sunny is slowed down and given a bluesy feel, and the Ellington band really sound wonderful on I Like the Sunrise and Poor Butterfly. Don’t be put off by its obscurity; this is a great disc.
Harry Connick Jr: Blue Light, Red Light
There was a time about thirty years ago when Harry Connick Jr’s albums seemed to be everywhere, and he was seen to be the “next Sinatra.” And then, about ten years later, he inexplicably took a turn towards dull easy-listening with a disc called Your Songs, and has never really regained momentum. Blue Light, Red Light, though, is prime Connick. It contains twelve original songs, performed with great confidence in big band arrangements that seemed to relish their slightly wacky moments. If you’ve never heard peak-period Harry Connick, this is well worth a listen to hear what all the fuss was about.
Chet Baker: As Time Goes By
Chet Baker’s vocal albums from the 1970s onwards are erratic in quality, to say the least. The more casual buyer is never quite sure what they are going to be confronted with when they put the disc in their player. As Time Goes By is one of the best later discs. This is, as you might expect, an album of ballads, and so one is spared Chet’s scat singing for the most part. The seven vocals on the album (with three instrumentals) are heartbreaking in their honesty, and the near nine-minute rendition of I’m a Fool to Want You is worth the price of admission alone.
Bing Crosby: Live at the London Palladium
There are a few albums on this list that, inexplicably, have never made it in complete form to CD. This 1976 double album is one of them. It has been issued in the CD era, but only in edited form, which is a great shame, and something that needs to be rectified. The album features not just Crosby – in remarkably fine form considering how late in his career this was recorded – but also guest spots from Rosemary Clooney, The Joe Bushkin Quartet, members of the Crosby family, and Ted Rogers. Rosemary Clooney is especially good in her five solo numbers, and the chemistry between her and Crosby shines through their duet of On a Slow Boat to China. The final record side features a medley of Crosby songs lasting over thirty minutes before Crosby ends the show with That’s What Life is All About. Some of the show is sentimental, and there’s an argument to be made that it is self-congratulatory, but it’s also one of the warmest live albums you are ever likely to hear, and a delight from start to finish.
Sammy Davis Jr: In Person, Australia ‘77
Another disc yet to make it in its original form to CD. It had been several years since Sammy Davis Jr’s last album, and then came this great performance from Australia, issued on the RCA label. Clearly, the songs are presented out of order – this isn’t editing of the highest order, it has to be said. But Davis is in wonderful form, and gives great performances of some of his signature songs, as well as a couple of numbers from A Chorus Line, and a Sinatra medley, in which he talks about his friendship with Frank and sings some of his most famous numbers. A second live in Australia disc was issued a couple of years later, under the title Hearin’ is Believin’. I’m struggling to find anything from this disc on YouTube, and so here’s the Sinatra medley as performed two years later in Acapulco.
Doris Day & Andre Previn: Duet
Doris Day recorded a series of excellent albums for Columbia during the 1950s and the first half of the 1960s that sold solidly rather than setting the charts alight. Undoubtedly the best of these was Duet, an album with Andre Previn on piano, sometimes also joined with a rhythm session. This was, in many ways, Day’s only real jazz album, and she sings brilliantly, whether romping through an upbeat number like Control Yourself or Close Your Eyes or on a seductive ballad like Yes or Remind Me. It’s s a shame there wasn’t more of the same to come, but, in the years that followed, she seemed to get bogged down in special projects like a religious album, a Christmas disc, and an LP of songs for children. In 1965, she released Sentimental Journey, a tribute to her time with the Les Brown band, and then, inexplicably, nothing else for thirty years.
Dinah Washington: Tears and Laughter
Another one of those album that hasn’t ever got a proper CD release – and even the streaming release is slightly different to the original LP. Here we have Washington in her prime, singing arrangements by Quincy Jones, Billy Byers, Al Cohn, Hal Mooney, and Ernie Wilkins. The songs themselves are straight out of the Great American Songbook, including Mood Indigo, I’m a Fool to Want You, and Secret Love. It’s something of a mystery why this is one of Washington’s forgotten albums. It’s certainly worth hunting down.
George Melly: Nuts
We end this post with something completely different. George Melly was a British larger-than-life jazz singer, raconteur, writer, surrealist, and the saviour of many otherwise-dull talkshow episodes. Melly’s specialism was forgotten (and often risqué) songs of the early jazz era, and he was at his best in a live setting when he could talk at length about his repertoire to put them in context. Nuts was his first album after a fourteen year recording hiatus. While it purported to be recorded at Ronnie Scott’s club in London, some of it was recreated later in the recording studio, allegedly due to the drunken antics on the night of the live show not working too well on an LP! After all, the album notes say that the concert at Ronnie Scott’s was a “night to remember for those who can. Some can’t.” Melly belts his way through T’aint Nobody’s Business, There’ll Be Some Changes Made, and the title track, Nuts – a song which is about exactly what you think it is. Nuts was issued alongside its sequel, Son of Nuts on CD in 2004. Good luck finding a reasonably-priced copy. Melly isn’t for everyone, but I confess that I miss my yearly visit to the Playhouse in Norwich to see him on tour. A great performer, and one of the great characters of British showbusiness.
Beyond Boundaries 