I've just been to the biggest and best birthday party ever.
Me, thousands in the Big Top, countless more in the live radio audience, The Guy Barker Big Band, The BBC Concert Orchestra, guest stars Alan Price, Zoot Money and Madeline Bell and the man it was all about.
Yes a relaxed and joyous Georgie Fame was celebrating his 70th, untypically dressed in a beautiful suit, and separated from his beloved Hammond organ to lead the proceedings standing centre-stage. As he said, this lavish production was the BBC equivalent to receiving an honour from the Queen.
Fame came to him at 16 – the name that is. Previously he was a Lancashire lad called Clive Powell who accepted an identity switch to secure a job playing piano behind early rockers Eddie Cochran and Billy Fury.
His playing and singing of High School Hop memorably recalled that era. Then he enlisted the massed ranks of musicians to explore his extensive back-catalogue.
A rocking What I Say with his guests raised the temperature higher. And humorous
R & B came with It Should Have Been Me, a duet with Zoot lamenting lost opportunities with beautiful women in Cadillacs.
Georgie's solo career took off at the Flamingo Club in the early 60s and a specially written tune recalled the musicians and celebrities who frequented it, including ladies made infamous by the Profumo Scandal.
His 1970's partnership with Alan Price was revived to warm applause, as they negotiated the tricky lyrics of Rosseta: Are You Better?
Jazz has always been part of Fame's make-up, and his husky, flexible voice served it as well as ever. Moody's Move for Love and Symphony Sid were dedicated to saxophonists Charlie Parker and Lester Young. And a beautiful Everything Happens to Me featured a verse based upon a Chet Baker trumpet solo. . .
It's easy to forget just how exceptional Fame is. Duets of Hoagy Carmichael tunes with
Madeline Bell, and renditions of his own songs - like the exquisite Eros Hotel - renewed the evidence.
I could live without lush strings but the Concert Orchestra was attractively lush, and the big band swung with fire and precision, driving the hit Yeh,Yeh as never before.
There was much more, most of it special,
some of it routine. But it was ever heart-warming to see Georgie properly
appreciated and firing on all cylinders as he goes into his eighth decade.
Derek Briggs