LENA MARTELL – "One Day At A Time"

Not really a new face if you were Scottish; Lena Martell was a fixed point on the Scottish cabaret/light entertainment circuit for many years (and had had a few hit albums) prior to her solitary national hit single. For obvious reasons I would have preferred a better “Lena” number one but I am consoled by the fact that (a) there is a better one to come (another Lena was half of a HIGHLY CONTROVERSIAL early noughties duo) and (b) Lena Martell’s real name is Helen Thomson (and there’s a “Lene” to come as well but more about that when she comes). And naturally I would have greatly preferred Popular to have featured “Lucky Number” by Lene Lovich, a top three hit earlier in 1979 and a record whose cheek, sprightliness and life constitute the antithesis of this dreary homily but anyway…

It isn’t quite the fault of the song, nor of its writers, one of whom was Kris Kristofferson, nobody’s idea of a right-wing demagogue. But “One Day At A Time” as sung by Martell is a deliberate throwback – and starkly so in this company – to the 1967/8 of Jones and Humperdinck, even to the extent of appearing on the Pye label, by then nearing the end of its tenure and tether, and maybe even to the 1955 of Ruby Murray. Although, despite the general futurist outlook of the 1979 charts, there were a number of country-pop hits, including “The Devil Went Down To Georgia” by the Charlie Daniels Band, “Maybe” by Thom Pace and “If I Said You Had A Beautiful Body, Would You Hold It Against Me” by the Bellamy Brothers, Martell stood for something beyond that.

In particular, being Scottish, she stood for the lachrymose country-MoR which, as I’ve mentioned previously, was the majority music in West Central Scotland, blended with the residue of folk memory; thus the Alexander Brothers (the biggest selling singles act in Scotland in 1964, including the Beatles), and thus also Cleland’s finest, Sydney Devine, specialising in sickly son-of-the-Parish ballads or gruesome weepies about long-lost silver-haired grannies recently having passed away. I can’t remember what provoked the national crossover success of “One Day At A Time” though would guess that Radio 2 probably had something to do with it. Martell was already a long-established star in Scotland, but in its God-fearing lyric and God-dreading stentorian vocal, there is a nasty tinge of Thatcher’s Revenge about it all – one recalls Thatcher, on her first afternoon as Prime Minister, on the steps of Number Ten blaspheming Francis of Assisi and simultaneously muttering in dread about “being swamped by an alien culture.” Martell croons it authoritatively, even though it’s a plea by an insecure singer for Jesus to see her through every painful day, to help battle an unspecified demon, to stop her from killing herself, though puts special emphasis on the lines “Jesus, you know if you’re looking below/It’s worse now than then/Cheatin’ and stealin’/Violence and crime.”

But she doesn’t sing it in the voice of a desperate woman; rather in the tones of a stern schoolmarm, bearing a fundamentalist Calvinist delivery which brooks neither question nor debate. If Johnny Cash had sung the song, as he probably did do, you could have believed every fibre and grain of his voice. Martell’s performance, however, is entirely bereft of any real passion, or genuine concern, or humour, or sex, or any of these other Satanic fripperies which actually make life worth possessing and prolonging. For two far more illuminating epiphanies I would suggest turning to PiL’s “Death Disco,” one of the greatest singles ever to make the Top 20, a simultaneous Irish wake and a terrible roar of paroxysmal grief as Lydon watches his mother in the hospital bed, slowly and irreversibly dying, helpless and angrier than he’d ever been on record, before or since; his screams of “I see it in your EYES” are genuinely terminal. And then, taking into consideration “One Day At A Time”’s references to “Yesterday’s gone” and “Tomorrow may never be mine,” we may reverse to that other Kristofferson-penned prayer, “Help Me Make It Through The Night” as performed by Gladys Knight in one of the greatest female vocal performances of the 20th century, complete with its “Little Drummer Boy” bugle quotes, its stroking, caressing harp, and its shattered plea for a one-night stand, a drug, anything to stop the fucking loneliness and despair. In comparison, Lena Martell flees unwanted shadows. Where’s Lena Horne when you need her?

Oh Lord, don’t tell me I have to go over to YouTube to remind myself how this went.

She does look rather slinky on the sleeve, like a young Delia Smith or something. I must be getting old if I’m detecting a hint of sexiness in Lena bloody Martell, next thing you know I’ll be sneaking peeks at photos of Nana Mouskouri.

Did singles already cost 99p by then? I was sure they were around the 79p mark.

Funny thing about this: I feel I’ve known the song for ever and yet I have no recollection of it being number one.

I have no comment to make beyond that it is a pleasant tune, and I don’t expect anybody expected it to break new ground, and it’s a salutory reminder that the Kool Kids never did have things all their own way.

From “YMCA” to “Video Killed The Radio Star”, it has been an exceptional run – not least because the previous 14 Number Ones were not only ground-breaking, but also genuinely popular: across-the-board consensus choices, at a time of massive cultural and socio-political shifts.

But all good things come to an end, and so we have our first Number One since “Mary’s Boy Child” that had everybody I knew yawning and groaning and swearing at the telly. Perhaps, in its mirror-image way, this makes “One Day At A Time” the biggest 1979 consensus hit of all?

Ah, now this gave sway to a wonderful little piece of Waldo high jinks one beery night. Myself and a couple of buddies, Paul and Mitch, aside from going gigging and pubbing, used to frequent a German Beer Keller in Richmond. An English guy called Barry Dawson played drinking songs (some in German) on an accordion, whilst punters sat at rows of large oblong candlelit wooden benches getting shitfaced. It was a wonderful place. Next door was a disco called “Cheeky Peeks”, a place we wouldn’t have been caught dead in, although just to make the gods laugh, when you were in the Gents in the Keller there was a small window at the top of the wall through which you could see the Cheeky Peeks dance-floor from un upward angle – very nice when a short-skirted nubile floated by. Just a golf chip away from these places was Richmond Bridge and on the immediate left a large trendy pub called “Christies”. It was in here where folk normally met prior to making their choice of disco or Keller. Back in 1979 many of the old-style jukeboxes (visible record players) had given way to those odious wooden wall boxes with yellow selection labels which lit up. Certainly this was the case the night we, the lads, entered Christies during the period that “One Day At A Time” was inexplicably number one. I can remember Geldof on “Swop Shop” practically pleading “Who the hell is BUYING this thing?!” and just about everyone I knew shrugged their shoulders in sympathy. Who indeed? This particular night, we stopped in Christies for the whole session, deciding against the Keller because it was raining hard and we just couldn’t be arsed.

Sooo, naturally I took it upon myself to treat a pub full of youngsters to a full blast of “Britain’s Number One” on the basis that if this is the most popular record out there, you (Britain) must want to hear it. I thus lit the yellow touch paper and retreated. Within about ten seconds of Lena coming straight in, the plug was pulled and McFadden and Whitehead (I think it was) came on to universal relief. But Waldo’s blood (mostly Pils by this time) had not been appeased. I stepped up to the plate again. Henry V had nothing on me, I’m here to tell you…

“ONE DAY AT A TIMMMEEE, SWEET JESUS….”

I managed to get back to my seat. This time, the management reasoned that there really was someone in Christies who wanted to hear this record and allowed it to run through. The patrons, however, were not happy and howls of vitriol, incredulity and desperation filled the air, the volume intensifying as Lena upped the tempo and a crescendo of hate totally drowning out her big finish. Amidst all this, investigations were frantically going on to try to finger to mole and the only thing we could now do was to join in the inquest.

“I saw some bloke leave just as it was coming on!” I lied to a lad next to me, who was going puce with fury. “I bet it was him!” The only dicey moment was when some thuggish-looking herbert who had been looking across at me for a while finally came over and demanded “Is this you, mate?” My immediate reaction was to say “Come off it, Tinkerbell. It’s Lena Martell!” but choose instead to simply throw my arms up in denial.

“Dear God. I never thought that would happen,” I said to my friends after the dust had finally settled. Paul then leaned over to me and in a low whisper growled: “Put it on again, son!”

I decided not to.

Happy Days!

Waldo, it was Cheeky Pete’s wasn’t it?

Now, I would not have known about the song being sung from the perspective of a would-be suicide. That’s how far the performance is from the song.

On a different tack, is this the last big hit on the old “Pye” label?

The rapidly diminishing stature could be seen in the rather pallid grey and white version of the label that this single had, from the pink of the old Kinks hits, from the purple period of Emile Ford, heck from the light blue on my Captain Beefheart single…

Still, they became “Precision” i.e. PRT, and then died slowly. Or, continued to.

Lee – You might well be right. Despite never having gone there, we were never adverse to hanging around outside, as both outcoming crowds merged. Although girlies did attend the Keller, most went to the disco and outside was the only place Kellerites could try to grab ’em.

Last big hit on PRT was, well we’ll get to that particular “classic” in about two years from where we are now on a Number Two Watch basis.

There was a long tradition of this sort of Two Ronnies light entertainment/easy listening topping the charts in the UK (Englebert, Roger Whittaker, Shirley Bassey, Peters and Lee etc.) but when did that end? Or is it still going? I can’t remember another one beyond this.

It was the last major hit on the Pye label as such.

(and I forgot the mid-eighties Real Thing reissues/remixes apropos PRT)

Light Entertainment Watch: Lena Martell had her own BBC TV series: PRESENTING LENA MARTELL! Sadly, all of these episodes are now lost, but there does also appear to have been a third series in 1974 which survives;

Series 1

11.09.71 with Mike Newman, The Pattersons

18.09.71 with Jimmy Marshall, Peter Rostal, Paul Schaefer

25.09.71 with Roy Castle, The Alex Welsh Jazz Band

02.10.71 with Ray Alan, Fame and Price

09.10.71 with Ted Rogers, Tom Paxton

26.09.72 with Vince Hill, Alex Welsh Jazz Band

Series 2

14.04.73 with Roger Whittaker, The Kings Singers

21.04.73 with Ray Fell, The Roy Budd Trio

28.04.73 with Tony Christie, Paul Melba

05.05.73 with The Alex Welsh Jazz Band, The Fortunes

12.05.73 with The Jacques Loussier Trio, Pierre Michelot, Allan Drake

The very last major hit on PRT was the reissue/remix of Petula Clark’s “Downtown” at the end of 1988.

Light Entertainment Watch 2: Lena had certainly been around for a long time. Here’s a brief filmography;

These shows are missing –

COMEDY BANDBOX: with Terry Scott and Hugh Lloyd, Terry Fearis, Jimmy Casanova, Southlands, Lena Martell, Lynton Boys (1963)

DEE TIME: with Bernard Cribbins, Lena Martell, The Dubliners (1967)

DODDY’S MUSIC BOX: with Matt Monro, The Scaffold, Lena Martell, David Hamilton (1968)

THE VAL DOONICAN SHOW: with Lena Martell, Stéphane Grappelli, Dickie Henderson (1973)

These episodes exist in the archives;

THE DAVID NIXON SHOW: with Freddie Davies, Lena Martell, Neville King, Frankie Vaughan (1972)

SATURDAY VARIETY: with Bob Monkhouse, Georgie Fame, Lena Martell, Larry Grayson, June Whitfield (1972)

SHOW OF THE WEEK: Lena Martell (1972)

Meanwhile, “Pye of Cambridge” got their monica back.

Here in the states it was Cristy Lane who graced the TV screen plugging her inspirational lp that featured this one. I think you could only get it thru tv. Maybe from her church, too.

I feel sorta bad saying a song to God sucks, but … screw it, I’m sayin’ it: it SUCKS.

Erithian # 29 – I couldn’t agree more. The Devil took Johnny to school, boxing his ears off, only for Harry Gibbs to replicate his inexplicable verdict when he somehow got into his head that Joe Bugner had beaten Ow ‘enery, an outcome which launched the otherwise docile Harry Carpenter into a memorably incredulous soliloquy, concluding:
“And how..in the WORLD can you take away the man’s three titles LIKE THAT?!”

“Apples for Pye”

Lovely.

I thought someone (probably DJP) may have pointed out that this was the first #1 single by a Scottish solo female.

And yet the second one comes on the same label (albeit with a different name) within the space of less than a year!

No, there’s one before that.

It’s the Daily Mail in song form.

Lena Martell wasn’t the only old-school MOR belter in the Top 40, either: see also Iris Williams’ “He Was Beautiful”: a vocal version of “Cavatina” (as used in The Deer Hunter) with lyrics by Cleo Laine.

Marcello, that had me spluttering “the Gallery music was nothing like Cavatina!” – until I did some googling and found this:

Q: What is the Gallery music called?

A: Well to be honest, it depends how old you claim to be as to which Gallery music you mean. With ‘Vision On’, the best-known Gallery music was the brilliant ‘Leftbank 2’ by the Lance Gambit Trio. It was referred to as “the Gallery theme” by all those on the programme. Another used was ‘Cavatina’ played by John Williams. Others associated with ‘Vision On’ were ‘Accroche-Toi Caroline!’ (Claude Vasori), ‘Java’ (Al Hirt) and the absolutely unforgettable ‘Gurney Slade’ by Max Harris.

Sadly there was news just the other day that Tony Hart has had to give up art due to illness, but what a legend.

Left Bank 2 – presumably the one with the vibes that had max resonance, with the acoustic guitar with minimal resonance.

One of the first times I noticed how different instruments could be ‘treated’ differently and sound interesting.