Breathes there an English expat girl with soul so dead, who never to herself has said, “Well, having heard that bloody song again, I’m just going off–not for the first time–to have a quiet little cry…”
Here’s the song:
Unlike most popular stars of the 1970s and 80s, Roger Whittaker ploughed his own furrow and seemed unaffected by contemporary trends.
Apparently, he’s become something of a figure of fun these days, someone who’s known only for having his records hawked on the Shopping Channel, or some other such insalubrious modern cultural institution I know not of. As in: “Roger Whittaker, HaHaHa.”
But, fifty years ago, he was a powerhouse. A delightful baritone. An unparalleled whistler, one who didn’t even need his mother in the frame to make an impression.
And, as Mark Steyn recently remarked, an international phenomenon. The Last Farewell is #28 on the list of the thirty best-selling singles of all time. Eat your heart out, Talking Heads, whoever you are.
Roger Whittaker had an extraordinary, ordinary, life. He was born in Kenya (where his parents had moved while his father recovered from a near fatal motorcycle accident, and he credits his two years of Army service (most of it–from 1954 to 1956–spent chasing the Mau Mau around in the forest at night) with making a man out of him. After that he started medical school, dropped out, and became a teacher. When he moved back to Britain, he went back to school for zoology and biochemistry, but eventually turned to full-time club singing. He married once–and for life–in 1964. His parents, who still lived in Kenya and from whom he was estranged, were attacked in 1989 and his father was murdered. His mother, who survived and later moved back to England, was tortured for hours and left for dead.
Celebrity seems to have affected him not at all. Sometimes, raw talent just speaks for itself.
I suspect my own mother had all his records.
I particularly loved the whistling, which often took unexpected turns:
Steyn also referred to his rendition of the Skye Boat Song, with accompanying vocals by Des O’Connor. It’s one I didn’t know, but it’s lovely too:
But. The Last Farewell.
It’s possible this excellent post, on Ricochet’s main feed put me in a reflective frame of mind. And perhaps it directly led to my own post, just a few days later, on Rudyard Kipling, with its appended recollection of “the sun [coming] up like thunder/Outer China crost the bay!” I saw that, one dawn, not so long ago. And I’ll never forget it.
It seems there’s a peculiar zeitgeist amongst still-living Brits from the colonial era. While we yearn–on the one hand–to “watch the English mists roll through the dell”–we can’t help pining to “hear the temple bells [a’calling] in that “cleaner, greener land” we once knew.
I know that’s true of me.
And it seems that Kipling and Whittaker are both troubadours who captured our feeling, perhaps better than anyone else, bookending the last 130 years.
Roger Whittaker died, at the age of 87, on September 13, 2023. Rest in peace.
