Dead And Not Remembered - Acker Bilk

We all play the "Guess who died" game.

I just thought you'd like to know...I lost with ACKER BILK. Nobody I know could guess who the fuck I was talking about.

This may have been different if I played this game in Great Britain, but maybe not.

I mentioned that a jazz clarinetist had died. DUH. He was famous for one song...around the time of Horst Jankowski taking a walk in the black forst, and Chris Barber and "Petite Fleur."

Nope. His song was a kind of lonely "Telstar" type thing, only instead of a minor key melody that had a space-age edge to it, HIS was about walking alone...on the SHORE. Duh.

"He was a STRANGER...he was sort of walking on the SHORE playing his clarinet."

What other clue could I have said? Nobody remembered "Stranger on the Shore." In fact even when I sang the melody...NOTHING.

"His name was kind of unusual: Acker Bilk."

DUH.

Do you suppose things would've been different if Acker Bilk got into a plane crash while that song was popular? "Oh, the poor man, he would've had a long, long career, like Al Hirt."

Al who?

Wasn't that a time? Guys like Pete Fountain being popular? Instrumentals going on the charts all over the world? No, I guess not.

And his fucking first name wasn't even Acker.

Bernard Stanley Bilk was using a nickname, which is totally obscure internationally, and might even be obscure in his native England. "Acker" means friend? That's not even rhyming slang.

For reasons unknown, but for which America is thankful, Bilk never scored another hit here. The same could be said for other irritants, like Kenny Ball, of "Midnight in Moscow" fame. Or lack of it. If he died, nobody here would know his name OR remember that tune.

Uh, is he still alive?