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Big Al Whittle walked on stage wearing a black suit, black t-shirt and black hat; something like a cross between
a trilby and a homburg. He looked like an enforcer for the Corleone family or the man who crushed Paul Newman’s fingers
in ‘The Hustler’. His voice was Lucca Brazzi low, hushed, vaguely threatening; he had a presence, an air of menace.
He was someone you didn’t mess with in case he made a mess of you. Then he started talking about his sister and Enid
Blyton, stories of when he was a kid, reading her comics, collecting the badges, wanting to be a ‘Sunbeam’; some
Mafia enforcer, more like Beryl the Peril’s minder or a hit-man for ‘The Beano’.
Al treads a fine, but wonderfully slippery line, between the serious and the insane. His off hand, quiet, dead
pan delivery seems to be conversational, even confidential, someone having a talk with a friend, at home in this world, while
at any moment he can slide into a parallel universe, an absurd country, taking the unsuspecting with him, to a place where
this world is revealed as the foolish, cruel, macabre, stupid and profoundly comic place it really is. His humour is dark,
surreal, gloriously funny – not so much off the wall as round the bend and off next door’s wall.
He has all the wicked delight of a mischievous schoolboy but he’s the schoolboy your parents always warned
you about, told you to avoid, and kept you from, the one who would always get you into trouble. Of course, you don’t
care; you’d willingly hand over all your marbles just to stay in his shady company. He nudges you, pushes you, elbows
you into places you know you shouldn’t go, areas where you have to laugh. If you didn’t laugh you’d feel
uncomfortable, you might realise exactly where you were and at what you were laughing. You laugh just to feel easy, to protect
your own sanity, taking comfort from the fact that the whole room is laughing so it must be all right. He does a song about
George Joseph Smith, the ‘brides in the bath’ murderer, and you are laughing so much you are aching. You are laughing
as you join in the chorus, ‘glug, glug, glug’ and you know it’s the last, deathly sounds of another innocent
victim going under and you are going under just as fast, laughing ‘till you fall from your seat at the childish gurgle
in every one of Al’s darkly satanic, gleefully enthusiastic ‘glugs’. By the time he gets to his song about
‘pubic grooming’ you are a willing accomplice, guilty by association, lost completely.
Incredibly, he has a lyrical side, a lover’s eye, a gentle touch. Somewhere beneath the comic assassin
is a wounded romantic; love songs sung in a voice that didn’t just finish the drink but swallowed the glass as well.
His playing is something else. If Frank sang and Fred danced then Al plays. Boy can he play! His finger-picking
is nothing short of wonderful; from waltz-time, through blues-time to rag-time, always in time and always good-time. His fingers
dance like Astaire, croon like Sinatra, every note is clear, every run impeccable, every snap of a string, every bend, every
run, everything tasteful, oozing quality. Every ringing, joyful note sang out, reached up and then settled in the corners
of the room glowing smugly in mellow satisfaction.
This was a neat sound system with a good sound man in control and a great player taking full advantage of them
both. Like ‘The Musician’ in Leicester, ‘The Maze’ in Nottingham is a terrific venue; part bar, part
club, a little smoky, a little glitzy, a little undernourished, part swagger, part shadow, part Lee Marvin, part Hank; a venue
that offers a good player all he or she needs to shine – all that is other than a guaranteed audience and there are
no guarantees of that anywhere. The mid-week crowd was a mix of young, not so young and down right past it; the ones who knew
why Al was special and those who were just finding out. Guys who looked a little pale, a little thin, girls smiling, with
breasts young enough not to need support just a chaperone. Some of the older guys stood, nursing their drinks, smoking sparingly,
knowing they had to go home sometime but not just yet, not while Al was still on stage, still singing, still playing.
If Ralph McTell is a national treasure then Big Al Whittle must be our buried treasure: it’s time he was
better known; it’s time we dug him up and his music. Mind you, while there’s something of the night about Al,
it’s no good asking him if he wants to be dug up; he’d probably write a song about it so we could all have a laugh.
Neil Dalton
Copyright 1.5.06
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