Patricia Hammond

I’ll be on BBC Four TV this Friday, making a wax cylinder! It was a real test for me; I’d grown up listening to cylinders and 78s in my parents’ collection, and always thought that if a modern singer did one, modern stylistic tics would give the game away despite the lo-fi sound. In the end, it was quite spooky, the nearest thing to time-travel I’m likely to experience.

Here’s a CLIP.

In any case, watch the series! 9pm, and naturally on iPlayer. Neil Brand is a tremendously engaging host. And a truly funny, very nice man, too.

In the meantime, I’m sure my mum will want me to remind people that I also do a mean Petite Messe Solennelle, and a very good Mozart Requiem, but I’d like to say that I don’t just do 1910s music. Heck, I can do 1940s. Here is evidence. Matt is wearing a genuine Demob suit, too.

Also something I wish to prove in my next album (after the WW1 album which has finally been mixed, and will be released early March!), which is that there was a different style to microphone crooning, a halfway-house of smooth, yet unamplified, singing. Very prevalent in hotel lobbies, even nightclubs. I’ve now spoken to enough 90-year-olds who used to sing in such places to know that microphones were by no means taken for granted!

Aaaaand, if anyone is in the Vancouver area, I’ll be doing a concert of 1940s and 1950s songs, unamplified, and in some nice frocks! Very appropriately, as it will be in the frock-tastic Museum of Vancouver!