[Harp-L] Re: Tommy Reilly and P.C. George Dixon

[Bobbie Giordano <bobg@xxxxxxx>]

Roger Trobridge answered Steve Shaw's question:
>>BBC Radio 4 has a six-part series reviving "Dixon of Dock Green," the
London 
>>police TV drama from the 50s and 60s, starting on Wednesday at 11.30a.m.
It 
>>had a memorable theme tune called "An Ordinary Copper" which was played on 
>>harmonica by Tommy Reilly and which I get asked to play more than anything 
>>else apart from the theme tune to "Last of the Summer Wine" (which I
believe 
>>he also played!).  
>
>Tommy played a couple but Harry Pitch played it for about 20 years, 
>and Jim Hughes has done the last few years. Each show had to record 
>new incidental music written and conducted by Ronnie Hazelhurst.

Allow me to interject here an earlier post of related content from the Harp-L
Archives a year ago.  [Even Doug's good friends tend to forget his part in
recording "Last of the Summer Wine".  heehee! ;)  Gotcha, Roger!]

=[bobbie]=

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To: harp-l@xxxxxxxxxx
Subject: Re: last of the summer wine 
From: Douglas Tate <douglas.tate@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> 
Date: Sat, 26 Jun 2004 04:49:15 +0100 

At 02:44 26/06/2004, Emile D'Amico wrote:

>I was wondering who plays the great
>chromatic harp on this great British
>comedy.

Hi Emile, I can give you a definitive on this.

Ronnie Hazelhurst first wrote this and offered the session for the show to 
Tommy Reilly.  Tommy turned it down because he didn't want the commitment 
in his very busy schedule of doing the show every week for 13 weeks.

SO, Ronnie asked Harry Pitch, Harry had his own band and was harmonica and 
trumpet and very jazz oriented.

Harry took the session. Although the basic tunes were always the same for 
each of the three main characters  it was re arranged every week with 
appropriate  other music for the action.  I believe it has been going now 
for 26+ years!
The three characters were represented in the music by :-
Harmonica, Harry Pitch
Guitar, Judd Proctor (from the Shadows)
Accordion,  Jack Emblow.

Since the start Harry did most of the sessions.  However he also quite 
frequently went to work cruise liners, or was sick.  In this case, in the 
early days Tommy Reilly did the fillin sessions, then Jim Hughes did a few 
and then I did them for a few years.
In 1999 Harry stopped doing them and I was offered the gig.  However, there 
was one session I couldn't do and I asked Julian Jackson if he would do it. 
The fixer at that time was Judd Proctor who arranged the musicians.
What neither Judd nor I knew was that Ronnie Hazelhurst had been in 
Birmingham that week and met Jim Hughes and offered him the job.  Both of 
us had accepted, but Ronnie was the bossman and Jim Hughes got the 
job.  Just as well really as I moved to America soon afterwards!!

So the answer to the question is that Harry, Tommy, Jim and yours truly 
were the only people who did the sessions.

An interesting story about this.  A friend of mine went to Music sales in 
answer to an Ad asking for someone to edit some harmonica music.  At the 
end of the interview the guy asked if my friend did the sessions for Last 
of the Summer Wine.  He said 'no' and explained (as above) who did.
"Interesting" said the interviewer "all the other five candidates for the 
job said they did it"  :)
My friend, Steve Jennings got the job!  (No, none of the others HAD done it)

Douglas Tate