John “Jake” Thackray was an English singer-songwriter, poet and journalist. He was born in Leeds, and was educated at the Jesuit St. Michael’s College, and a Jesuit boarding school in Dolgellau, north-west Wales, and considered joining the priesthood, but instead chose to study Modern Languages at Durham University. After graduation he spent four years teaching English, mainly in France – in Lille, Brittany and the Pyrenees – but also including six months in Algeria at the height of the war for independence in 1961–1962. During his time in France he had some of his poetry published and discovered the chansonnier tradition and in particular the work of Georges Brassens. “I missed out on rock and all my influences were French,” he would later say. In 1966, he had two brief columns – What is a Prof? and What is a Student? published in the BBC’s The Listener magazine.
In 1964 Thackray returned to his native Yorkshire, teaching at Intake School in Bramley, Leeds. Teaching himself to play the guitar, he found that one way to get unruly pupils to take an interest in their studies was through his songs. This and performing in folk clubs led to appearances on local BBC radio programmes, which brought him to the attention of producer Norman Newell. Thackray recorded thirty songs with Newell, eleven of which were released as his debut album, The Last Will and Testament of Jake Thackray, in 1967. Its title track exhorted his friends to mark his death with a party, and then forget him. The album also included “Lah-Di-Dah”, in which a prospective bridegroom assures his bride he loves her so much that he will try to be nice to her dreadful family.
This in turn led to a BBC television slot, composing a weekly topical song for Bernard Braden’s consumer magazine programme Braden’s Week. He was not immediately popular – his first appearance in late 1968 provoked letters demanding his dismissal – but he eventually won over the audience. After Braden’s Week was cancelled in 1972, Thackray took up the same role on its successor show, That’s Life! In nearly thirty years of performing he would make over a thousand radio and TV appearances, including slots on The David Frost Show and Frost Over America, and his own show, Jake’s Scene, on ITV.
In 1968 he married Sheila Marian Clarke-Irons, a 21-year-old student. His second album, Jake’s Progress, was recorded at Abbey Road Studios while the Beatles put the finishing touches to their Abbey Road album next door. Released in 1969, it abandoned the orchestral arrangements of its predecessor for a small acoustic band. It included the song “The Blacksmith and the Toffee Maker”, which Thackray adapted from a story in Laurie Lee’s Cider With Rosie. He began recording a new album in 1970, but these recordings were scrapped. In 1971 he released Live Performance, a live recording of 14 songs from his 1970 performance at the Queen Elizabeth Hall in London (an expanded, 29-song double CD of the same performance would be released in 2006).
A third studio album, Bantam Cock, followed in 1972. Its title track became a folk standard and was covered by folk singer Fred Wedlock, The Corries and comedian Jasper Carrott among others. Other songs included “Isabel Makes Love upon National Monuments”, “Sister Josephine”, and “Brother Gorilla”, an English adaptation of Georges Brassens’ “Le gorille“. In 1973 he opened for Brassens when he performed at the inauguration of the Sherman Theatre in Cardiff, which he would describe as the high spot of his career.
After Bantam Cock Thackray’s television appearances continued, but his recording career stalled. A compilation album, The Very Best of Jake Thackray, was released in 1975. His final studio album, On Again! On Again!, appeared in 1977. Its title track, a long-winded tirade about women who talk too much, would see Thackray accused of misogyny, but the album also included “The Hair of the Widow of Bridlington”, a song of female self-determination in the face of social disapproval. It also featured two more Brassens adaptations, “Isabella” (based on Brassens’ “Marinette“) and “Over to Isobel” (based on “Je rejoindrai ma belle“). The same year he published a book of lyrics, Jake’s Progress, illustrated by Bill Tidy!
From the late 1970s he had made most of his living on the live circuit, touring in Europe, North America and the Far East, but in 1981 he returned to television with Jake Thackray and Songs, a six-part series on BBC2 featuring Thackray and guests, including Richard and Linda Thompson and Ralph McTell, performing in a variety of venues. An album of the same name, recorded live at the Stablers Theatre, Wavendon, Milton Keynes, as part of the recordings for the TV show, followed in 1983. A BBC-licensed DVD of Jake Thackray and Songs was released in 2014. Thackray’s last release during his life was a compilation, Lah-Di-Dah, released in 1991.
Although he gave up teaching for show business, Thackray did not really like being what he called “a performing dick”. He was uncomfortable with big audiences, and favoured pubs and community halls as performance venues in preference to grander ones such as the London Palladium (although he appeared there in a Royal Variety Performance). He became disillusioned with stage life – he is recorded as saying “I’d never liked the stage much and I was turning into a performing man, a real Archie Rice [the hack music hall comic in John Osborne’s The Enterainer], so I cancelled gigs and pulled out” – and he was plagued by a self-doubt and a breakdown in confidence that Ralph McTell describes as “catastrophic”. His style of work was also falling out of fashion: his literate, witty lyrics and tales of rural Yorkshire had little resonance in the punk and Thatcher years, folk audiences had lost interest in contemporary song and, in the days of alternative comedy, his bawdy humour was deemed sexist and outdated. He ultimately gave up performing in the early 1990s and turned to journalism – for four years he wrote a weekly column for the Yorkshire Post!
