It's not about small woodland creatures, and it's definitely not about Terry Wogan. Alfred Hickling joins in with the Cornish Floral Dance
In May 1911 a young violinist and composer of light music named Katie Moss visited the small Cornish mining town of Helston. She arrived in time to witness the traditional Flora Day celebrations: a day-long jig through the town performed to a simple, infectious refrain. The joy of the experience inspired her to jot down some lyrics on the train home: "I thought I heard the curious tone/ Of the cornet, clarinet and big trombone/ Fiddle, cello, big bass drum/ Bassoon, flute and euphonium."
Are you humming along yet? It may be that you associate the Floral Dance with Cornish custom; though you are more likely to recall the deathless version made by the Brighouse and Rastrick brass band, whose recording remained at No 2 in the charts for nine weeks in 1977. (It was prevented from reaching the top spot by Wings' Mull of Kintyre, the only time in British chart history in which northern brass bands and Scottish pipers so thoroughly dominated the charts.)
Yet the performance few are able to forget is Terry Wogan's bizarre appearance on Top of the Pops in January 1978, when the under-prepared and seemingly embarrassed DJ intoned the litany of big bass drums and euphoniums while pelting the audience with flowers. It made the tune infamous; yet for Ian Marshall, a Cornish folklorist, musician and author of the definitive The Amazing Story of the Floral Dance, Wogan's intervention was regrettable. "Unfortunately, it is the performance everyone immediately thinks of," Marshall says. "I think Terry Wogan genuinely liked the tune, but for some reason he opted to perform live, which was a mistake. You were reminded of a performance given by a seriously stoned Elvis Presley near the end of his career."
Marshall's book is a fascinating document of a musical obsession that covers every aspect of the provenance, etymology and performance history of the tune. But the roots of the Floral Dance are mysterious and subject to confusion, even in Cornwall.
"The original melody occurs only in the chorus of Katie Moss's version ? the 'fiddle, cello, big bass drum' part. Eighty per cent of the published composition was her own invention," Marshall says. The most far-reaching of Moss's modifications was to change the name of the dance itself. "The springtime celebration in Helston is known as the furry dance, which I can only suppose she altered because she didn't want to give the impression that it was a song about small woodland creatures. Unfortunately, it's since become the custom even for Cornish people to refer to the furry dance by the wrong name."
Moss's rewrite was the Edwardian equivalent of a chart-topper. Thousands of copies of the sheet music were sold, and the first singer to have a recorded hit with the tune was the light baritone Peter Dawson. Further versions appeared from Stanley Holloway, Julie Andrews and folk band the Yetties. The tune took on a new lease of life, though, from the mid-70s, when it became a brass band standard.
In 1975 West Yorkshire's venerable Brighouse and Rastrick band hired a talented young music director named Derek Broadbent, who had the idea of combining a brass arrangement with a pop rhythm. "It's actually a double-offbeat ? you can do the twist to it," Broadbent says. His second stroke of inspiration was to put the tune out as a single. "It was only intended to be something we could sell at concerts to raise funds," Broadbent says, "but as no brass band had issued a 45rpm disc before, we were surprised to find we qualified for the singles chart."
A Radio 2 breakfast producer passed the disc to Wogan, who played it (while singing along) at peak listening time before the 8am news. Six weeks later, the 27 members of the Brighouse and Rastrick band were scrambling down to London for the recording of Top of the Pops.
Sheridan Fryer, the band's librarian, remembers the day: "It wasn't easy getting time off from work, and we only made it down the motorway for the 2pm recording with seconds to spare. They'd never had a brass band on Top of the Pops before and they didn't really know how to cope with us. The studio manager was worried that we might get spittle on the floor."
Unlike every other act in the studio that day, the Brighouse and Rastrick band played live. "There was a young Irish lad in tight red trousers gawping at us throughout our rehearsal," Fryer says. "He turned out to be a very young Bob Geldof. We thought he looked in need of a good dinner."
The band members were pleased to find fellow Yorkshireman Jimmy Saville was on hand to introduce them: though contrary to most people's recollection, Wogan was not present. "It's assumed that we played on Wogan's version, but that came out a few months later, with the Hanwell band from London, who were not credited on the label," Fryer says. "I'd be quite glad of the opportunity to clear that up."
The band's chart success cost them some credibility in the brass world. "I think some of the other outfits thought we'd lost the plot ? especially as we became so busy promoting the Floral Dance that we were unable to compete in the British championships. But we answered our critics by winning it the following year."
The purple-jacketed gentlemen of the B&R remain a force today. Their version of the tune featured in the film Brassed Off, a gold disc hangs proudly above the band's well-appointed rehearsal complex outside Halifax. In the band's archive, the original charts are so well used it has been necessary to laminate them. "We still have to bring it out at every concert," Fryer says. "There'd be uproar if we didn't."
The strains of the recording will be heard again as part of this year's Durham International Brass festival; albeit in barely recognisable form. The DJ and sound artist Scanner has created a work entitled Floral Derrangement, which involves slowing the tune so much it runs to 130 times its normal length.
Why 130 times? "It is an acknowledgement of the history of the Brighouse and Rastrick band, which has its 130th anniversary this year," Scanner says.
Scanner's super-slow arrangement stretches the tune until it sounds closer to a Wagnerian funeral march than a traditional Cornish knees-up; though for two days its curious tones will be audible to pedestrians crossing Durham's Kingsgate bridge. Scanner hopes that the brass players in town for the festival will be inspired to play along. "The ultimate aim is for the piece to become an interactive improvisation on the theme of the Floral Dance. I'd like anyone who happens to be passing to be able to join in." A certain Mr Wogan excepted, perhaps.
Floral Derrangement is at the Durham International Brass festival 15-17 July.
chelsea handler and ted harbert halle berry and gabriel aubry charlize theron and stuart townsend susan sarandon and tim robbins jake pavelka and vienna girardi
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