It Was 50 Years Ago Today: “Winchester Cathedral” by The New Vaudeville Band

December 6, 1966
“Winchester Cathedral” by The New Vaudeville Band
#1 on the Billboard Hot 100, December 3-9 & 17-30, 1966

Pop/rock musicians in the late ’60s looking to expand their sound tended to draw from the music of idealized cultures separated by distance (Indian), time (baroque), or race (blues).

For musicians with less serious aims, though, there was also a strain of pop that sought exoticism closer to home: the music of their parents’ and grandparents’ generations, specifically the late-era music hall/vaudeville of the ’20s and early ’30s. After all, few things are as close in grasp but ultimately unknowable as what the world was like just before you were born.

For a brief period in the mid-’60s, rock bands incorporated music-hall song structures, instruments, and stylistic quirks, often as a counterpoint to their increasingly psychedelic explorations. While the fad was picked up on both sides of the Atlantic (note the Lovin’ Spoonful’s “Daydream”), the British had a special affinity for the style.

The Beatles, the Rolling Stones, and the Small Faces all flirted with music hall, while the Kinks built roughly half of their songs in this era on the retro format. Herman’s Hermits even scored a US #1 hit with their version of the music-hall classic “I’m Henry VIII, I Am.”

The biggest pop hit in the vaudeville vein, however, wasn’t by an established rock band trying out a new old sound. Instead, it was a studio group convened by songwriter Geoff Stephens, whose previous credits included Dave Berry’s “The Crying Game,” the Applejacks’ “Tell Me When,” and Manfred Mann’s “Semi-Detached Suburban Mr. James,” as well as producing Donovan’s “Catch the Wind.”

Stephens had penned a whimsical pastiche of ’20s pop, enlisting his writing partner John Carter to sing lead through his hands to imitate Rudy Vallée. The resulting record, “Winchester Cathedral,” was credited to the non-existent New Vaudeville Band.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=26wVkUXdZvU

For a pastiche of music descended from old-school dance music, however, the pace of “Winchester Cathedral” is leaden and undanceable, the horns bulbous and gassy — though, to be fair, the garish production and dinky instrumentation are probably a more honest tribute to small-scale, low-end music halls than the rockers’ rosier interpretations.

To assure pop listeners that it’s not just a nostalgia trip for old fogies, however, there’s a slack jolt of fuzz guitar as a vague gesture to psych rock. (The record’s only good joke was winning the 1967 Grammy for Best Contemporary Song.)

The best thing about “Winchester Cathedral” may be the song itself. The lyrics are terrible, to be sure, but terrible in a plausibly vaudevillian novelty way. The melody is catchy without being painful, familiar without being too predictable.

Conversely, though, every cover version – and circa 1967, there were a lot of them, by everyone from Petula Clark to Frank Sinatra to Vallée himself – proves how superfluous the song is removed from its moth-eaten ’20s dress-up. What’s left is pure kitsch, ridiculing the past while stoking nostalgia for it – and, worst of all, not even getting what made it so appealing in the first place.

When “Winchester Cathedral” became a surprise hit in late 1966, topping the US pop chart and making the UK Top 5, Stephens quickly recruited a touring band. The new New Vaudeville Band leaned hard on its name, featuring a horn section dressed in old-fangled costumes and a singer who sang through a megaphone.

Astonishingly, the group — a certified one-hit wonder if ever there were one — nonetheless managed to chart three more singles over the course of the following year (“Peek-a-Boo,” “Finchley Central,” and “Green Street Green”) before the novelty wore off.

While it might be a stretch to accuse Stephens and the New Vaudeville Band of killing the music-hall revival, the group’s fade into obscurity coincided with rock’s ebbing interest in the style. The leaden likes of “Winchester Cathedral” had turned the music hall revival from a cheeky or nostalgic trip to the past into a soggy mass of warmed-over leftovers.

It Was 50 Years Ago Today examines a song, album, movie, or book that was #1 on the charts exactly half a century ago.

Sally O'Rourke

Sally O’Rourke works in an office and sometimes writes about music. She blogs about every song to ever top the Billboard Hot 100 (in order) at No Hard Chords. She has also contributed to The Singles Jukebox, One Week // One Band, and PopMatters. Special interests include girl groups, soul pop, and over-analyzing chord changes and lyrics as if deciphering a secret code. She was born in Baton Rouge and lives in Manhattan. Her favorite Nugget is “Liar, Liar” by The Castaways.