The Forgotten Classical Satirist

If you were asked to name the best classical music satirists if the 20th century, the first name on your lips would undoubtedly be the late Peter Schickele, a.k.a. P.D.Q. Bach, with Spike Jones and Anna Russell probably coming in at Nos. 2 and 3. The next name on the list would probably be Victor Borge; those who are deeply involved in opera might come up with falsetto soprano Michael Aspinall or female opera satirist B.J. Ward. But you’d probably run out of names without ever coming up with that of Alec Templeton. Until a few days ago, the only thing I knew Templeton from was his tongue-in-cheek fugue from Bach Goes to Town, which was recorded (and performed in person) by Benny Goodman’s popular swing band back in 1938.

But a friend of mine from Brooklyn sent me a homemade CD on which he included Templeton’s 1936 recording of Arthur Sullivan’s The Lost Chord, first played straight (well, some of it, anyway) and then played as if it were a patter song from one of the Gilbert & Sullivan operettas. It was just so funny that I had to look him up online, at which point I discovered a great deal more of him: vicious satires of Italian opera (including a Metropolitan Opera “performance” of Ziggy Elman’s swing tune And the Angels Sing), a simulation of all the different musical sounds you hear in the corridors of a music conservatory, one recording on which he played The Stars and Stripes Forever as a Strauss waltz and The Beautiful Blue Danube as a Sousa march, a surprisingly good imitation of Frankie Laine singing “My heart at thy sweet voice” from Samson et Dalila, a take-off of a man with a new radio who just likes to dial-flip, parodies of German lieder singers and off-key Gilbert & Sullivan choruses, and a sign-off song called Good-Byee in which he informs his audience that he can’t wait to get off the stage. And on top off all this, there are his tongue-in-cheek jazz-classical hybrids: in addition to Bach Goes to Town there are also Mozart a la Mode, Mendelssohn Mows ‘Em Down, the Ghost Rhapsody and a Pocket-Sized Sonata for Clarinet and Piano. The first-named of these has been recorded by several pianists as well as by the distinguished British harpsichordist George Malcolm and the last-named by a surprisingly large number of clarinetists including the legendary Reginald Kell (who gives us the squarest and least swinging version of all). At his height in the 1940s and ‘50s, Templeton was an almost permanent summer replacement show on radio, played both jazz and classical works with the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra in the 1950s, appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show and had not one but two TV programs on the Dumont network.

So why is he forgotten?

My guess is that it’s because most of his classical spoofs ended around 1941, by which time he had become very popular as an erudite radio host who played popular and light classical piano works on the air as well as on records. Out of sight, out of mind, you know, and Templeton’s transformation from classical satirist to popular jazz and classical entertainer was virtually complete.

Born in Wales in either 1909 and 1910—according to Wikipedia, his birth certificate clearly states 1909 but his tombstone says 1910—Templeton was, like George Shearing, blind from birth but showed remarkable musical talent at a very early age. How early? Well, he was admitted to Worcester College, Oxford at the age of NINE where he studied the organ with Ivor Adkins and later was admitted at an early age to the Royal College of Music in London. In addition to having a steel-trap mind that could remember any and all music he heard, Templeton was also gifted with absolute pitch, which later helped him in his very complex classical spoofs. Judging from his recordings, he must have driven the other students at the Royal College crazy with his devastating spoofs and sharp wit. They were probably very happy to see him go when he graduated.

Templeton was hired as the jazz pianist in Jack Hylton’s very popular British dance band. During their tour of America in 1936, Templeton decided to go out on his own and stay in the U.S., where he became a citizen a few years later. In that same year of 1936 he made his first series of records for The Gramophone Shop in New York, which included The Lost Chord, The Shortest Wagnerian Opera, the Ghost Rhapsody and his spoofs of Italian opera, off-key Pinafore selections and his Trip Though a Conservatory. Possibly for the first time in show business history, recordings made for a small label led in turn to his being discovered not only by musicians but also by the entertainment industry. By 1939 he was a sensation, recording for RCA Victor; a year later he jumped to Columbia for a few more devastating parodies (including versions of the popular song Some of These Days as it might have been played by Bach, Czerny, Bob Zurke and Rachmaninoff).

But then…he went “serious” on us. An album of piano solos for Decca is disappointing unless you like cocktail-party versions of Gershwin or the Grieg piano concerto, but as it turns out, this is just what America wanted to hear, so Templeton became famous, made money (lots of it), but lost his mojo.

By the early 1950s he had amassed so much money, in fact, that he could subsidize his somewhat expensive hobby of collecting musical clocks and music boxes, which he absolutely loved. Remarkably, he issued two LPs of them, one in mono on the old Remington label and another in stereo on RCA Victor. They’re cute to listen to but certainly not something most people would want to hear more than once. Yet they sold surprisingly well at the time, and in a rare November 1952 appearance on the Sullivan Show he showed that he still “had it,” doing his Frankie Laine-sings-opera spoof as well as a jazz song called Give Me the Name, Age, Height and Size of You. In 1958 he appeared on one TV program playing soft jazz numbers like Moonglow, then he died in 1963 of unrevealed causes.

Thus did Alec Templeton maximize his talent as best he could, but those of us who loved his classical satires regret the metamorphosis. Still, you can find a great deal of his early material online at both the Internet Archive and YouTube. If you are a fan of well-done and devastatingly funny classical spoofs, I urge you to go and listen to them. You can also find excellent performances of Mozart a la Mode by Paul Berton, the complete Pocket Sized Sonata by clarinetist Andrej Supan, and Malcolm’s recording of Bach Goes to Town. They somehow all fit together to portray an immensely talented pianist-singer who walked a tightrope between blatant musical satire and true popular appeal at the keyboard.

And don’t forget to check out his Good-Byeee song as sung by him along with Bea Lillie and Bing Crosby. I’d love to hear some classical singer do this as a final encore in one of their recitals!

—© 2024 Lynn René Bayley

Follow me on Facebook (as Monique Musique)

Check out the books on my blog…they’re worth reading, trust me!