Chart entered : 19 July 1967
Chart peak : 43
By the Summer of Love, the trad jazz revival seemed a long time ago and one of its leading lights signed off with this nod to what replaced it. It was his first hit in three years.
This was a very quick cover; Sgt Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band had only been out for a month. One of the reasons Kenny's boys could do it quickly was that the original already had a trad jazz arrangement which does raise the question what the point of this was. Kenny's version is a little more authentic with trumpet, trombone and tip-tap drumming but his diffident vocal doesn't improve anything.
Despite this relative success Kenny's time on Pye was drawing to a close. There were two more singles in 1968, " I Wanna Be Like You" ( from The Jungle Book of course ) which swings well enough but again would benefit from a better singer and "Wild Daffodil" , written by Ron Grainer ( best known for the Dr Who theme ) which is a pub singalong which sounds like Lonnie Donegan in novelty mode.
In 1969 Kenny switched to Fontana and in January released a version of the original Nirvana's "1999" . I haven't heard Kenny's record but again the original is a ragtime tune so it wouldn't require much re-arranging. In April the follow-up was "The Night They Raided Minsky's " a burlesque instrumental from a musical comedy film of the same name released the previous year. It's fine if you like that sort of thing.
By now Kenny was a TV face appearing regularly with Morecambe and Wise and Pye were happy to re-sign him in 1970. "Shake Em Up And Let 'Em Roll" was an old Lieber and Stoller song which Kenny got to perform on The Morecambe And Wise Show but jazz just wasn't selling singles anymore. Kenny released a long string of singles on Pye going down to 1976, none of which I've heard. I'm guessing there were no great departures but who knows ?
In 1977 his deal was with Spiral . He and the boys had a new TV gig as the house band on Saturday Night At The Mill and his next release was naturally enough the theme tune, a good time rag tune with some very uninspired lyrics. "Palomino Pony " from the same year was his only other single for the label.
Two years later he popped up again on Breeze with the single "Turtle's Progress". Written by Alan Price it was the theme tune to a TV series of which I have no memory at all. In 1980 it was the theme from Soap although Kenny's version isn't the one used by the series.
That seems to have been his final 7 inch. The following year he played at Charles and Di's wedding reception. The TV work pretty much ceased in the mid-eighties and thereafter he earned his corn through live work interspersed with the occasional LP. His wigs got progressively less realistic as he got older .He often appeared with his contemporaries Chris Barber and Acker Bilk. and played his last show with them in February last year, a fortnight before his death from pneumonia aged 82.
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