A song about Soho, bakeries and fathers

Why today? So, on my dad’s birthday (he would have been one hundred and two today), a song about our Sunday trips to buy bread in Soho. I was brought up on Charing Cross Road, on the edge of Soho, where everything we needed was: food shops, liquor stores, barbers, music venues (for my dad), the wonderful magazine shop where I bought comics, and various school friends. There was a bakery, hidden down a slope, that supplied the restarants of Soho and beyond, and where locals would go and get fresh baguettes, hot from the ovens. The smell of fresh baked bread still gives me a Proustian rush. I just wish I could remember the name of the bakery…

What inspired it? I was listening to Ella Fitzgerald’s “Cry Me a River” and became hypnotised by its intro — Herb Ellis on guitar and Joe Mondragon on bass — so I looped it. I chopped up some electric piano and organ loops and then played some very reverbed guitar over the top. Walking in Soho one night, I passed Bourchier Street, and the lyrics started there, suggesting a use for the loopy track. I felt that I should use some of the names of the places we frequented (Camisa, Lina Stores, Ronnie’s, The Nellie Dean, Moroni’s… I got one wrong, Gerry’s, which didn’t open until the 80s, and I didn’t have time to re-record it — let it stand for all of Soho’s liquor stores!) 

About “Cry Me a River” Arthur Hamilton wrote it for Ella Fitzgerald to sing in Pete Kelly’s Blues, but it didn’t make the edit. It was then recorded by the languorous Julie London, and that version was used in the Jayne Mansfield film The Girl Can’t Help It. Wikipedia: “The jazzy number was a remnant of the past in a picture that otherwise celebrated the emergent beat of rock ‘n’ roll, but that didn’t prevent its selling millions and becoming one of the most covered standards of all time”. The bass and guitar on Julie’s version were played by Ray Leatherwood and Barney Kessell (who also arranged it).

Thanks to Calum (likeahammerinthesink) I hear the brilliant set of podcasts made by Clare Lynch for The Photographers Gallery, which solves the mystery (only my mystery, obviously) of the name of the bakery. Here’s a transcript…
Claudio Mussi: In the sixties there was the 2i’s Coffee Shop, next door to Camisa, where all the pop stars used to go. Bar Italia of course was there, where we all gathered in the afternoon to have a cup of coffee. Moroni, the news agent was very famous in London in the ‘60s, because he was the only one who used to sell Italian newspapers. The Italian people are crazy about football. On Monday, Gazzetta dello Sport used to arrive about 3 o’clock from Italy. In those days it used to come by plane from Milano, between 3 and 4. There used to be a queue, all waiters and chefs coming out of the restaurants in Soho, rushing there, queue up and wait for the newspaper to arrive so they could read the football Italia results. Because there was no other way of knowing the results.  And here, where La Perla was, there was a branch of a chocolatier, a firm that used to make chocolate that was in the corner of Great Windmill Street and I cannot remember the name. See this is a classy street now! Floris, Floris also used to be a bakery, a chocolatier. It used to be down there, I think, Floris the bakery. And this used to be a chocolatier. Armin Loetscher (Sweetie): I’ve been in London since 1959. I used to work as a pastry cook, when I worked for Madame Floris. You had to have a permit, then, you know to come in. But I worked in Zurich for a patisserie, and she knew Madame Floris. And she got me the job and I got a permit and worked there in Bouchier Street, Bouchier Street there, you know where the flats are, that used to be a bakery.