• Included among the Record Descriptions of Favorite Albums (Part 1).
• “Winchester Cathedral” became a major hit, reaching the British Top 5 and the top of the charts in the U.S., plus a Grammy Award in 1967.  

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The New Vaudeville Band – Winchester Cathedral (1966):  Usually when musicians in the rock era looked backward, they reworked older songs in a new way.  The New Vaudeville Band wrote many of their own songs and distilled them with sounds from the 1920’s and 1930’s, including (naturally) vaudeville, swing music, traditional jazz, and British dance hall music.  Though credited to Geoff Stephens (under a pseudonym), the English studio mastermind behind the New Vaudeville Band and the man who wrote “Winchester Cathedral”, the lead singer was actually John Carter, a veteran of several British bands, who mimicked vocalists like Rudy Vallee who sang through a megaphone by singing through his hands. 

“Winchester Cathedral” unaccountably became a major hit, reaching the British Top 5 and the top of the charts in the U.S.  “Winchester Cathedral” even won the Grammy Award for Best Contemporary Song in 1967.  An album was quickly put together, as was an actual touring band (“Winchester Cathedral” was strictly a studio creation).  The other songs on the album include some that are newly written and some that are older songs, and they are performed in a similar fashion as the hit.  One song on the album, “There’s a Kind of Hush (All Over the World)” became a hit for Herman’s Hermits in March 1967; the song was co-written by Geoff Stephens and his frequent songwriting partner Les Reed.  Americans are typically ready to move on to the next big thing, so oddball acts like the New Vaudeville Band and Mungo Jerry lose their appeal fairly quickly; but the New Vaudeville Band had two more hits in the U.K., “Peek-a-Boo”, which reached the Top 10, and the Top 20 song “Finchley Central”, with both appearing on their second album that was released in 1967, Finchley Central.  The New Vaudeville Band was also featured in the soundtrack of the 1968 film The Bliss of Mrs. Blossom.