Description
The Welsh composer and songwriter Harry Parr-Davies (1914-55) was a musical prodigy, having composed entire operettas and numerous songs by the time he was in his teens. In an audacious move, aged 17, he gained access to the dressing room of the singing star Gracie Fields at London’s Winter Garden Theatre. His boldness paid off, as, from 1934, he worked as Fields’ accompanist.
Later that year Gracie Fields starred in the musical film Sing as We Go, which featured one of Parr-Davies’ best-known songs (also called Sing as We Go). Fields played the heroine, who, laid off from her job in a cloth mill, sought work in the seaside resort of Blackpool. The film’s final scene of Fields leading the millworkers back into the re-opened mill whilst singing Sing as We Go has become an almost iconic film cliché.
The melody of the song was used by the comedy group Monty Python in a parody song called Sit on My Face, with the risqué (!) lyrics penned by Eric Idle. Such are the lyrics that it even led to one American radio station being fined for playing the song. No lyrics are used in this arrangement – just the catchy melody!
