Unauthorised item in the bagging area

Thursday 8 March 2012

Dem Bones, Dem Dry Bones


I've been watching the re-runs of The Singing Detective on BBC4 for the last few weeks. It concludes tonight. The only other time I've watched it was when it was first broadcast, back in 1986. A gap of twenty six years seems pretty reasonable to revisit doesn't it. I've got to say I've got even more out of it more now than I did aged 16 (although it was engrossing back then. And for a 16 year old boy Joanne Whalley was diversion enough on her own, nevermind all the other stuff going on in it). If you don't know the series read this, then go and get the box set.

One of the scenes that had really stuck in my memory from 1986 was the one where Philip Marlowe is lying in his hospital bed, awful psoriasis and pain leading to hallucinations. The doctors study him and then begin to break into song as they diagnose. The curtain around Marlowe's bed is drawn back and the ward starts to dance, with nurses providing a chorus line and playing skeleton xylophone. Youtube here. The song playing that the medical professionals mime and dance to is an old spiritual Dry Bones (or Dem Bones or Dem Dry Bones), a song written by James Weldon Johnson to teach children anatomy which somewhere along the line got mixed up with the Book of Ezekiel. There have been scores of cover versions over the years. Eventually I found the one from the TV series, by Fred Waring and His Pennsylvanians. Apologies for the volume/quality on this mp3 but then the recording is many decades old and hasn't had the benefits of remastering.

Dry Bones

3 comments:

Simon said...

I've been watching just to see Joanne Whalley. Man alive she was lovely. Still is too although obviously older. I had a type back then though. Girlfriends in the late 80s were all small, dark with big eyes. And a poster of Susanna Hoffs on the wall, who was definitely cut from the same cloth.

Swiss Adam said...

We're cut from the same cloth Simon. Joanne Whalley and Susanna Hoffs were my type too.

Dirk said...

I once stood an armlength away from Mrs Hoffs back in 1985 and she smiled at me. Occasionally the thought of that still makes me wake up at night ... where I'm pleased to see that some parts of my body are still able to feel as if they were 27 years younger.

Usually I then have to visit the loo ... once I am awake anyway.

Oh boy. Enough of that. I will now search the web for a nearby home for the aged.