By Vishnu Makhijani
New Delhi, Aug 7 (SocialNews.XYZ) For a teenager in the early 1960s, the only access to western pop music was through two weekly programs on All India Radio and one wondered why “The Carnival Is Over” was invariably featured. on both week after week.
One soon realized that this was so, because heartbreak was as integral to life as eating and breathing.
Still, one pondered the lyrics, delivered with great feeling by the low-pitched singer-songwriter-musician Judith Durham (one learned of her Australian identity much later), whose talents extended to piano and tambourine, and asked wonder why this had to be so:
“Say goodbye my true lover/As we sing a love song/How it breaks my heart to leave you/Now the carnival is gone
High above the dawn is waiting/And my tears are raining down
Because the carnival is over/We may never meet again
My heart beat like a drum/And your kiss was as sweet as wine
But the joys of love are fleeting/For Pierrot and Columbine
Now the harbor light is calling/This will be our last goodbye/Though the carnival is over/I’ll love you till I die”.
Someone also asked why her band, where she was the lead singer, was called The Seekers. Was the search for true love or would it be like the Holy Grail – forever unattainable?
It was much later that one learned that life does not imitate art and neither does art imitate life when it comes to matters of the heart.
Not surprisingly, “The Carnival Is Over” became The Seekers’ anthem.
At its peak, it was selling 93,000 copies a day in the UK with sales of at least 1.41 million in the UK alone and for three weeks it was No. 1 in the UK Singles Chart for two months after its release in November 1965. It remains one of the UK’s top 50 best-selling singles today.
It’s a song that tugs at the heartstrings even today as it approaches 60 years after its release and has brought the curtain down on every live performance of the band.
With the death of Judith Durham in Melbourne on August 5 from bronchiectasis, a long-standing chronic lung disease, aged 79, an era has ended, but what will remain forever is the thread of longing that runs through many of her songs , as in “When Will the Good Apples Fall?”
Durham’s was a rare case of a singer who excelled as a member of a group and even greater success as a soloist.
It began, in fact, with The Seekers’ first UK release featuring Durham, ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’, in February 1965 which reached No. 1 in the UK and Australia. There were also top 10 hits with ‘A World of Our Own’, ‘Morningtown Ride’ and ‘Someday, One Day’. ‘Georgy Girl’ reached number two on the Billboard chart and number one on the Cashbox chart in the US.
Born Judith Mavis Cock on July 3, 1943, in Melbourne, Durham (she took her mother’s maiden name as her professional name) she originally planned to become a pianist and earned an Associate in Music-Australia (AMusA) degree in classical piano at the Conservatoire of the University of Melbourne.
She also had several professional engagements playing the piano, received classical vocal training and performed blues, gospel and jazz pieces.
Her singing career had begun one night at the age of 18 when she asked Nicholas Ribush, leader of Melbourne University’s jazz band, at the Memphis Jazz Club in the Melbourne suburb of Malvern if she could sing with the group.
In 1963, she began performing at the same club with Frank Traynor’s Jazz Preachers and in the same year, also recorded her first EP, “Judy Durham” with the Jazz Preachers for W&G Records.
At the time, the Seekers consisted of Athol Guy, Bruce Woodley and Keith Potger, a producer with ABC Radio, through whom the group was able to record a demo tape. This was given to W&G Records, who wanted another sample of Durham’s voice before agreeing to record a Jazz Preachers album. Instead, W&G signed the Seekers, along with Durham, for an album titled “Introducing the Seekers”.
The band hit the dirt when they sailed to the UK on the SS Fairsky to provide musical entertainment on board. The band had planned to return in 10 weeks, but received a flood of bookings through Grade Agency, to whom they had sent a copy of their first album – and on 4 November 1964, recorded ‘I’ll Never Find Another You’ at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios.
Four years later, while on tour in New Zealand, Durham advised the band that she was leaving The Seekers and left in July 1968.
Durham returned to Australia a month later and her first solo TV special, ‘An Evening with Judith Durham’, aired on the Nine Network in September. During her solo career, she released three albums titled ‘For Christmas With Love’, ‘Gift of Song’ and ‘Climb Ev’ry Mountain’.
In 1970, she did the TV special Meet Judith Durham in London, with her rendition of the lounge song When You Come to the End of a Perfect Day.
In 1975, Durham starred in an acting-singing role as Sarah Simmonds, a burlesque performer in The Golden Girl, an episode of the Australian television series Cash and Co. Set in the goldfields of the 1800s, the episode also featured Durham’s husband, Ron Edgeworth, on the piano.
She performed six songs including “Oh Susanna”, “When Starlight Fades”, “Maggie Mae”, “Rock of Ages”, “There’s No Place Like Home” and “The Lord Is My Shepherd”.
In 2003, Durham was in the UK for The Diamond Tour celebrating her 60th birthday. The tour included a concert at the Royal Festival Hall, of which a CD and DVD was released.
In 2006, Durham began modernizing the music and phrasing of the Australian National Anthem, ‘Advance Australia Fair’ which she performed for the first time in May 2009. It was also released as a CD single.
On February 13, 2009, Durham performed the closing number at the RocKwiz Salutes the Bowl – Sidney Myer Music Bowl 50th Anniversary with “The Carnival Is Over”.
In June 2018, to celebrate Durham’s 75th birthday, a collection of 14 previously unreleased songs was released on the album So Much More.
On 21 November 1969, Durham married her musical director, the British pianist Ron Edgeworth, at the Scots’ Church in Melbourne. They lived in the UK and Switzerland until the mid-1980s when they bought property in Queensland.
In 1990, Durham, Edgeworth and their tour manager, Peter Summers, were involved in a car accident on the Calder Freeway, a rural highway. The driver of the other car died at the scene and Durham suffered a broken wrist and broken leg.
The response from her fans led Durham to consider getting back together with the other members of The Seekers for a Silver Jubilee show. During this reunion, Edgeworth was diagnosed with motor neurone disease. He died on December 10, 1994, with Durham by his side.
In 2000, Durham broke her hip and so was unable to sing “The Carnival is Over” at the closing ceremony of the Sydney Olympics, but sang it from a wheelchair at the Paralympic Games soon after.
In May 2013, during the Seekers’ Golden Jubilee tour, Durham suffered a stroke that impaired her ability to read and write – both visual language and musical scores – but her ability to sing was unaffected – and it was built on rebuilding her abilities during recovery. .
Thanks for the music, Judith Durham. You will be greatly missed.
(Vishnu Makhijani can be reached at [email protected])
Source: IANS
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Gopi Adusumilli is a programmer. He is the editor of SocialNews.XYZ and President of AGK Fire Inc.
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