Te Soundtrack

The songs for Te Soundtrack were chosen to illustrate Billy’s life and not to demonstrate his astonishing vocal range. Yet even so the multi-talent of Billy T James’ musical ability still shines through. Take the soft silky vocals of standard ballads like “Prairie Moon”, “When A Child is Born” Movie Cowboy” to Jazz inspired “Lookin’ Good But Feelin’ Bad” and “Mama Don’t Allow”, the Broadway belters “Join The Circus” and “We’re Gonna Have A Good Time” and his own subtle take on “Pokarekare Ana” giving a sound track that demonstrates a rainbow of style.

One of the great pleasures of working with Billy was to suggest song titles that were out of his usual mode and let him work on them until he astonishingly made them his own. Just listen to the Radio Times Closer “Good Night Everyone” and hear how the Kiwi Joker takes a very ordinary 1930s song and makes it sound as though it is his own tongue in cheek humour.

Whenever people tell me of their experiences working with Billy, they all invariably say that it was a privilege. He always seemed able to make you want to do your very best work for him. Part of that was Billy himself worked harder than anyone else, on making sure that every nuance of a joke was timed correctly, every lyric line was sung to fit seamlessly into the arrangement, that every tune was carried to suit its situation.

Nothing was “off the cuff,” everything was rehearsed to the slightest detail. Even up to the last moment of a recording he would be volunteering changes to words or timing on a sketch, rephrasing a lyric line, lengthening a pause.

All this had an effect on his co workers who realised they were working with greatness and would need to lift their own performance to keep up.

Yet Billy did all this with his usual charm and good humour, never revealing the hard work beneath what was seen by his adoring audience as an effortless performance.

Tom Parkinson