New York Philharmonic – "The Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms" (2013)

 

Desert Island Discs is a BBC radio program that first aired almost 70 years ago.

On each episode, a guest – usually an entertainer or other celebrity – is asked to choose eight recordings, a book, and one “luxury item” that they would choose to have if they were cast away on a desert island.  To date, over 3000 guests have appeared on the show.

The late Rolling Stones drummer Charlie Watts appeared on Desert Island Discs in 2001.  The eight recordings he said he would want to have if he were marooned on a desert island included nothing by the Rolling Stones, the Beatles, or any other pop/rock artist.

The late Charlie Watts

Watts was a jazz drummer before joining the Stones, and continued to play and record jazz throughout his life.  His Desert Island Discs selections included recordings by Duke Ellington, Frank Sinatra, Charlie Parker, and other jazz greats.

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Watts also chose a recording of a 1956 England/Australia cricket match – the fourth match of five played between those two countries that year for “The Ashes” trophy.

That match is known as “Laker’s Match” due to the extraordinary performance of English cricketeer Jim Laker, a right-arm off break bowler who took 19 out of a maximum 20 wickets in that match – a cricket world record that has never been equalled.  (No, I have no idea what any of that means either.)

Jim Laker lets one fly

Watts – who like Mick Jagger was a lifelong cricket aficionado – was 15 years old when that match was played.  It obviously made a huge impression on him.

I had assumed that Desert Island Discs selections had to be music recordings, but that’s not the case.  It’s good to know that if I’m ever asked to appear on the program, I’m free to choose a recording of a significant Yankees victory – maybe the 1978 one-game playoff (a/k/a the “Bucky F*cking Dent game”) or game seven of the 2003 ALCS series (a/k/a the “Aaron F*cking Boone game”).

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Watts picked the “Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms” from Stravinsky’s 1911 ballet, Petrushka, as his favorite of his eight “desert island” recordings.

I wanted to know why – that choice seemed to have come from out in left field – so I dug into the archives of Desert Island Discs on the BBC website, and listened to the recording of Watts’ appearance on the show.   

It turns out that Watts had a very personal reason for singling out “Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms.”  

Watts and his wife Shirley Ann Shepherd – they were married in 1964 – bred Arabian horses on a farm in Devon, England.  (At one time, they owned more than 250 horses, some of which cost hundreds of thousands of dollars.)  Shirley chose to have a recording of “Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms” played during one of her horse shows – the title made it a very appropriate selection for such an event.  

Watts with his daughter Seraphina
and granddaughter Charlotte

According to Charlie, his only granddaughter – her name is Charlotte – immediately responded to Stravinsky’s music.  “I will forever see my granddaughter running around the room galloping to it,” he told the Desert Island Discs host.

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Desert Island Discs spots all its guests a Bible and a copy of Shakespeare’s complete works and asks them to pick a third book to take.  Watts chose Dylan Thomas’s collected poems.

As for the “luxury item” – which can’t be another person, and can’t be anything that could be used to get one off the desert island and back to civilization – one of the most popular choices is a piano.

Watts not surprisingly chose drumsticks as his luxury item.

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Petrushka (or Petrouchka) is the Russian name for the 16th-century Italian trickster puppet who was called Pulcinella.  (The English version is known as Punch – “Punch and Judy” shows featuring Punch and his wife have been a staple of popular English entertainment since the mid-1600s.)

A drawing of one of the costumes used in
the original 1911 production of Petrushka

Stravinsky’s ballet about Petrushka, which was first presented by the legendary Ballet Russes ballet company in Paris in 1911, has been described as the “perfect fusion” of the three fundamental elements of ballet: music, choreography, and set design.

Click here to listen to a 2013 New York Philharmonic recording of “Dance of the Coachmen and Grooms” from Petrushka.

Click on the link below to buy the recording from Amazon: