Acker Bilk, born January 28 1929, died November 2 2014
Acker Bilk was a bowler-hatted titan of Trad jazz who conjured a warm, sentimental sound from his clarinet
Acker Bilk: The "Great Master of the Clarinet"
His beautiful music has been a source of inspiration to me ever since I first heard his music in 1973. It was the first time that I had met my future father-in-law, the late Tery Clifford in Coventry. I had gone there from Oxford, where I had met Annie, to meet her family.
It was late one evening that I heard a most beautiful sound coming from the sitting room. Terry was listening to his favourite album, and Acker Bilk was playing the Stranger On The Shore. It was truly a beautiful sound. It was inspiring. It made me to dream and think about good things in life. It was soothing and healing, what many years later I would call ‘Music for the Common Good’, touching everybody’s heart.
I sat and listened to the entire Album with Terry. The more I listened the more I enjoyed.
Acker Bilk’s music has remained a source of inspiration to me ever since. Anytime I need to dream good things and be insired, I turn the music on and listen to the Stranger On The Shore*, Autumn Leaves**, and more.
Bilk’s popular appeal owed almost as much to his unaffected and avuncular manner as to the warm, sentimental sound of his clarinet. May God grant him eternal rest; he was, in the old idiom, a lovely man, a great musician, who if required may still be a peacemaker in heaven, by just getting his clarinet out and playing his good old melodies.
*Hear the Stranger On The Shore
** Hear the Autumn Leaves