Lodge
St. Andrew Kilmarnock
No.126
Established 1771
Frank Chacksfield & 126
The legendary big band leader is linked to 126 through a friend and brother of the lodge whom he both visited and kept up correspondence over many years. I have yet to complete the details of the fraternity and will add detail as I glean it from our Past Masters.
Biography.
Frank Chacksfield,
born Francis Charles Chacksfield, was a popular conductor in the "easy listening"
style. He is remembered by many music lovers and record collectors for his
numerous albums and appearances on radio and television during the era following
the second world war. From the 1950s onwards, Chacksfield was one of Britain's
most famous orchestra leaders, and his fame spread around the world. Early
in his career he was fortunate to have several big sellers in the USA, which
firmly established his reputation world-wide. During his recording career
with Decca alone, it is estimated that he sold 20 million copies. Chacksfield
learned to play the piano as a boy and became the deputy organist for the
local church. Though his parents discouraged his pursuit of music as a career,
he persevered. In the late '30s, when he was in his mid-20s, he was leading
small musical bands in Britain. At the beginning of World War II Frank joined
the Royal Signals. Just as he was assigned a post overseas he became ill.
While he was recovering he was allowed to make a BBC broadcast. The broadcast
led to his being posted to the Army's entertainment section at Salisbury.
he was assigned to the British Army entertainment unit, and after the war
he became a regular performer on the BBC. In 1953, he formed an orchestra
he called "The Tunesmiths" and won a contract with Parlophone Records. Within
two years, he expanded the group from a traditional big band into an orchestra
with strings and released a series of "mood music" albums. His sound was similar
to Mantovani and Melachrino. His biggest hits, in both the UK and the US,
were "Ebb Tide" and "Limelight." Chacksfield was also responsible for the
musical arrangement of the first ever British entry into the Eurovision Song
Contest, "All" by Patricia Bredin in 1957. Only because BBC musical director
Eric Robinson insisted on accompanying Bredin to the contest in Frankfurt,
Chacksfield did not get the chance to perform as a conductor on this international
stage. In the late 1970s and early 1980s Chacksfield recorded a large number
of instrumental recordings for Starborne Productions. The recordings were
licensed for use by "Easy Listening" radio stations and functional music companies.
The vast majority of these recordings were not made commercially available
to the general public until 2007 by Starborne Productions. Chacksfield had
two giant US hits in 1953, "Ebb Tide" and "Terry's Theme from Limelight".
A third single that year, "Golden Violins" appeared in the Cashbox charts
(Billboard only ranked to 20 positions at that time.)