The Jimmy Kennedy Songbook celebrates greatest hits
Date Posted: February 28, 2020
It is a little known fact that a songwriter from an Ulster-Scots background penned ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’, one of the best loved and best known children’s songs of all time.
The songwriter’s name was Jimmy Kennedy. He was born in 1902 and grew up near Cookstown before embarking on a career that would catapult him to Tin Pan Alley in London and eventually to New York where he would write for all the major performers of the day. He became one of the brightest stars in the industry, writing nearly 2,000 songs across his long career.
The Jimmy Kennedy Songbook is a celebration of his greatest hits, made for BBC Northern Ireland by Clean Slate Productions, with assistance from the Northern Ireland Screen Ulster-Scots Broadcast Fund. It will be shown on BBC Two Northern Ireland on Sunday 8th March at 10pm.
Recorded at The Belfast Empire, host and singer songwriter Duke Special is joined by Eddi Reader, Gareth Dunlop, MayKay, Tabitha Agnew and James Yorkston for an evening breathing new life into Jimmy Kennedy classics. The hour-long programme also contains some archive short films exploring the career of Jimmy Kennedy and some of the stories behind the songs with contributions from his son, Jim Kennedy, and writer and broadcaster Paul Gambaccini.
The same songwriter went on to write classics such as ‘Red Sails in the Sunset’ ‘Harbour Lights’, ‘South of the Border’, ‘My Prayer’ and ‘Istanbul, not Constantinople’ which were sung by some of the twentieth century’s most iconic singers and entertainers; Vera Lynn, Bing Crosby, Frank Sinatra, Dina Washington, Perry Como, Dean Martin, Patsy Cline, Rosemary Clooney, Fats Domino, Nat King Cole, Elvis Presley and the Beatles, among many others.
