1963 Abingdon School Quatercentenary Private Issue tenuous Beatles & Radiohead

	£		50
	$		66

1963 Abingdon School Quatercentenary (1563-1963) Private Issue 10 " LP with a tenuous link to the Beatles & Radiohead!. An educated guess would say there were 99 of these pressed as at that time that was a tax threshold, and shop pressed albums like 77records regularly issued 99 copies to avoid the taxation required on a 100 or more, plus this would likely meet the demand for a small private schools audience of parents back then. Normally with a record like this the strongest interest is from the Boy Treble and Choral collectors, as there is some of that plus more though, in that the programme for the visit of Princess Margaret when the school was 400 years old, had some additional entertainment to it, with a few of the teachers bands playing as well. A minor hit by one band led by John Horrex was issued on Parlophone (engineered by George Martin) in 1966 as fully detailed below, but this is the private mini album with its first appearance, and that same group also sang on Peter Sellers cover of Help!. Sir George obviously liked them. The tenuous Thom Yorke / Radiohead link is that this is the school they all went to when they were still called On a Friday. I cannot say for sure if any of the teachers on this taught them, or even if one of the boys who sing on it went on to teach there and taught them, you would need to do the research yourself. Still, its a nice little thing with an interesting backstory. The choir are excellent, incidentally.

The Highway Code

"No, not that best selling document published by the Department of Transport but a musical version arranged by John Horrex who came to Abingdon to teach Physics in 1951. Sung in an a capella style by a quartet of Abingdon masters calling themselves the Master Singers, the song was recorded for Parlophone by George Martin, the Beatles’ producer, and eventually made it to number 22 in the 1966 Hit Parade. 

Known to the boys for his smooth style as Erasmic, after a well-known shaving soap, John Horrex was a counter-tenor who performed regularly in both professional and amateur productions. He devised the Highway Code during the 1950s and it was performed on special occasions, including in front of Princess Margaret during the Quatercentenary celebrations in 1963.

On 31 March 1965 a School recording of the song was played on a new BBC magazine programme, This Time of Day.  According to the Sunday Telegraph’s radio critic, “If there was one single item which did most to put the programme’s name on the map, it was probably the Highway Code sung as an Anglican psalm by a quartet of schoolmasters from Abingdon.” Well, never mind about it putting the radio programme on the map, the song certainly put Abingdon School on the map. 

In December 1965 the quartet – John Horrex, Geoff Keating, George Pratt and Barry Montague – provided the backing to Peter Seller’s spoof version of the Beatles’ Help. After this the Master Singers got their own recording contract for the Highway Code. Released on 14 April 1966, by 30 April it had reached number 22 in the charts and might have gone further had the group not been bumped off Top of The Pops at the last moment.  However, they did make an appearance on the Ken Dodd Show on 14 August, fame indeed!

Top of the Pops, the hit parade… whatever next, the Sixties had arrived at Abingdon and the Master Singers weren’t the only band at the School. There were the Zodiacs whose electric guitars, according to the Editor of the Abingdonian, “have shaken distant windows” whilst they practised for the Prefects’ Dance, the Scorpions, their contemporaries, and over the years many, many more. Among the most successful: On a Friday who left School and became the band Radiohead, and Walter Gervers and Jimmy Smith who left School and joined the band Foals."