Wilbur Flywheel is a completely self-contained act. Wilbur does not use any backing tracks and can either play a “real” grand piano or bring his own electric piano and PA system to your venue.
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform You’re A Lady by Peter Skellern. This is one of my favourite love songs from the 1970’s. It was written and recorded by Peter Skellern and was his first major hit (reaching No 3 in the UK charts). I’ve always loved the lyrics and emotion of the song. The original was heavily produced and orchestrated. I hope you like my version of this beautiful song, performed using only piano and vocals
A Whiter Shade of Pale, performed by Wilbur Flywheel This song is one of less than 30 singles that have sold more than 10 million records. When “A Whiter Shade of Pale” was released in 1967, it immediately went to No 1 in the UK and all over the world. The summer of 1967 is often called the “Summer of Love”, the year in which the sixties spirit really came of age. John Lennon was a huge fan of this song and played it repeatedly in his Rolls Royce. The original recording was done using a Hammond Organ and sounded very different to my own piano arrangement. I hope you like it.
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform his version of “Let It Be”. This is one of my favourite Beatles songs though (as you will see) my own arrangement is hugely different from the original. It was one of the last songs released by the Beatles just a month before they formally broke up (in 1970).
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform “Imagine”. Imagine was recorded by John Lennon in 1971 and was the best-selling single of his solo career. Imagine was re-released upon John Lennon’s death in 1980 and reached No 1 in the UK charts. Imagine has been named (by the American performing rights people) as one of the 100 most performed songs of the 20th century. Rolling Stone magazine has described Imagine as “Lennon’s greatest musical gift to the world”. More than 160 artists have recorded or performed cover versions of Imagine (including Elton John, Madonna, Lady GaGa, Diana Ross, Dolly Parton, Stevie Wonder, Jeff Beck, Herbie Hancock and Stevie Wonder).
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform his version of “Nobody Knows You When You’re Down and Out”. This song was written by Jimmy Cox in 1923. The song became popular when Bessie Smith recorded it on September 13, 1929 just two weeks before the Wall Street Crash signalled the beginning of the ten year Great Depression. More recently Eric Clapton has recorded this song many times and it was part of the live set with his band “Derek and the Dominos”.
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform “The Coney Island Washboard”. This is one of my all-time feel-good songs. A couple of renditions of this one always cheers me up instantly on a bad day (as you’ll probably notice in the video). It was written in 1926 and later recorded by artists such as Hoagy Carmichael and The Mills Brothers. It seems that in the twenties you would scrub your clothes clean with a washboard and thimbles but some discovered the washboard’s potential as a musical percussion instrument. There was a famous boardwalk in Coney Island (a seaside resort in Brooklyn, New York. You have to imagine a lady doing the laundry on the boardwalk and scratching out rhythms from popular songs of the day while cleaning the clothes. I love the line “She played Charleston on the laundry for the boys”.
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform his version the classic Irish song: “The Mountains of Mourne”. This song dates back to the late nineteenth century. It describes London from the perspective of an Irish labourer from a village near the Mountains of Mourne in Ireland. Don McLean included this song on his “American Pie” album which reached No 1 in the USA album charts within two weeks of release.
Watch Wilbur Flywheel perform his version of Neil Sedaka’s “Betty Grable”. We all know the phenomenon of fandom for modern bands such as One Direction, and the Beatlemania of the 60’s. But in the 40’s and 50’s, before TV and the Internet, impressionable teenagers developed fixations on movie stars. And there was no bigger star than Betty Grable. This song describes one teenage boy’s infatuation with Betty Grable and his subsequent realization that he would actually never actually get to know her in person.
Betty Grable is quite an obscure Neil Sedaka song but I can still remember hearing it for the first time (on the radio while in a motorcycle shop) and was so fascinated by the melody that I had to stay in the shop to hear the complete song.
I couldn’t find the sheet music so learned my own version by ear by listening to Neil Sedaka’s record. Over the years it has evolved into the version I play today and I still love the song.
Betty Grable was one of the most famous film stars of the 40’s and 50’s. She made her last film in 1955 and died of lung cancer in 1973.