Dudley Savage R.I.P.

[julian_craster]

Dudley Savage

Organist whose BBC Radio programme was so popular that 43,000 complained when it was axed



Daily Telegraph

29 Nov 2008





Dudley Savage, who died on November 25 aged 88, presented a programme of popular organ music on BBC Radio for more than 30 years.



An accomplished performer who also composed and arranged music, Savage broadcast his hospital request show called As Prescribed on the BBC's West of England Home Service from 1948 until 1968, playing the organ from the ABC Royal cinema in Plymouth for a live hour-long programme every Sunday morning. The show – mainly for patients in hospital – included hymns, Gilbert and Sullivan, show tunes and vintage music from the 1930s. His signature tune, Smiling Through, introduced each programme.



When the BBC dropped the programme, listeners complained in such numbers that the show was hastily reinstated, eventually running until 1979.

William Dudley Savage was born on March 20 1920 at Gulval, near Penzance, where his mother, a farmer's daughter, played the organ in the village church. He studied under organists at Truro Cathedral and with musicians in Cornwall and Plymouth, and at 16 won the organ solo event at the Cornish Music Festival.



Having been "discovered" by Harold Ramsay, Dudley toured England as the "Cornish Boy Organist" in 1936-37. He made his first broadcast, for Radio Normandy, in 1936, and for the BBC the following year. In 1938 he was chosen as the organist for ABC's Royal Cinema in Plymouth, which had been constructed that year and included a Compton cinema organ with eight ranks of pipes as well as a Compton Melotone unit – this was an electrostatic sound generator invented by the company to provide additional tone colours. With a break for war service, Savage remained at the ABC until the cinema became a bingo hall in 1976.



After being called up in 1940 Savage served as a captain in the Indian Army and broadcast on All India Radio, returning to Britain and resuming his career at the Royal in 1946. His programme on the West of England Home Service began broadcasting weekly in June 1948, and carried on until 1968. But after a petition with 43,000 signatures was sent to the BBC – at the time the largest of its kind ever received – it was brought back as a monthly show in 1969, continuing for another 10 years and moving eventually to Radio 2.

Savage also undertook concert tours of Britain and Europe and regularly toured the West Country with his Hammond organ. He also presented occasional editions of Song of Praise.



Away from the organ, he collected wireless sets, and tended his acre of garden. He was appointed MBE in 1978.



Dudley Savage's wife, Doreen, died in 2003. Their two sons survive him.

[julian_craster]

Dudley Savage: 'The Cornish Boy Organist'

Dudley Savage: Cinema organist and later a popular broadcaster on BBC Radio

By Kenneth Shenton



Independent

Friday, 5 December 2008



Dudley Savage was one of the last of the cinema organ superstars. Amid a career spanning more than half a century, this most accomplished performer, composer and arranger never ceased to make music both accessible and enjoyable. In addition, as the host of the long-running BBC radio programme As Prescribed, his name still engenders a particular warmth of affection felt only for a very few broadcasters.



William Dudley Savage was a Cornishman, born near Penzance in the village of Gulval, in 1920. Educated locally, he inherited his considerable musical talent from his mother, a very fine amateur performer. Initially taught piano by his mother, he later studied organ at Truro Cathedral. In 1936, under contract to Union Cinemas, he toured extensively, billed somewhat unimaginatively as "The Cornish Boy Organist".



Two years later, aged only 18, Savage was chosen as the first organist of the newly built ABC Royal Cinema in Plymouth. Here his arrival proved particularly propitious, coinciding as it did with the installation of a brand new state-of-the-art Compton organ complete with melotone unit. It was conspicuous for its balance and refinement, superb reeds and varied mixture scheme plus diapason units that would grace many a church organ. Savage was in his element, fully able to exploit its immense musical possibilities.



Called up for military service in 1940, he spent most of the Second World War in the Indian Army. Commissioned in 1943, he later rose to the rank of captain. Demobbed three years later, he then returned to the Royal Cinema, staying until its conversion to a bingo hall in 1976.



In June 1948, initially on the BBC West of England Home Service, Dudley Savage's distinctive signature tune, "Smiling Through", heralded the launch of his own organ music series. Aptly titled As Prescribed, this hour-long show, essentially a request programme for hospital patients, was broadcast live every Sunday morning from the console of the ABC Cinema in Plymouth. Here, in addition to providing a varied mix of music, Savage proved a consummate communicator, building a very personal rapport with his audience.



When, in September 1968, the BBC summarily cancelled the programme, uproar ensued. More than 43,000 signatures were collected on a petition presented to the Director General. Even the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Most Rev Michael Ramsey, felt moved to express his outrage in what was then the biggest protest the Corporation had ever received. Reinstated within three months, the programme later transferred to Radio 2, finally ending in 1979.



As musical fashions changed and cinema organs disappeared, Savage adapted both his repertoire and technique to enthusiastically embrace the smaller and much more flexible Hammond organ. An occasional presenter on BBC Television's Songs Of Praise, still very much in demand, he was also a most welcome contributor to Radio 2's ever popular The Organist Entertains. A new recording, a retrospective entitled Perfect Partners (due for imminent release), provides a most poignant and fitting monument to his work and achievements.



William Dudley Savage, organist, broadcaster, composer and arranger: born Gulval, Cornwall 20 March 1920; MBE 1978; married 1940 Doreen Vosper (died 2003; two sons); died Liskeard, Cornwall 25 November 2008.

[julian_craster]

Dudley Savage in 1938 at ABC Plymouth