A song.
One good song
is all I need
to take flight.

For me, growing up in the seventies, “Stranger on the Shore” by Acker Bilk was such a song. I’m pretty sure no Millennia or Gen X have ever heard of it. I, too, have not heard it for years until recently when it was aired on social media.

“Stranger on the Shore” was written by the British songwriter, Acker Bilk in the 1960s. Bilk was a clarinet player and a Jazz fan at heart. He wrote the uplifting tune for his daughter, Jenny and wanted to name it after her. Later he conceded to changing the title of the song to what it became after the BBC chose it as the theme song for a TV children’s series about a French au pair in Brighton. The song became hugely successful on the billboard, both in the UK and the US, and would go on to earn Bilk a decent living for many years, so much so that he joked that it was his pension. The song also attracted scores of distinguished musicians who included the it in their albums, including Duke Ellington who covered it for his album Ellington 65.

As time passed, the interpretations grew more bizarre, with some version morphing into reggae and jazz-funk. But for me, nothing beats the original, with its  dreamy tune that will easily transport any listener to images of, well, a walk on the shore.

Here’s a gorgeous rendition of “Stranger on the Shore” by the Dick Bakker Orchestra