Cherry Wainer with Don Storer

Every time I visit YouTube for worthy exponents of the classical organ repertoire, I get sidetracked.  Here’s the best organist with a poodle on the bench ever – Cherry Wainer.   Cherry was very busy in the 50s and 60s, and featured on Oh Boy! the first teenage all-music show on British TV, airing in 1958 and 1959, and broadcast live from the Hackney Empire.  Here she is in a clip from the series: Moanin.  Spot the poodle (and the twerp who walks right across shot in the last few seconds – but this was early, live, television).

Here’s a later clip, Love for Sale from 1966.  Dig the groovy guys and gals in the background (and spot the poodle again).  Don Storer, who became her husband, is the drummer.  He wears the look of wounded anguish that jazz musicians adopt to show how much they suffer for their art, and Cherry does some really kooky things with her eyes – but I guess it’s hard to put on much of a show otherwise, when you are trapped behind a drum kit and a Hammond B-3 respectively.

And although Cherry’s playing in her sleep on this clip, I had to include Last Night, from 1963, for the glorious inelegance of the enthusiastic twisters on the dance floor (in contrast to Cherry’s neat footwork in sparkly stilettos).  Can’t see the poodle on this one – perhaps it’s given up and gone home.