TORCH Sidney
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‘Mr Friday Night’ – Sidney Torch, a legend in light music Liz Moloney idney Torch was a household name Conservatoire, started playing the piano Sfrom the 1930s, first as a cinema in Lyons restaurant orchestras at 14 and organist and after the war as a composer, then played with the orchestra at the arranger and orchestral conductor, Regal Cinema at Marble Arch, in especially as the conductor of BBC London. radio’s Friday Night is Music Night. He But it was as a cinema organist that he spent the last 17 or more years of his life became well known. When a Christie at The Moorings, St John’s Road, organ, the largest at the time outside the Meads, Eastbourne, yet Eastbourne United States, was installed at the Regal, seems not to have known he was there, Marble Arch, he moved on to that, and and his death received little attention. I his panache and brilliance brought him am now ashamed to confess that I had rapid success, both there and later at the not heard of him until I moved into The Regal, Edmonton. He joined Union Moorings myself and was told by a Cinemas in 1936, and opened new resident who remembered him that there organs, including the mighty Wurlitzer had been a famous musician called organ at the Gaumont State Cinema, Sidney Torch living there. Not long Kilburn, now the biggest in England, afterwards I was at the Royal Albert Hall which he played from 1937 until 1940. with the choir I belonged to, singing in a He recorded in those cinemas, and Christmas concert, and the conductor broadcast regularly twice a week for announced with a flourish that the next piece was arranged by ‘the legendary Sidney Torch’. I realised my neighbour had not been exaggerating, and my interest was kindled to do a little research. He had been born Sidney Torchinsky of Russian-born parents, Morris and Annie Torchinsky, in London in 1908. His father, who was an orchestral trombonist and gave Sidney his early musical education, changed the family name to Torch: Sidney confirmed the change by deed poll much later, in 1946. He studied at the Blackheath several years during the 1930s on the BBC Wurlitzer organ for the World Service, often in the early hours because everything was broadcast live and at the time required in other countries. Sidney Torch had tremendous flair as a musician and as a showman, in his natty suits and with his signature tune (taken from a popular cartoon) ‘I’ve got to sing a torch song’, to which he added his own lyrics making play on his name. Torch was drafted into the RAF in 1940, initially as an air gunner. He was later commis- sioned and became conductor of the RAF Concert Orchestra, which gave music for Chappell. But his greatest fame him valuable experience in orchestral came from his work with the BBC scoring. He composed the theme music Concert Orchestra for 20 years from for the radio comedy series Much Binding 1952, especially in the radio programme in the Marsh (set on an RAF station, and that began the following year. He had written by and starring two other RAF already done a great deal of radio work men, Kenneth Horne and Richard and he responded to the BBC’s brief for Murdoch), which ran from 1944 to a programme ‘to help people relax after 1954. After the war he realised that the the week’s hard work and put them in cinema organ’s heyday was over and with the right mood for a happy weekend’. He characteristic decisiveness did not try to devised and conducted Friday Night is go back to his earlier success but began to Music Night on the BBC Light forge a new career in light orchestral Programme, a huge popular success conducting, composing and arranging. which is still going strong on Radio 2. He married Eva Elizabeth Tyson, a BBC That jaunty light orchestral music so producer, in 1949, which might have redolent of the period 1945–65 was often had some influence on his decision too, arranged and conducted by Sidney as she didn’t like the organ, according to Torch; he recorded brisk, rousing later reports. versions of the Dam Busters March, the He conducted the Queen’s Hall Light signature tune for The Archers, ‘Barwick Orchestra and the New Century Green’, and the Paul Temple theme, Orchestra, and formed his own orchestra ‘Coronation Scot’. His arrangements are (Sidney Torch and his Orchestra), still regularly played in popular concerts recording with all of them. He composed and on radio. Some of his work is available on CD and thanks to the it seems a modest recognition for generosity of enthusiasts, anyone can someone with his lifetime of easily hear many of his organ and achievement. The couple were appar- orchestral classics on the internet. ently happy enough with their unmusical Though many recounted stories of his retirement, but after his wife died on 1 personal kindness, Torch was a March 1990, and with his health deteri- demanding taskmaster and both players orating, Sidney Torch became increas- and singers were said to fear ‘the glare of ingly depressed. He took an overdose less the Torch’ and the crackle of his starched than five months later, on 16 July 1990, shirt-cuffs as he delivered his sharp leaving warm, apologetic and explanatory downbeats. He said in a rare interview notes to two good friends, one of them after he retired that he had often been his doctor, who was on holiday and so cruel to his BBC producers, but he thought most of them benefited from the experience. After a disagreement with the BBC in 1972, however, he left the programme, the orchestra and his life in light music for ever, snapping his baton in half at the end of his last concert. He and Elizabeth retired soon after- wards to Eastbourne, to a flat which housed a grand piano which he never played. He gave his records away to friends. Music was his business, from which he had retired. He was appointed MBE for services to light music in 1985: out of the way. His death seems all of a Nevertheless, as the very appreciative piece with the man, for he had never obituary in The Times of 19 July put it, flinched from ending what he thought ‘he leaves a legacy to treasure’, and 26 had no beneficial future: his career as a years later it is still true that ‘Friday Night cinema organist, then his life as a is Music Night is his epitaph’ and ‘his successful conductor and broadcaster, influence, particularly as an arranger, still and now, sadly, his life itself. prevails on the programme’. References and Acknowledgements Ades, David. ‘Sidney Torch (1908–1990)’ in Legends of Light Music, on the Robert Farnon Society website. Bruce, Ken. Programme note for BBC Concert Orchestra’s 60th anniversary, Radio 2, 3 February 2012 (BBC website Media Centre). Williams, Lew. ‘Sidney Torch recalled by Lew Williams’ in Journal into Melody, June/July 2005, on the Robert Farnon Society website. Obituary, Sidney Torch, The Times, Thursday 19 July 1990, available from the Times Digital Archive. Inquest papers from East Sussex County Council Archives and Records Department kindly supplied by HM Coroner for East Sussex. Eastbourne Gazette, 8 August 1990, ‘Unhappy musician took fatal overdose’ on microfilm in Eastbourne Library..