Tulips From Amsterdam – Max Bygraves (1958)

Description

Additional information about this, Max Bygraves vinyl art.

Max Bygraves- The Artist

Walter William Bygraves OBE (1922 – 2012), best known by the stage name Max Bygraves (adopted in honour of Max Miller), was an English comedian, singer, actor and variety performer. He appeared on his own television shows, sometimes performing comedy sketches between songs. He made twenty Royal Variety Performance appearances and presented numerous programmes, including Family Fortunes between 1983 and 1985. His catchphrase “I wanna tell you a story” became an integral part of his act, although it had originated with comedian Mike Yarwood impersonating Bygraves. Bygraves became a successful recording artist with seven top ten hits on the UK Singles Chart between 1952 and 1960. Many were novelty songs. One of his most popular recordings, “You Need Hands” in 1958, was written by Bygraves under the pseudonym Roy Irwin (or Erwin), a name picked at random from a telephone directory. 

Tulips From Amsterdam – The Song

Tulips From Amsterdam is a popular romantic song, best known in the 1958 hit version by British entertainer Max Bygraves. Most English versions of the song credit its composition to Klaus Günter Neumann, Ernst Bader, Ralf Arnie, and Gene Martyn.The song was first written in 1953, as “Tulpen aus Amsterdam”, by the German singer, songwriter and entertainer Klaus Günter Neumann, after he had performed at the Tuschinski theatre in Amsterdam and visited the tulip fields at Keukenhof. His music publisher did not like the song, but in 1956 the lyrics were seen by another songwriter, Ernst Bader, who rewrote the words and asked Dieter Rasch – who wrote under the pseudonym Ralf Arnie – to compose a new tune. The tune that Rasch used for the song has similarities to the “Flower Waltz” from Tchaikovsky’s Nutcracker suite.

The Windmill – The Shape

This record has been modelled into a windmill. A windmill is a structure that converts wind power into rotational energy using vanes called sails or blades, by tradition specifically to mill grain (gristmills), but in some parts of the English-speaking world the term has also been extended to encompass windpumps, wind turbines, and other applications. Windmills were used throughout the high medieval and early modern periods; the horizontal or panemone windmill first appeared in Persia during the 9th century, and the vertical windmill first appeared in northwestern Europe in the 12th century.[2][3] Regarded as an icon of Dutch culture, there are approximately 1,000 windmills in the Netherlands today.

Tulips are a genus of spring-blooming perennial herbaceous bulbiferous geophytes (having bulbs as storage organs). The flowers are usually large, showy and brightly coloured, generally red, pink, yellow, or white (usually in warm colours). They often have a different coloured blotch at the base of the tepals (petals and sepals, collectively), internally. Because of a degree of variability within the populations, and a long history of cultivation, classification has been complex and controversial. The tulip is a member of the lily family, Liliaceae, along with 14 other genera, where it is most closely related to Amana, Erythronium and Gagea in the tribe Lilieae. There are about 75 species, and these are divided among four subgenera. The name “tulip” is thought to be derived from a Persian word for turban, which it may have been thought to resemble by those who discovered it. Tulips originally were found in a band stretching from Southern Europe to Central Asia, but since the seventeenth century have become widely naturalised and cultivated. Flowering in the spring, they become dormant in the summer once the flowers and leaves die back, emerging above ground as a shoot from the underground bulb in early spring. Tulips were frequently depicted in Dutch Golden Age paintings, and have become associated with the Netherlands, the major producer for world markets, ever since.

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