Acker Bilk, who topped the charts with Stranger on the Shore, has died aged
85. Here are five of the best songs from the jazz clarinet player.
Stranger on the Shore is the haunting song that made Acker Bilk an
international star. It was originally a shorter piece called Jenny that was
named for his daughter. But when a 1960 children's TV show called Stranger
on the Shore aired on the BBC, about a French au pair living in England,
they used Bilk's song for the closing credits. The song caught on and became
the first simultaneous No1 in Britain and America, remaining in the Top 30
singles chart for 53 weeks in the UK, which gained it an entry in the
Guinness Book of Records. Bilk is on the select list of artists who have
been played in space. Along with tracks by Frank Sinatra, three of Bilk's
tunes, including Stranger on the Shore, were on a cassette that accompanied
the Apollo 10 astronauts on their mission around the moon in 1969.
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