"The Many Faces of Ryan" - a CD Review by Nigel Stapley
In the thirty years since his passing, the abiding memory of those who were fortunate enough to see and hear Ryan Davies perform is that of laughter.
In "The Many Faces Of Ryan", we can hear him at his peak and in his natural element - in front of a live audience. Some of the jokes and stories are familiar - and some of them were old friends even then - but his engaging energy, his impeccable timing and his strong sense of character make them live. Few could hold an audience - be it at a cabaret club or a private function - better. If any of the material itself sounds dated, perhaps that is because it comes from an earthier yet less cynical age, from a time when the central idea of comedy was to amuse rather than to shock. It really was "the way he told them".
And then, of course, there was Phyllis: completely up-front, brassy and delightfully bawdy, with mis-coinages that would make Mrs Malaprop go into immediate retirement. Here we have the pleasure of her company for over twenty minutes of a rescued and restored live recording in which she recounts her career move from barmaid to traffic warden, with a trip to London thrown in for good measure.
What Ryan Davies understood was that you had to create characters with which the audience could identify. Every Welsh village had its Phyllis (I know mine did) and, for all the cabaret sophistication, the humour was essentially that of the 'gwerinwr' - the common man (and his wife, of course!). Throwing in little local references was yet another way of drawing people in to the humour of recognition, and you can hear him do that to good effect in these excerpts.
By comparison with the legendary "Ryan At The Rank" (which dates from the same period), the style and tone of these once-lost performances is somewhat more down-to-earth - nearer the Terylene shirt than the tuxedo - no doubt because Ryan knew how to tailor his material to the audience he was playing, and performing for a private function may have been a chance for him to let his hair down a little. But it is never coarse: apart from his obvious talents and professionalism, the attractiveness of Ryan's performances - in whatever medium - stems from something which can't be faked: integrity. Along with his natural warmth, these are the characteristics which endeared him to the public of his time, and which continue to inspire the affection of so many, even after all these years.
In a montage of items from the much-missed "Poems And Pints" television series, we witness more of Ryan's strengths in depth as he switches nimbly between characters and accents in a variety of short pieces by such luminaries of the Welsh cultural scene as John Tripp and Harri Webb. The CD also includes a couple of snippets from interviews where Ryan speaks of how important comedy was to him and (most crucially of all, of course) how he 'discovered' the fearsome Phyllis!
But this man was far more than a comedian (or, as I prefer to think of him, a comedy actor). We also get to hear his rendition of Michel Legrand's "Summer Of '42" at one end of the spectrum (a performance of wistful poignancy totally in tune with the song's subject matter) and - diametrically opposed in all respects bar its musicality - his reworking of "Happy Birthday To You" in the style of various composers; a routine which owed much to Victor Borge, and which other musician/comedians such as Joe Griffiths have used since.
Topping and tailing this release are the joyous "Blodwen & Mary" (sung with his long-time partner Ronnie Williams) and Nigel Hopkins' beautiful arrangement of "Ti A Dy Ddoniau", in order to remind us that - in addition to everything else - Ryan Davies was a talented songwriter in the 'evergreen' style.
The term 'irreplaceable' is overused, but the sad fact is that in the thirty years since his death, no-one has been able even to fill the gap he left, let alone take forward and develop the idea of entertainment of a high professional standard, based on a deep grounding in our own culture, yet adding the best of the Anglo-American world to it. In that sense too, Ryan Davies was a 'one-off', and this CD gives us a full hour and a quarter of the best of entertainment from a man whose spectrum of talents graced our lives like a rainbow, and whose many faces and voices brought laughter and entertainment to our land.
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