The Last Farewell

1971/1975

Roger Whittaker

To call ‘The Last Farewell’ a forgotten hit could actually be somewhat of a misnomer…this very lovely nautically themed ballad about a young Royal Navy sailor bidding his beloved farewell before sailing off to war ended up becoming one of the very few singles, ever, to sell over ten million copies…something that only 49 singles, out of tens of thousands of them have done. It was also covered by a slew of artists, including none other than The King himself, Elvis Presley. The intro…a French horn solo…was used by Chicago TV powerhouse WGN for several years as the background music when their logo was displayed during its half-hourly Station I.D. blurbs. It was one of the very very few songs featuring a full orchestra to chart in the top 20 during the Pop era.

So people remember it fondly. And if you’ve forgotten it, you’ll instantly re-remember it when you hear that chorus. It’s just apparently dropped off of the face of the earth as far as radio station program directors are concerned.

So! Just how does a classical, full orchestra backed love ballad about a sailor in the tall-ship era British Navy saying goodbye to his girl  become a Top 20 hit in the US during the all out Pop Vs Rock music conflict that was 1975? You can thank a pair of songwriters and England’s legendarily lousy weather. The Last Farewell’s birth came about because of a typical dreary English rain storm. Seems that one uber-dreary London evening in 1971 a proper British gent by the name of Ron Webster, a silversmith by trade, and talented poet and folk singer by hobby, was on his way home from work, riding on the top deck of one of those icons of London public transportation, the double decker bus. The top deck front windscreens of those beasts didn’t…and don’t…have wipers, so he was listening to the rain spatter the front windscreen, watching  it hit and and run down in rivulets, and pretty much wishing he was anywhere that was warm and wasn’t a rain swept bus.  Thoughts of an island paradise, and a girl, and a guy telling her goodbye…for the last time... were inspired. Not only did it inspire words…it inspired Iambic Pentameter. OR Sonnet…at any rate, verse. Remember, in his spare time Ron was a poet…a pretty good one.  ‘The Last Farewell wasn’t originally a song…it was a poem.

At the same time Ol’ Ron was knocking out a pretty epic piece of poetry, a well known and popular British radio personality named Roger Whittaker was holding a contest of sorts. He invited his listeners to send in poetry and, being a songwriter of pretty amazing talent himself, he’d turn them into songs. He chose one per week. Ron sent in his poem, entitled The Last Farewell, and Roger received it. And chose it to turn into a song.

He made it a classic piece of music, a love ballad featuring a full orchestra with a French horn solo for an intro. It was, literally, classic, and not what you think of when the term '1970s Pop Music’ comes to mind. This was 1971, keep in mind…1975 was still four years off…so How…
Ahhh, read on. Roger Whittaker played it on his radio show and included it as a track to one of his albums, and a few singles were sold, and a few DJs in a England and Canada got a hold of a copy of it and played it occasionally, but it barely made a ripple. It could have dropped off of the face of the earth without even uttering a whimper had it not been for a vacationing couple from Atlanta…the ‘He’ of the couple being the program director for one of Atlanta’s premier top 40 stations. Did I mention they were vacationing in Canada?

They happened to hear ‘The Last Farewell' being played by a local DJ, and the wife fell head over heels for it…she told him he had to get a copy of the song, and spin it at his station. As any guy who’s ever been in a loving relationship with a lovely lady knows, your better half sometimes makes requests that are not suggestions. Me thinks this was one of those times.
So he got in touch with the Canadian station's program director and got all the pertinent info about the single, and snagged a copy of it, and at some point after he got home, they put ‘The Last Farewell' in the rotation. And the phones almost immediately lit up like the oft-noted Christmas Tree. People loved it. 
 
I have a feeling it didn’t take a whole lot of prodding for Roger Whittaker to re-release it in the US. It didn’t exactly blow the charts away, but it didn’t do at all shabbily either. It just did squeak onto the Billboard Hot 100 on April 5^th, 1975, debuting at #97, then slipped into the Top 20…at #20…eleven weeks in, on June 14^th,  peaking at #19 just a week later, on the 21^st. The Last Farewell would stay at peak for a single week before dropping off the charts, for a fifteen week chart run.

The Last Farewell did even better on the Easy Listening, AKA Adult Contemporary charts, snagging the top spot there.  Over in the UK…the land of it’s birth…it snagged the runner up spot (Being aced out of #1 by another nautically themed hit, Rod Stewart’s ‘Sailing’) and was one of two versions of the single to chart in the UK. The song was about a Royal Navy sailor, so the Royal Navy…actually the Royal Marines…took it on. The Royal Marine Band assigned to the legendary Royal Navy aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal, accompanied by a goodly percentage of 'The Mighty Ark's crew took their version of it to #41 on the British Pop Chart, just before she was decommissioned, in 1979. 

It was shortly after this that The Last Farewell started disappearing from the radio airwaves, at least on Top 40 stations...it hung around on 'Easy Listening' stations for a couple of decades, and if you do hear it on the radio today, it'll be on one of those now re-branded 'Adult Contemporary' stations, probably late at night, and very likely on a request show (Think 'Delilah').
 
I haven't heard it for years, and to make a full disclosure, I was one of the ones who'd all but forgotten about it until I listened to it on Youtube, while researching this very post. I remember hearing it as a teenager, but I as also one of the ones who, well, didn't think it sounded like 'Our' music...my loss. You just get a better appreciation for the classics as you get older.

Lots of Seventies songs were awesome. And you can call hundreds of them awesome, peppy, pretty, edgy...but there were very few that were actually classically beautiful. To bad this one fell off the radar, because it was one of them.

So enjoy! 'The Last Farewell' by Roger Whittaker.

Elvis Presley stayed absolutely true to the song's melody and lyrics when he covered it on his album 'From Elvis Presley Boulevard, Memphis Tennessee' in 1976. The King's version is just as pretty as the original, and was released as a posthumous single seven years after his death, in 1984...it reached #48 on on the Hot 100, and IMHO, should have charted higher. Here it is as a bonus

And as a second bonus, the HMS Ark Royal's Royal Marine Band performing The Last Farewell, accompanied by the ship's company. I wish the audio was better, because They absolutely owned it!