The Mrs Mills Experience - news, gigs and more

[editor]

Update: Vintage got cancelled, so we're doing a replacement free show at the Prince Albert on Friday 13th July - and we'll have the BBC filming our performance!

Here's some pics from Saturday's mad gig at the Dogstar where we played to a dubstep night!

http://mrsmills.org/mrsmills-dogstar-june-2012.html

 

[miniGMgoit]

 

[editor]

We're going to be on the tele!

We're featured on this programme: "Let's Have a Party- The Piano Genius of Mrs Mills" - it's going out at 9pm on 23/9/12 on BBC4.

 

[Balham]

Brilliant! Going to put the web site about abit, FB, couple of forums etc.

If someone could do the same for Russ Conway . . . .

 

[miniGMgoit]

Any news on a dubstep remix?

 

[editor]

We're back!

It’s a festive Brixton knees-up as the legendary Mrs Mills Experience announce Christmas dates

 

[editor]

We're at the wonderful Duckie club this Saturday

 

[editor]

Win tix! Win tickets for the Mrs Mills Experience at the fabulous Duckie Club, Sat 16th March 2019

 

[editor]

This was bloody fantastic. I love Duckie!

In photos: Music hall rabble rousers The Mrs Mills Experience wow the crowds at Duckie, Sat 16th Mar 2019

 

[Badgers]

A tribute in Viz is no small thing

 

[editor]

Sadly, there's no Mrs Mills gigs planned, but I just spotted this:

The Story Behind The Mrs Mills Piano​

Built in 1905, this Steinway Vertegrand has been at Abbey Road Studios since 1931. Its distinctive sound owes to 1950s engineer Stuart Eltham, who sent it back to Steinway to achieve an older sound: the hammers were hardened with lacquer to emulate the bright, slightly metallic tone of a tack piano, while certain strings were detuned to create a subtle chorus effect, for that distinctively old-time bar-room sound that cuts right through any mix. Still in use today, the piano has featured on countless records and film scores, but has been affectionately known for decades by Abbey Road engineers as the ‘Mrs Mills Piano’, in homage to British pianist Gladys Mills, the majority of whose popular music hall, singalong-style records were recorded on this piano throughout the 1960s and ‘70s.

Introducing the Originals Mrs Mills Piano from Abbey Road Studios & Spitfire Audio

“Really exciting for me to hear Spitfire’s sampling of what we used to call Mrs Mills piano from Abbey Road. It’s great to have it on my computer.” — Sir Paul McCartney. In partnership with Spitfire Audio, we are proud to present Originals Mrs Mills Piano — capturing the distinctive sound of the...

www.abbeyroad.com

 

[richardhlucas]

We're going to be on the tele!

We're featured on this programme: "Let's Have a Party- The Piano Genius of Mrs Mills" - it's going out at 9pm on 23/9/12 on BBC4.

There is a link to the Documentary here
1,503 views 2 Jan 2021
BBC documentary about the life and career of Mrs. Mills (Gladys "Glad" Mills) 1918-1978.

 

[editor]

Just come across this piece

Nothing can really prepare you for the sight of Mrs Mills in full flight on The Morecambe and Wise Show. A huge, terrifying woman in a huge, terrifying floral print dress, she pounds remorselessly at a piano, performing Yes Sir, That's My Baby while aiming an equally remorseless rictus grin at the camera. The footage I'm watching comes from 1973, but it seems to hail from much earlier. It's like something from the height of the Blitz, and, like a lot of things that passed as entertainment during the second world war, it's hard to imagine anyone enjoying it without the incentive to merriment presented by the Luftwaffe raining death from the skies on a nightly basis. But the audience in 1973 audibly love Mrs Mills. They're singing along.

In fact, Mrs Mills is an extreme example of that rarest of things: part of an entirely forgotten pop phenomenon. You might call it "cabaret pop" if anyone mentioned it these days, but they don't. Its cast was a curious ragbag of 60s leftovers, unctuous balladeers of both sexes, "foreign" acts wielding bouzoukis or punctuating versions of Tie a Yellow Round the Old Oak Tree with cries of "Olé!" (testament, presumably, to the increasing popularity of package holidays in the era) and boy/girl vocal combos peddling a kind of winsome, antiseptic pop that sounds utterly alien to modern ears.

The bizarre lost world of 1970s cabaret pop

The internet may have closed the gap between past and present, but some bygone eras are still hard to believe. Alexis Petridis revisits the strange, lost world of 1970s cabaret pop

www.theguardian.com