Buy Ted Chippington – Blues Fan. New 500 Limited edition 10″ Vinyl here
Straight outta Fenton (Stoke On Trent) the young Eddie Chippington began annoying audiences at hippy festivals and pop concerts in the early ’80s when opening shows for long haired groups such as Here & Now, The Cardiacs and Dangerous Girls.
When maturity and baldness caused the growing Potteries lad to become Ted Chippington and a ‘Top Comedian’ he also moved in to riling up and calming down excited crowds with his act at gigs by punk rocker bands The Fall, the Nightingales, The Farm, the Higsons and many others.
During this period Ted – “The funniest man alive” according to music weekly Sounds back in the day – was to influence a new generation of stand up comedians (Stewart Lee, Richard Herring, Simon Munnery, etc, etc) with his live performances of what Stewart Lee descibes as “a mixture of surrealism and insolent provocation and uncompromising boredom”. Indeed Lee claims that Chippington was the very reason he got in to stand up, while Herring speaks in glowing terms of Ted’s “contempt for the very idea of jokes”.
Ted first came to national prominence when he opened for The Fall in Birmingham in 1984 and his performance was recorded and released by the Nightingales’ Robert Lloyd’s record label Vindaloo Records as a 7″ EP.
Entitled Non Stop Party Hits of the 50s 60s and 70s, refering to his penchant at the time for performing his own versions of classic hits, the record was played often by John Peel on his Top Gear programme – a rare occurrence for a comedian.
In 1986 he released an album on Vindaloo, Man in a Suitcase – a collection of live recordings plus more songs – which reached the Top 10 in the Indie Album Chart and his version of “She Loves You” from the album received wider exposure following repeated plays by Steve Wright on his Radio 1 show which in turn led to the track being released as a single by Warner Brothers after being picked up by Bill Drummond (KLF, etc) who was an A&R man at Warners at the time.
The 45 narrowly failed to make the Top 50 but “She Loves You” raised Chippington’s profile considerably and led to numerous media appearances, including a turn on the BBC’s lunchtime magazine show Pebble Mill at One and as a guest on That’s My Dog.
Chippington also fielded interviews with many radio shows and magazines – from New Musical Express to the colour supplement of The Mail on Sunday – and performed at the Glastonbury and Reading festivals in addition to hosting his own sell out show at Paul Raymond’s Revue Bar in Soho – ‘An Evening With Ted Chippington’ featuring guests Mark E Smith, Keith Allen, Poison Girls’ Vi Subversa and presenter of New Faces and That’s My Dog Derek Hobson.
Chippington once again came close to mainstream UK singles chart success with a recording of his theme tune “Rockin’ with Rita (Head To Toe)” which he performed with his fellow Vindaloo artists the Nightingales and teenage girl group We’ve Got A Fuzzbox And We’re Gonna Use It. Promotion of this record included a performance on kids TV pop show Razzmatazz and a promo video featuring one of Ted’s football playing mates Pat Nevin.
Ted then toured the USA completely bamboozling American audiences when supporting Fuzzbox and recorded a ‘Live In USA’ album on the tour, which remained unreleased until twenty years later when surfacing on his ‘History Of Ted Chippington’ CD box set Walking Down The Road.
A further Vindaloo single followed, with his reading of Dion’s “The Wanderer”, and was another relative hit but still Chippington’s ruthless disregard for the conventions of stand-up made him a perennial outcast from the 1980s comedy scene – albeit a popular and influential performer.
In 1990, bored by the media attention and feeling his new found popularity was the opposite of his initial aim Ted retired from show business to pursue a career truck-driving in California.
This new career ended ignominiously when his lorry shed its load on the Pacific Coast Highway and for a few years Ted worked as a cook in various restaurants in Mexico before returning to the UK born again as Reverend Ted Chippington, getting married and settling in Torquay.
In 2007 a definitive 4CD box set of Ted (& Eddie) Chippington’s earlier work, entitled Walking Down The Road, was released on Robert Lloyd’s new Big Print label.
A tribute to Chippington entitled “Tedstock”, featuring Stewart Lee, Phill Jupitus, Simon Amstell, Josie Long, Richard Herring and numerous other stand-up comedians, was held at London’s Bloomsbury Theatre in order to fund this release. This event and the box set release led to a new flurry of media appearances for Chippington, including substantial tribute articles in national newspapers (Independent, Guardian, etc) and television (including a feature on BBC’s Culture Show).
Due to demand and boredom Ted began gigging once more but found the experience tedious and has once more gone in to a semi retirement, however he still enjoys performing with his good mates the Nightingales and has done several tours with the group in the last couple of years, including his first dates in Germany and Switzerland where he completely baffled his audiences although performing his act in German.
Ted will once again be touring the UK with the Nightingales in May/June 2012 (dates below) and to coincide with these shows Respect Vinyl is proud to announce the first record of new Chippington material for over twenty five years – Blues Fan – a 10″ single of his classic live favourite coupled with a whole bunch of material on the 33rpm B-Side, including music by Ted’s all female American backing group TC & The Sushine Band.
Blues Fan is probably Ted’s best record release yet and an instant Chippington ‘greatest hit’.
TRACK LISTING
Side A – 45rpm
BLUES FAN
Side B – 33rpm
PHIL COLLINS IMPRESSION
MINT
SUNSHINE
BENNY HILL’S MATE
TOUR DATES
MAY
29 – Shrewsbury, The Vaults
30 – Brighton, Green Door Store
31 – LONDON (DALSTON), POWER LUNCHES ARTS CAFE – “BLUES FAN” LAUNCH PARTY WITH SPECIAL GUESTS
JUNE
1 – London, Nambucca
2 – Southampton, Talking Heads
3 – Wolverhampton, Slade Rooms
4 – York, Fibbers
5 – Manchester, Night & Day
6 – Glasgow, Nice N Sleazy
7 – Stockton On Tees – ARC Arts Centre
8 – Birmingham (Digbeth), Wagon & Horses
9 – Bristol, The Thunderbolt
10 – Kidderminster, Boar’s Head
Buy Ted Chippington – Blues Fan. New 500 Limited edition 10″ Vinyl here
