Horace Albert Duke. The inspiration behind the song and indeed the name we have chosen for this band. There are a lot of people that have a memory of Horace… if you are of a certain age and from ‘around here’ - Sussex, West Sussex, Worthing. A local character that stood by the roadside greeting the passing traffic. There exists video footage of Horace, you can find it on Youtube. Some called him Bertie or Burlington Bertie. He was a larger than life figure on a roundabout, people would be fascinated by his presence and his quirky and odd behaviour. Always dressed impeccably and with his bicycle ‘wedged against the curb’. I do remember him myself, just about and as a young child remember getting caught up in the wonder of this human spectacle that was Horace. I don't think we had given him a name or knew of it ourselves, but I can say that I did witness him myself, if anyone asks.
So, Horace… why Horace? Well I think with the ever changing world in which we live and the utterly bizarre and extraordinary things that take place in our world, I got to wondering, what would Horace have made of all this? I can't really say how these concepts were fused together, they just were. In a day were we all know a lot about each other, or can find out, Horace's fame was as quirky and unusual as the man himself.
The actual sentence itself ‘Whatever happened the the late great Horace Albert Duke?’, I do not believe I can claim. I think that I saw it somewhere, in fact, I'm sure of it. The rest of the words are my own, based on what I remember and what I looked up. The song sort of wrote itself as when you have enough material to work with, the ideas are already there. I did get a little help from a thesaurus (well, online thing that helped me with some words that rhyme with 'Duke'). These were 'Bashi-bazouk', which I took to mean disorderly soldier - sort of works, I thought. Also the word ‘sharouk’, something that is smoked - a pipe - from the middle east (Iranian just seemed to fit nicely) - sort of works too. ‘Rebuke’ a little more obvious.
*I did note in my research, that not everyone ‘loved’ him. I sometimes change this bit to, ‘not everybody loves’
Words:
Verse 1 (double length)
Burlington Bertie in a beflowered boater hat
Reliable as clockwork on his bicycle he sat
Frightfully impeccable or impeccably frightful
Horace Albert Duke, is a name and a title, oh yeah…
Horace Albert Duke, absurd and superb
Boneshaker bicycle now wedged against the curb
Startles at the toot (toot toot), flicks back his foot
Arches himeself back, as the car horns attack, oh yeah…
Pre-chorus
The duties of local dandy, Burlington Bertie
Begin promptly at 10, and end at 4:30…
There's dandying to be done, there's roundabouts to be spun
There's prancing to perfect and there is traffic to direct
Chorus
Whatever happened to the late Great Horace Albert Duke
With an endless stream of traffic to rebuke
Whatever happened to the late great Horace Albert Duke
Verse 2
A flamboyant figure, wearing white silk gloves
A local eccentric that everybody loves*
Burlington Bertie, a local enigma
Shakes off the insults and the ridicule and stigma.. oh yeah…
Per-chorus and chorus repeats
Outro
Whatever happened to the late great Horace Albert Duke
A harmless human folly, or bashi-bazouk
smoking his cigarette like an Iranian sharouk