Song of the Day 9/27: Roger Whittaker, “The Last Farewell”

Unless you’re a boomer, and maybe even if you are, you probably don’t recognize the name of Roger Whittaker, who died a couple of weeks ago at age 87. He was a sort-of-folk singer who grew up in Kenya when it was still a British colony and became popular in Europe in the pre-Beatles ’60s. But his fame in the US stems from TV commercials he made to market his LP “All My Best” in 1977 after he was dropped by his record company. It went on to sell nearly a million copies.

As the ad notes, Whittaker was almost unknown in the States, but he actually had a Top 20 hit in 1975. The song originated from a radio program Whittaker hosted in Britain. He invited listeners to send him lyrics that he would set to music; “The Last Farewell” was penned by a silversmith in Birmingham, England. Whittaker recorded it for his 1971 LP “New World in the Morning.”

It wasn’t released as a single until the wife of a program director in Atlanta heard it on the radio as she was travelling through Canada. She convinced her husband to air it, and listener requests snowballed it into a No. 19 hit in the US, No. 2 in the UK and No. 1 in 11 other countries. Its global sales topped 10 million.

One of Whittaker’s trademarks was his whistling ability, best demonstrated on a tune he wrote that won a European song contest in 1967. This clip is from a French TV show, but Whittaker gained his biggest fan base in Germany, despite the fact that he sang the lyrics phonetically because he didn’t learn the language until years later.