Welcome!
Welcome to the world of Carey Blyton: composer, writer and nonsense poet (and nephew of Enid). Carey is perhaps best known as the creator of the accidental children’s hit Bananas in Pyjamas, but he was an accomplished musician and a man of many talents—not to mention an all-pervading sense of humour.
Explore this site to find out all about Carey’s multifaceted life and work. Use the quick links to access pages of particular interest, and you can see the latest news below. Visit the News page for more announcements.
Latest news
July 2024
Recent Carey Blyton publications from Fand
Since this site was last updated, there have been several small but significant new Carey Blyton developments and publications, all related in one way or another to Fand Music Press. The new publications are summarised below, and may be purchased either from this site or from Fand directly, where further information is available. Presenting the releases in chronological order…
Unknown work discovered
A new discovery was made by Peter Thompson in 2021, in the form of an unknown work called The Ballad of Lady Maynard and Dudin Brown, an apparently new choral work (for unaccompanied SATB). In fact, this turned out to be a previously unknown arrangement of The Mistletoe Bough with humorous new original words by the composer—cheekily masquerading as a folk song collected by Gustav Holst!
Fanfare
Fand also issued the very first publication of Carey’s fanfare Fanfara Pian’ e Forte (Echo-Fanfare) for three trumpets, three trombones and side drum.
Three Welsh Folk Songs
A more substantial new publication is Carey’s collection of Three Welsh Folk Songs, published by Fand in early 2022 in a high quality new edition by Richard Hallas. The three constituent songs, Lullaby (Suo Gán), The Plea of the Miller (Tón y Melinydd) and David of the White Rock (Dafydd y Garreg Wen), are for a solo singer accompanied by either piano or harp, and were dedicated to the Canadian baritone, Robert Ivan Foster—whose superb recording can be heard on the CD Carey Blyton: The folksong arrangements.
Three library works
Of Carey’s catalogue of library music, three of the more substantial and better known items have finally been published by Fand in late 2023, and are available as regular scores or (directly from Fand’s site) as large-format conductor scores. The works are Commuter Special, Valse Musette and Girl Friday.
More recently, in early 2024, John Mitchell and Peter Thompson created a new arrangement of Girl Friday for easy piano (Grade 4–5). John Mitchell has also gone much further by producing his own new medley, or short cycle, of piano arrangements of excerpts from Carey’s library music. Mood Music Medley is for players of Grade 6–8 standard and presents arrangements of Valse Musette, Girl Friday, Minuet for Octet, Pan and Echo, Table for Two, Commuter Special and Music Hall Memories.
The Doggy Tales of Arnold
Finally, in 2024 Austin Macauley Publishers reassigned the rights of The Doggy Tales of Arnold back to the Carey Blyton estate, and Fand Music Press is delighted to be able to offer copies of both the paperback and hardback versions of the existing book. A PDF-format ebook is also available. The longer term project is to publish all the stories in one new volume.
See the News section for more announcements.