| "The Last Farewell" | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Single by Roger Whittaker | ||||
| from the album New World in the Morning | ||||
| B-side | "Mammy" | |||
| Released | 1971 (reissued 1975) | |||
| Recorded | 1970 | |||
| Genre | Pop | |||
| Length | 3:38 | |||
| Label | RCA Records | |||
| Songwriter(s) | Roger Whittaker Ron A. Webster | |||
| Producer(s) | Denis Preston | |||
| Roger Whittaker singles chronology | ||||
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"The Last Farewell" is a song by the British folk singer Roger Whittaker (music and vocals on the original recording) and Ron A. Webster (poem and lyrics). Whittaker hosted a radio programme in the United Kingdom, backed by an orchestra with arrangements by Zack Lawrence. Roger Whittaker said, "One of the ideas I had was to invite listeners to send their poems or lyrics to me and I would make songs out of them. We got a million replies, and I did one each week for 26 weeks."[1]
Ron Arthur Webster (1944-1994), a silversmith from Solihull Birmingham, England, sent Roger Whittaker his poem entitled "The Last Farewell", and this song became one of the selections to appear on the radio program. Webster was working for a company called "Lancaster Engraving" in Hockley. [2] He was travelling home on the upper deck of a Midland bus on a cold and rainy night and wished he were somewhere warm instead. That's when the inspiration fo the song came to him. Webster told the Coventry Evening Telegraph, according to an article published on the 10th September 1975, that he had been writing songs in his spare time for about 15 years. He had written The Last Farewell with Roger Whittaker in mind. But this was already before the singer had invited listeners to his radio programme to submit poems.
It was recorded, and featured on Whittaker's 1971 album New World in the Morning (A Special Kind of Man in the US and Canada). It is one of the fifty all-time singles to have sold 10 million (or more) physical copies worldwide.