A blue plaque in association with The Coventry Music Museum has been unveiled at 25 Kingsway, Coventry, exactly fifty years since Mouldy Old Dough by Coventry band Lieutenant Pigeon was released.

This unique pop record was recorded in the front room of this very house, and as they say: love it or hate it, but you can’t ignore it. This virtually instrumental record (save a few growls of the title), hit the top spot in November 1972 for four weeks, and became the first number one record by a Coventry band (The Specials would have to wait till the next decade to accomplish the same feat).

Mouldy Old Dough was unique in so many ways, its ragtime stylee with military drum and flute mash up complete with two syncopated pianos gave the song a melancholy darkness, despite its outward good time happy vibe.

It remains a powerful anthem to the world of Stock Car racing and Oldham Athletic Football Club. Played by marching bands in Northern Ireland, it was a favourite of Jarvis Cocker and Fatboy Slim and even Depeche Mode covered it in their early days. It was a hit all over the world and remains the only number one record to feature a Mother and Son in its line-up. Indeed, pianist Hilda Woodward, already in her sixties at the time gave the band another angle of curiosity (if another one was needed).

Long before the Coventry Ska/2-Tone movement, Pigeon helped to put Coventry on the map. Indeed, in November 1972 when Pigeon was flying high at number one in the UK charts, Chuck Berry was chart topping with My Ding-A-Ling in the USA, both songs were recorded in Coventry.

Organiser of the plaque Pete Chambers BEM of the Coventry Music Museum said of the event: “I have wanted to celebrate Lieutenant Pigeon and their Kingsway base with a plaque for many years and now is the time. Along with the plaque, the museum is staging an exhibition and it’s such a ‘coo’ to get Pigeon’s Nigel Fletcher and Rob Woodward onboard to make it official. It will be a lot of fun and I hope people will be happy to learn about this unique song that was beyond ‘novelty’ by a band that was beyond ‘one hit wonder’ status.” 

50 Years of Mouldy Old Dough runs at Coventry Music Museum till December 2022. For more information, visit: covmm.co.uk