HE HAD them singing "Liverpool" in concert halls around the globe when he took his famous collaboration with Paul McCartney on tour.
And now Carl Davis has just announced he is to revive the Paul McCartney Liverpool Oratorio, which he co-wrote with the former Beatle back in the early 1990s, for the city's birthday celebrations next year.
Merseyside music lovers will have the chance to see the world-renowned conductor and composer lead the Royal Liverpool Philharmonic long before that in a series of "Summer Pops" concerts - cunningly titled given conductor and orchestra's previous association with the separate King's Dock event.
Then in November he will be back at the Phil again, to celebrate becoming a septuagenarian at "Carl's Birthday Bash".
While Carl still has mixed feelings about the RPLO losing the King's Dock Summer Pops to the likes of Simply Red and the Sugababes, there is no doubt the man married to our own Ma Boswell still has a very special regard for the city.
"In 2007 when Liverpool celebrates its big anniversary we're going to revive the Paul McCartney Liverpool Oratorio," he says, casting his mind back 15 years to the emotion the piece stirred in him the first time round.
"I remember standing in Tokyo in front of an audience full of Japanese people, with an all-Japanese choir and they're singing the lines "We were born in Liverpool" - or you're in Brooklyn with the Harlem boys' choir and they're all singing the same line.
"It was surreal. It was like the whole world was born in Liverpool under the Beatles banner - and that happened wherever we were in England, or in Germany, in Sweden, or anywhere. I loved it at the time. I haven't done it now for quite a few years so it will be very interesting."
Sir Paul, he says, "wrote some beautiful melodies" when they collaborated on the full-length classical work which premiered in Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral in June 1991.
"He is an absolute icon of pop music," Carl continues. "But he was very modest and he appreciated the music in a very fresh way. He looked at it as an adventure.
