GLCD 5106 The 30's Reviews & Broadcast

THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIGHT MUSIC The 1930's Volume 1 GMCD 5116 In Town Tonight - The 1930s Volume II With Eric Coates - Haydn Wood - Frederic Curzon - John Ansell - Eduard Künneke - Reginald King - Jack Hylton - Marek Weber - Richard Rodgers - Louis Levy - Henry Hall - Alfredo Campoli - Fred Hartley Sound Clips Track 02 Wedding of the Rose Track 07 March of the Bowman

Contents:
 

The dates refer to the release of the record. Compiled mainly from the collections of David Ades and Alan Bunting, who also wish to thank John Fountain, Clive Garner, Ian Manfred and Malcolm Powell for their valuable assistance in supplying some of the original recordings.

 The 1930s witnessed a significant change in the way in which most ordinary people enjoyed their musical entertainment. At the beginning of the century amateur music-making around the parlour piano was a regular occurrence in many homes, but by 1930 radio broadcasting was starting to make a big impact, and sound recording (which had moved from acoustic to electrical in 1925) was reaching a standard that most found acceptable. Also the movies were now accompanied by soundtracks, and musicals were very popular as escapist entertainment during the miserable years that followed the 1929 Wall Street crash. Music was now readily available from several reliable sources: the days of the ubiquitous parlour piano were numbered.

Light Music thrived as a result of these changes, which we would today describe as technological. Previously orchestras could only be heard if you could afford to visit the concert hall or variety theatre, or at venues such as the bandstand in the local park and at the seaside. But now homes could be filled with glorious sounds through the modern miracle of radio, and the wind-up gramophone became increasingly popular. Although records were now being recorded electrically, they were usually played at home acoustically, with heavy soundboxes poised over steel needles which dug into the grooves on the shellac discs to release the music. Today we regard these ancient machines with a mixture of admiration and horror: admiration that they often produced amazingly good reproduction, but horror at the damage being done to the discs themselves.

Record companies deliberately made their products in such a way that the 78s would sound best when reproduced acoustically. Only later did they respond to the fact that radiograms and electric record players were gradually making their presence felt as the 1930s drew to a close. Modern sound restoration engineers have to take this into account, when working on records from that period.

The wide variety of tracks in this collection reflects the considerable range of musical riches from which record buyers could choose around seventy years ago. From the small tea-room ensembles, to the large symphony-size orchestras, these are the sounds that reflect a decade when music seemed to provide a much-needed antidote to the realities of life in the real world.

Had it not been for one piece of music, the composer of our opening number would probably have been long forgotten today. Arthur Wood (1875-1953) is remembered through Barwick Green from his suite ‘My Native Heath’, which BBC Radio has used for over 50 years as the signature tune for “The Archers”. As well as being a talented composer, Wood was also recognised as an arranger, and for some thirty years he worked as a London theatre conductor. Curtain Time is conducted by Charles Shadwell, a name familiar for many years on BBC Radio, notably with the ‘ITMA’ programme. The BBC Variety Orchestra is accompanied by Reginald Foort on the organ, reflecting the short-lived custom of having both an orchestra and an organist providing interval entertainment at top cinemas in the 1930s.

Jack Hylton (1892-1965) fronted one of Britain’s most popular dance bands for almost twenty years, and it was not uncommon for him to slip the occasional piece of light music into his shows. The German Leon Jessel (1871-1942) had a big hit with his Parade of the Tin Soldiers in 1911, and in the same year he achieved equal success with The Wedding of the Rose.

Eric Coates (1886-1957) seemingly had the musical world at his feet in the 1930s. He had progressed from being a leading writer of popular ballads, into one of the greatest light music composers of all time. At that time it was the custom for this kind of music to be presented as Suites, and Coates gave us fascinating collections such as ‘The Three Men’, ‘Four Centuries’, ‘Summer Days’, ‘From Meadow to Mayfair’ and his ‘Four Ways Suite’ from 1927. The movement Westwards revealed the composer’s willingness to embrace the new syncopated sounds that were drifting across the Atlantic, a style to which he also returned in 1941 for the final movement Rhythm from ‘Four Centuries’.

In 1936 the British publishers Bosworths established a library of recorded music for use by radio, films and television. Although perhaps they did not enjoy the high profile later enjoyed by Chappell & Co. (who started their library in 1942), nevertheless Bosworths produced some fine light music. Tea Dolls’ Parade is an example of the kind of dainty music that was still appreciated at that time, including the innocent sounding title that certainly links this piece to pre-war days.

John Ansell (1874-1948) is remembered today for his Nautical Overture Plymouth Hoe in which he cleverly linked many seafaring themes. He composed it in 1914, but such was its enduring popularity that he conducted it himself twenty-five years later for the HMV 78 included in this collection. At one time Ansell was assistant conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and like Arthur Wood he was also in demand in London’s theatreland.

The fame of the composer Carl Emile Paul Lincke (1866-1946) spread far beyond his native Germany, thanks to his Glow Worm Idyll which was performed numerous times in many different styles. When Johnny Mercer added English lyrics in 1953, it even reached the top ten in the hit parade.

Frederic Curzon (1899-1973) was a pianist, organist and conductor until the success of his “Robin Hood Suite” encouraged him to take up full-time composing just before World War 2 broke out. The third movement March of the Bowmen has retained its popularity to this day.  Later Curzon fulfilled an executive role guiding the Boosey & Hawkes Recorded Music Library, but that still allowed plenty of opportunities for composing. 

Although better-known to the public through his small ensembles heard on the radio and at fashionable locations such as the Swan and Edgar store in London’s Piccadilly Circus, Reginald King (1904-1991) was also a prolific composer of light music. Among his more substantial works is the Concert Overture The Immortals, which has been unjustly neglected for over half a century.

Sherman Myers and Montague Ewing are just two better-known examples of many pseudonyms used by the prolific composer Herbert Carrington. His many popular numbers (well over one hundred) included Policeman’s Holiday, Fairy on the Clock, Moonlight on the Ganges and the novelty chosen for this collection – Butterflies in the Rain.

Haydn Wood (1882-1959) was a contemporary of Eric Coates, and their respective careers followed similar paths, beginning with ballads (Haydn Wood’s big success was with Roses of Picardy) leading to acceptance as leading composers of light music. Coates was particularly successful in writing popular signature tunes, thus bringing him more to the attention of the public at large. But Haydn Wood fully deserves to be recognised as a composer of true worth, with many of his suites containing real substance. His Overture May Day was first published in 1918; possibly his inspiration harked back many centuries to a time when the beginning of May was reckoned to be the start of summer. Whatever may have been his inspiration, this bubbling work contains many of the elements of his composing abilities that have appealed to generations of music lovers, and since the composer himself is conducting the recording on this CD we can safely assume that we are hearing this delightful work exactly as he would wish.

The Italian violinist Alfredo Campoli (1906-1991) has occupied a warm place in the affections of British music lovers, since his debut at London’s Wigmore Hall in 1923. He played in many light orchestras, and was also a prolific broadcaster and recording artist in his own name. Moths Around The Candle Flame is typical of the many light pieces that demonstrated the virtuosity of the maestro and the musicians who played with him.

Eduard Künneke (1885-1953) was already respected as a composer of operas and operettas, when he left Germany to visit America in 1925/26. The influences he encountered in the ‘new world’ resulted in his Dance Suite for Jazz Band and Orchestra. There is some resemblance to the experience of Eric Coates in England; both composers appear to have been unafraid to incorporate some modern jazz styles into their traditional light music. Today these sounds may appear very dated, but this can be attributed to the fact that jazz has always been a developing form of music; what is in-style today, is definitely passé tomorrow. Perhaps more surprising is the fact that Künneke should have been able to conduct an orchestra as prestigious as the Berlin Philharmonic in this recording from 1938, at a time when the history books tell us that the political establishment in Germany did not approve of the influence of American styles in music.

Marek Weber (1888-1964) was a major recording artist in the 1930s. He was born in the Ukraine, developed his career mainly in Germany, then moved to London to escape the Nazis, before living briefly in Switzerland then emigrating in 1937 to the USA. A prolific recording artist in the early 1930s, his orchestra tended to specialist in show selections and novelty pieces – The Nightingale’s Morning Greeting being a prime example.

Richard Rodgers (1902-1979) was one of America’s leading composers of the 20^th century, and his works embraced a wide spectrum of popular music. Slaughter on Tenth Avenue was composed for the show “On Your Toes”. Rodgers once said that it was customary to drop ballet sequences from musicals, but they couldn’t leave out his Slaughter… because it formed an integral part of the plot. Paul Whiteman (1890-1967) was highly respected for his ability to combine popular music and jazz into a form acceptable to the vast majority of the American public, and his recording of this work remains a minor classic.

In the 1930s there was a vogue for on-site recording of orchestras where they would normally perform to the public, such as theatres or – as in the case of Leslie Jeffries (d. 1960) – at the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne. At the time the normal surface noise on 78s tended to mask any blemishes, but now the sounds of hotel activity – and even the traffic outside – occasionally intrude on the music. The composer of Dance of the Icicles, Kennedy Russell (1883-1954) appears to have been involved in shows and films, but little of his light music seems to have survived.

Novelty numbers with oriental or exotic themes cropped up from time to time – perhaps Luigini’s Ballet Egyptien is the best remembered example. Variety acts, such as the sand-dancing trio Wilson, Keppel and Betty also helped to make this kind of music popular, and Samum by the German composer Carl Robrecht (1888-1961) enjoyed several different recordings. The full version extends over two sides of a 78, but Phil Cardew’s snappy arrangement for Henry Hall is probably more listener-friendly.

Finally we come to a man whose full, rich orchestral sound is indelibly associated with the atmosphere of big Hollywood movies of the 1930s, although Louis Levy (1893-1957) actually worked in the British film industry. That special ‘sound’ was mainly due to two talented arrangers who worked closely with Levy – Bretton Byrd (b. 1904) and Peter Yorke (1902-1966). Often it is hard to decide which of them was responsible for individual titles, but there are clues in the fact that Yorke went on to carve out a successful career in his own name, and his later recordings and broadcasts build on the fine work he did for Levy. 1937 was obviously a good year for film musicals, since almost all of the titles chosen by Louis Levy for his Music From The Movies selection have stood the test of time

Page revised 07.04.06