GLCD 5128 Light Music While You Work Reviews & Broadcast

THE GOLDEN AGE OF LIGHT MUSIC Light Music While You Work TIVOLI CONCERT HALL ORCHESTRA Conducted by SVEND CHRISTIAN FELUMB - HARRY FRYER AND HIS ORCHESTRA - RICHARD CREAN AND HIS ORCHESTRA - REGINALD PURSGLOVE AND HIS ORCHESTRA - HARRY DAVIDSON AND HIS ORCHESTRA - MANTOVANI AND HIS ORCHESTRA - THE STUDIO ORCHESTRA Directed by PHIL GREEN - RONNIE MUNRO AND HIS SCOTTISH VARIETY ORCHESTRA - 01 Calling All Workers 04 White Horse Inn    05 Haunted Ballroom 11 Lisbon Story   25 Something In The Air

Contents:

Whereas the title of this collection will mean a lot to British people ‘of a certain age’, it is appropriate to offer an explanation to the younger generation and Guild Music’s many friends in countries outside the United Kingdom. When the full misery of the Second World War was becoming all too apparent in the early months of 1940, the BBC (the sole broadcaster at the time) was persuaded that the public needed cheering up, and morale-boosting radio programmes would be an important addition to other forms of popular entertainment such as the cinema and variety theatres. Radio shows were gradually being relayed to factories to relieve the monotony of mass production, especially in the fields of armaments and other essential war supplies, and it was believed that bright and cheerful music might even increase output.

One can imagine the number of meetings and internal soul-searching that must have taken place before the BBC would embark upon such a step. Since its inception in 1922 it had gained a reputation as the guardian of the nation’s morals and this certainly extended to the kind of music that it would allow on its airwaves. ‘Popular’ music was viewed with grave suspicion, even though pre-war commercial broadcasts beamed to Britain from the near continent had demonstrated the public’s appetite for lighter musical fare.

But somehow a programme called “Music While You Work” did survive all the planning obstacles, and the first broadcast took place at 10.30am on Sunday 23 June 1940. It became something of an institution in British broadcasting, where it was to remain in the schedules for an unbroken run of 27 years. When the BBC celebrated its 60^th anniversary in 1982 “Music While You Work” was one of several popular programmes brought back for a few editions, and the positive public reaction resulted in several more ‘returns’ before the very last broadcast was heard in 1995.

The man credited with the original idea – and its successful implementation – was Wynford Reynolds (1899-1958). ‘Live’ musicians were usually engaged for the programme, ranging from solo performers such as organists, to small groups, dance bands, light orchestras and military bands. After some early experiments with light classics the feedback from the factories soon indicated that workers preferred tunes they knew and to which they could sing along. The BBC could not be expected to broadcast to such a restricted formula throughout the entire day - after all, they had a large audience of listeners in their homes. Gramophone records provided the answer as far as the factories were concerned; when the radio programmes were not suitable for the workforce the Tannoy public address system resorted to records played by one of the staff.

This is when someone at Decca realised that a special series of 78s would fit the bill admirably and their own “Music While You Work” label was born; sensibly they sought Wynford Reynolds’ advice from the outset. These were not intended to be an accurate carbon copy of the BBC broadcasts, and the orchestras on the Decca records (mostly their contract artists) did not necessarily also perform on the radio. But they did succeed in conveying the ‘feel’ of the programme and have provided a fascinating subject for collectors to study over the years.

The first twenty records that were released, starting in 1942, were included in Decca’s usual blue and gold label ‘F’ series of popular 78s and given their own ‘MW’ prefix. Thereafter all issues were only on the black and white ‘Music White You Work’ label and by September 1943 some 27 discs were available. Following this rather slow start, the floodgates opened, and nearly 400 more were to be released before the final ones appeared in January 1947. The series was quickly deleted, and throughout the existence of the label Decca publicity had been sketchy, to say the least. The record buying public was often unaware of what was available, so consequently some of the titles must be quite rare. Some of the later 78s were recorded using Decca’s revolutionary ‘ffrr’ process which remained a closely guarded secret for some while since it had originally been developed to assist the war effort, and the improved sound quality of several of the tracks on this CD is evidence of this.

The choice of music was largely dictated by what was likely to be popular in the factories, although there is evidence that occasional attempts were made to inject some ‘culture’ – a few of the tracks on this CD may well have fallen into that category! Selections (especially from shows) were also well received and it may help to jog some memories to know what was included on the three we have chosen:

“White Horse Inn” Selection  White Horse Inn, Your Eyes, My Song Of Love, Goodbye

“Lisbon Story” Selection  Pedro The Fisherman, Never Say Goodbye, Someday We Shall Meet Again

“Something In The Air” Selection  Something In The Air, Home, You’ve Done Something To Me, You Happen Once In A Lifetime

The first and second shows are still remembered today but – despite its catchy tunes – “Something In The Air” seems to fallen by the wayside, although it ran for 499 performances during the war. Its composer, Manning Sherwin (1902-1974), was certainly no lightweight - he also wrote The Moment I Saw You and A Nightingale Sang In Berkeley Square.

When LPs first appeared Decca released a few collections by Harry Fryer, Richard Crean and Ronnie Munro which were taken from the MWYW series. One track – Fascinatin’ Manikin – only appeared on LP, but there seems little doubt that it was recorded for the series but never issued; two recordings never issued at all are Rendezvous and Valse Septembre, presented here for the first time using the original test pressings.

By far the lion’s share of the recordings in this collection feature Harry Fryer (1896-1946) and his Orchestra. Like so many musicians of his era, he found work playing for silent films and gradually progressed to conducting at London theatres and leading venues in and around the capital. He was a regular broadcaster, both before the war and later frequently on radio in “Music While You Work”. The London publishers Boosey & Hawkes contracted Fryer in 1941 to conduct for their Recorded Music Library. By the end of the war he had become a household name and there seems little doubt that, had it not been for his death in 1946 aged only 50, his talents would have been much in demand during the post-war years.

Richard Crean (1879-1955) became a familiar name in the 1930s through his association with the London Palladium Orchestra. Prior to that he had travelled widely as Chorus Master with the Thomas Quinlan Opera Company, before accepting a similar position at Covent Garden with Adrian Boult. Then a spell at Ilford Hippodrome in variety led to his appointment in 1930 as conductor of the London Palladium Orchestra which lasted for around five years until he formed his own orchestra which he conducted, on and off, for the rest of his life. For a short while in 1941-42 he conducted the newly-formed BBC Midland Light Orchestra, and like Harry Fryer he was also a contributor to the Boosey & Hawkes Recorded Music Library.

Harry Davidson (1892-1967) enjoyed two successful, and different, careers before and following the Second World War. After various engagements around London and the north-east of England spanning the years 1914 to 1929, he finally secured the highly prestigious appointment as organist at the newly built Commodore Theatre at Hammersmith in London. The Commodore had a fine 18-piece orchestra conducted by Joseph Muscant (1899-1983) and, by the early 1930s, it had acquired a loyal national following for its regular broadcasts. After five years Muscant left to take over the Troxy Broadcasting Orchestra and, in July 1934, Harry Davidson stepped into his shoes. Although the orchestra was disbanded during the war, Davidson managed to keep many of his superb musicians together and soon he was broadcasting regularly, notching up no less that 109 editions of “Music While You Work” during the programme’s first year. In November 1943 his series “Those Were The Days” appeared for the first time, providing listeners at home with a regular helping of melodious old-time dance music. It became a permanent fixture in the schedules with Harry in charge until ill-health forced him to retire in November 1965. But such was its popularity that the programme continued under Sidney Davey for another twelve years.

Reginald Pursglove (1902-1982) was an accomplished violinist who worked with many of the British dance bands in the 1920s and 1930s. During four decades he was heard regularly on the radio fronting various ensembles such as small groups (his contribution to this CD is a good example) right up to light orchestras which gradually assumed greater prominence as dance bands were heard less frequently on the air. His Albany Players (later renamed the Albany Strings) constantly provided top quality light music, but eventually the BBC’s decision to rely less upon live music meant that the orchestra did not survive the 1960s – a fate that was to befall so many of Pursglove’s contemporaries.

Annunzio Paolo Mantovani (1905-1980) was one of Britain’s foremost light orchestras for many years, achieving fame throughout the world through the sales of millions of LPs. What is less generally known about his career is that he contributed four titles to Decca’s Music While You Work series. Two of these rare recordings have already appeared on Guild Light Music CDs – Castiliana and The Spirit of the Matador on ‘Mantovani – By Special Request Vol. 2’ GLCD 5113. The other two – Adios, Conchita (composed by Mantovani) and Memories of Spain finally receive their debut on CD in this collection.

Philip Green (1910-1982) was one of Britain’s most prolific musicians and some of his numerous recordings have already appeared in this series. He made a large number of MWYW 78s, but most of them were without strings so they fall outside the scope of this CD.

Ronnie Munro (1897-1989) started his career playing piano in various clubs and bands in London before eventually working regularly with EMI – particularly the HMV ‘house’ orchestra The New Mayfair Orchestra. He contributed numerous arrangements for top recording bands such as Jack Hylton, Lew Stone, Percival Mackey, Ambrose and Henry Hall. In 1940 he was appointed conductor of the BBC’s newly-formed Scottish Variety Orchestra, and Thousand and One Nights is typical of the kind of music for which they became known.

Ironically, although the MWYW series eventually ran to over 800 sides, there
never was a complete version of its famous signature tune Calling All Workers and the truncated version which appeared as part of a medley was played by a studio band, not an orchestra. Contemporaneous recordings of this piece are surprisingly few and, apart from the famous Eric Coates recording which has already appeared on numerous CDs, the only similar orchestral recording we have found is the 1948 one we feature here by the Tivoli Concert Hall Orchestra. This seems to be a rare 78 which will be known to very few collectors outside Denmark, so we hope that it will be accepted as a reasonable substitute giving an accurate representation of how the signature tune sounded on BBC broadcasts when “Music While You Work” featured a light orchestra.  David Ades

Page revised Monday February 05 2007