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who likes 1920 and 30s 40s music

This is all getting very serious.....


The words of this just crack me up, rhyming “sawmill proprietor” with “winked his glass eye at her” - priceless!
 
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Maurice, I finally got round to listening to “Temptation” and quite enjoyed it, agree with you on the vocalist though. Grofe did the orchestration of Rhapsody in Blue for Whiteman, amongst others, I think one of the attractions of this era is the trouble taken properly to present the music, even if for popular consumption.

So now, to Nottingham and Billy Merrin.


Played on a Garrard 401.

However, there is a superior version, I think this is about the most romantic song ever written.
Roy Fox/Denny Dennis

 
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John,

Yes, I was aware of the Whiteman orchestration. I don't rate the Billy Merrin track, especially the vocal, but the Roy Fox track is his usual polished performance and the vocal quite acceptable. Both recorded in the same year and such an amazing difference.

Does the name Lou Simmons mean anything to you? He had a band in London before the war and later moved to Bournemouth, but I didn't meet him until the late 1960s. At the time when I knew him he was blind, though I don't think he was born blind. There is this little snippet:-
https://www.dorsetecho.co.uk/news/5353932.musicians-played-on-as-german-bombs-fell/ and there used to be a Wiki entry, but that has long since gone. When I knew him he used to have a quartet in the rather oldfashioned Trouville Hotel with himself on drums, though I wouldn't call him a drummer. I never knew the Peter Green in the article, but ironically the manager of the hotel at that time was a Peter Green, but well into his sixties, whereas the Peter Green in the article was 81 in 2005, so definitely not the same guy. The hotel has since been bought by a chain and been thoroughly modernised. Peter Green, the hotel manager, was connected to the Green's Cake Mix & Custard Company.

Maurice :cool:
 
Sorry, Maurice, I don’t recognise that name.

From looking into Reg Bassett, it seems that, unless a band got onto the Beeb, there wasn’t a lot of coverage to spread their fame outside the local area. RB was the resident band at Trentham Gardens ballroom, a place where you would have found me on a Saturday evening, if I had money and the car had petrol in the tank. The next call, if you didn’t pull, was the transport café on the A34 for egg beans and chips at about midnight!

Exchange heard one night over the egg and chips - Pretty girl and her mates walk in, she is wearing a black sweater, plaid minidress, and dark tights with white socks over them, up to the knee.

Voice from next table “Ello petal, like the socks!”

”They’re me virgin’s socks!”

”Bit late innit!”
 
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Maurice, I finally got round to listening to “Temptation” and quite enjoyed it, agree with you on the vocalist though. Grofe did the orchestration of Rhapsody in Blue for Whiteman, amongst others, I think one of the attractions of this era is the trouble taken properly to present the music, even if for popular consumption.

So now, to Nottingham and Billy Merrin.


Played on a Garrard 401.

However, there is a superior version, I think this is about the most romantic song ever written.
Roy Fox/Denny Dennis

Lovely words John.
Lynn
 
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