The World of DECCA Post 5 Music Hall, Jazz Bands and Dance Bands

Foreword

Later in Part 5, we will discuss the Jazz members of the WORLD OF club and we'll

finish off with a trio of Dance Band kings. First, however, let's dip back into the reign of Queen Victoria.

Music Hall itself, being popular Victorian entertainment, is a dated phenomenon but resembled today’s variety shows where a succession of performers entered the stage to sing, dance, juggle, do magic as well as such as performing feats of acrobatic daring. After the first name on this week's list, the following ten characters all feature on THE WORLD OF MUSIC HALL (PA 81) which appears to exist, naturally enough, I suppose, only in mono format. But, before all of that, a Big Band leader left over from Part 4. So, my friends, give it up (whatever that means) for the driver who came eighth in the 1949 British Grand Prix.

BILLY COTTON

WAKEY WA…KAY! The inimitable shriek call of Mr Billy Cotton, band-leader and vaudeville music-hall entertainer who liked to insert comedic moments between tunes. The wake-up usually followed the band’s signature tune, ‘Somebody Stole my Gal’ at the start of each show. Sadly, listeners to THE WORLD OF BILLY COTTON (SPA 19) or THE WORLD OF BILLY COTTON VOL. 2 (SPA 128) won’t be able to start their session with this song as it doesn’t feature. Still, there are plenty of others associated with Billy and his band if you fancy a sing-song. Go on – invite the neighbours round! There’s ‘I’ve Got a Lovely Bunch of Coconuts’, ‘Maybe it’s because I’m a Londoner’ and ‘The Marrow Song’ on SPA 19 and ‘Knees Up, Mother Brown’, ‘The Cokey Cokey’ and ‘Boomps-a-Daisy’ on Vol. 2. One piece of advice, though – if you value your carpets, it might be best to avoid the ‘The Dam Busters March’ because even the most straight-faced man in your street won’t be able to resist marching around your front room … and don’t even mention ‘The French Can-can Polka’. Oops! I just did … Sah…ree… Anyway, as well as being on SPA 19, ‘The Queen’s Horses’ crops up on THIS IS LONDON (SPA 593) whilst the rousing ‘Dam Busters March’ gets a second outing as track A1 on THE WORLD OF YOUR FAMILY FAVOURITES VOL. 2 (SPA-R 502). And yes, between the First and Second World Wars, Billy Cotton drove racing cars and though distracted by entertaining British troops, touring his band around Europe during WWII, Billy didn't forget how to drive, achieving his eighth placing four years following the declaration of peace.

LESLIE SARONY

Writer and singer of about 400 whimsically silly songs as well as an actor on the stage during the late 1920s and 30s, Leslie Legge Sarony Frye composed songs such as ‘The Sizzle of the Sausage’, ‘The Wedding of the Garden Insects’ and ‘There’s a Song they Sing at a Sing-Song in Sing-Sing’ fell from his pen but his song here is George Lashwood tune, ‘In the Twi-Twi-Twilight’ all about the way that young love blinds one to imperfections in one’s beau. The lyrics tell us that the girl, being so neat … he never once thinks about the size of her feet. Sarony’s own songs were sung by such stellar performers as George Formby and Gracie Fields, both of WORLD OF fame. Songs that glorified the mundane; songs about cough sweets and cheese, sausages and cake. One such song warns us of the abuse of vegetables (‘Don’t be Cruel to a Vegetabuel’). Sarony was also light on his feet with a penchant for the eccentric, using his natural ability to produce dance improvisation when required at audition or to fill in during a performance. Another star of the day who took on Leslie Sarony’s songs was Albert Whelan.

ALBERT WHELAN

An Australian piano-playing, entertainer who was popular in English music hall, Albert Waxman (Whelan), much like Leslie Sarony above, was mainly a singer and dancer debuting as the latter on the London stage in the guise of a scarecrow. ‘The Three Trees’ is one of his most well-known spoken word pieces and is featured on PA 81 complete with whistled signature tune, ‘The Jolly Brothers’ written, incidentally, by Mr Robert Vollstedt. In fact, Mr Whelan was the first of the major entertainers to use a signature tune which he whistled at the start and end of his shows. Whelan also appeared on film including, Stars on Parade and Danny Boy in which he played a tea stall proprietor and a chap called Scotty, respectively – just thought that you should know …

GEORGE ROBEY

Known as the Prime Minister of Mirth, comedian, singer and actor, George Edward Wade (Robey), like most music hall entertainers of the nineteen twenties, thirties and forties, was known for his precise diction. He adopted the surname Robey after working in a civil service office of that name. Prone to cropping up as a pantomime dame at Christmas and being a popular songster, he became associated with ‘If You were the Only Girl in the World’ and ‘Where did You get that Hat’ along with characters like ‘The Chinese Laundry Man’ and ‘Clarence, the Last of the Dandies’. Another of his personifications was ‘Daisy Dillwater, the District Nurse’ who took to the stage riding a bicycle. After stopping a while to share a little comedic fare, the nurse would hurry upon her way. To distinguish him from his peers in music hall, he chose to wear a long black coat buttoned from the neck, a tatty hat over a balding wig, white face-paint and dark eyeliner. A look that eventually became that of the Prime Minister of Mirth. His song on PA 81 is ‘It’s the first Time I’ve ever done That’ in which the girl who is ‘modest and shy’ kisses the boy in a moment of weakness. She then explains that she’d normally save her kisses for her 'parents, her dog and her cat' before the song continues with 'Apart from a few Grenadiers and the Welsh Fusiliers, it’s the first time (she’s) ever done that.'

MARIE KENDALL

Mary Anne Florence Holyolme to her mother, Marie Kendall began her life as a performer with her father in pubs and penny gaffs at the age of about five years. Penny gaffs were back rooms in pubs that held cheap, often smutty entertainment. In her late teens Kendall, was earning a massive £100 per week by dashing to and fro between up to seven London theatres each night to sing. She sang before King George V and Queen Mary songs including her hit of the day, ‘Just like Ivy, I’ll Cling to You’, a snippet of which can be heard in one of her two medley tracks on PA 81. I think it’s a shame that of the nine tunes involved in the medleys, not included is ‘If I can see this for 1s 6d, what could I see for a quid?’ Marie Kendall, generous in her sympathy, famously supported music hall peer, Marie Lloyd against obscenity charges for the contents and title of a song called ‘She Sits among the Cabbages and Peas’!

MARIE LLOYD Jnr.

Sadly, the song on PA 81 is a tune other than the one above but fun just the same. Marie Lloyd, born Matilda Alice Victoria Wood, (and no, Victoria Wood of Dinner Ladies fame did not take her name from Marie’s) performs ‘It’s a Bit of a Ruin that Cromwell Knocked about a Bit’ for us here. Marie Lloyd soon got a risqué reputation for inserting double entendre into her otherwise inoffensive songs by way of nods and winks towards the audience. In the event of being asked to perform such songs in order to claim her innocence, as apparently singers were asked to do back in the day, she sang them straight and no-one could find anything to complain of. Anyway, ever keen to placate the moralists, Lloyd amended the lyrics of ‘She Sits among the Cabbages and Peas’ to ‘She Sits among the Cabbages and Leeks’!

BOBBIE COMBER

Bobbie Comber, born Edmund in Bury St Edmunds (hmmm, I wonder …) was, in common with all of the above participants on THE WORLD OF MUSIC HALL, a comedian, singer and actor. In his song here, ‘Let’s all Go to the Music Hall’, he champions the music hall phenomenon.

MAX MILLER

Another one for the risqué story and innuendo, Max Miller (originally Thomas Henry Sargent) was hardly ever on the radio or TV due to his racey material but one tune beat the ban by popular demand. ‘Let’s Have a Ride on Your Bicycle’ might have been a danger to the morals of the youth of the day but if it wasn’t for the chuckling of Cheeky Chappie, Max, it would have been difficult to hear where any offence could have been taken. Still, times have changed. Censorship laws were very strictly controlled in the time of the original music hall and any material that was intended for use on the stage had to be cleared before use. Innuendo was one way of circumnavigating the laws – you know, instead of ‘having sex’ one might say, ‘having a ride’ you know ‘on your bicycle’?! One might also miss off some of the punchline and allow the audience to use their imagination and in so doing, the artiste could blame the dirty minds of the laughing crowd for getting him into trouble. This was a tactic used by Miller in particular and, in any case, getting banned by the BBC, as has ever been the case, boosted sales of tickets and merchandise. His song on PA 81 is the autobiographical ‘Confessions of a Cheeky Chappie’.

BILLY DANVERS

Born William Mikado Danvers, Billy was billed as ‘Always Merry and Bright’ or ‘Cheery and Chubby’331 with his red nose and jauntily placed hat. Not one for saucy tittering, Danvers stories were along the lines of the one that tells of three chaps in a pub boasting about their wives and the colour of their eyes. One wife had blue eyes whilst the next had grey. The third fellow, however, could not remember and so walked up to her when he got home and had a good look. ‘Hmm’, he mused, ‘Brown’, and a bloke got up from behind the settee and said, ‘How did you know I was here?’ There you go – smut-free. The song performed by Billy Danvers here is ‘Kiss Me’, which was written by Danvers himself. Not so much a song as a musical vehicle for a couple of his stage show stories, really.

DICK TUBB

Dick Tubb, with his nasally conversational style of song presentation, seems a little confused as to his gender in that he seems to think he is one of the titular ‘Ladies of the Naughty Nineties’, his contribution here. He/she gives an account of how men of the time wore long moustaches that filled ‘us girls’ with glee and continues to tell us that though they (the men) 'are fickle, their beards didn’t half tickle in 1893'. Ah well ...

Well, I don't know about you but I'm now ready for a bit of jazz.

JAZZ

CHRIS BARBER

Trombone playing jazzman Chris Barber began his playing career in 1949, at the age of nineteen, continuing to perform until the summer of 2019, aged 89. After four or so years into his new career, there was, in Barber’s second band, a character who is more associated with a quite different musical genre, skiffle – Banjo-playing Lonnie Donegan. THE WORLD OF CHRIS BARBER (SPA 254) is credited to Chris Barber’s Jazz Band with Guest Artist Lonnie

Donegan and Ottilie Patterson and track A2 is ‘Rock Island line’, a tune very familiar to Lonnie fans. Donegan’s version of this Leadbelly tune, with Chris Barber on bass, was right there at the start of the skiffle movement in 1955. It was around this time Ottilie Patterson jumped aboard the Barber ship, introducing a kind of rhythm and blues to the jazz band. In the early days, the Barber bands played what might be called British ‘trad’ jazz with a hint of that New Orleans sound backed by prominent banjo strumming – largely upbeat and fun. Over the many incarnations of the band, they mopped up the styles of a fine assortment of guests and touring partners including gospel singer, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, bluesmen Big Bill Broonzy, Muddy Waters and Sonny Boy Williamson and even an electric guitarist called John Slaughter who became a long-standing member. A later Barber band enjoyed the company on stage of Van Morrison, a long-time solo singer/songwriter who earlier on in his career, was part of the pop-rock group Them, who feature on THE WORLD OF THEM (SPA 86) which is discussed in a later post. Incidentally, the track listing of THE WORLD OF CHRIS BARBER was duplicated exactly for a 2010 release of The Best of Chris Barber.

GEORGE MELLY

It was the ‘trad’ and New Orleans groove of the Jazz Revivalists which lured George Melly towards the jazz scene in the first place and it was jazz’s ‘hell-bent pleasure seeker’ (to quote the back cover of the LP SPA 288) Mick Mulligan and his band in particular, with whom he sang as, indeed, he did with John Chilton and Digby Fairweather later in his career. And much later in his musical life, he serenaded us over the backing of punkists The Stranglers in a dainty little ditty called ‘Old Codger’. Still, enough of that coz that song doesn’t fall within the cramped confines of our area of interest, namely; THE WORLD OF GEORGE MELLY (SPA 288) which has the sub-title ‘The Fifties' and on the front cover of which we find an image of utmost sartorial inelegance. Ah well, we might as well know Mr M as he really is. Here, George can be heard to

warble all over the music of the bands of such as the afore-mentioned Mick Mulligan and Alex Welsh.

Melly wasn’t all about music though; he was also about scriptwriting cartoons. During the 1960s, whilst taking a break from music, George used to supply the words spoken by Flook, a kind of mole-like, piggy kind of creature with feet like an elephant who used to live in the Daily Mail newspaper. Poor old Flook had suffered the words and foibles of several writers over the years, another of whom was WORLD OF comedian, Marty Feldman. Anyway, in Melly’s charge, the elephantine-footed, piggy-like mole took on many of the characteristics and habits of the author within and ended up in George Melly’s favourite restaurants and pubs which may seem a little incongruous as the cartoon strip was ostensibly for young people. I’m not sure that I would have understood them when I was young as they seemed to contain adult, news-related satire but one that might have appealed was where Flook, as related in an interview with the cartoonist, Wally Fawkes, became a food critic in the style of Kenneth Tynan who went down in history as the first person to use the F-word on TV. So, anyway, Flook came over all self-righteous after

witnessing gluttony on a grand scale amongst his colleagues on a food-related television show and, because the gorging gourmands, in his mind’s eye, began to turn into pigs, decided to ban the use of the four-letter F-word, ‘Food’. Now, the problem I have here is that Flook, right, with his questionable looks, got upperty because others began to take on a physiognomy of something similar to his own good self! Well, I might leave you to think on that and no, I don’t apologise for getting off of the subject of music! There’s plenty of that elsewhere in this work!

DUDLEY MOORE

Now, whilst most of us would be familiar with Dudley Moore’s comedy career, largely with

Peter Cook, and his progression into comedic acting, some may be surprised to find that he was also a very well-established jazz pianist. In fact, Moore was responsible for some comic sketch augmentation via his piano during the Beyond the Fringe stage production, a satirical presentation in the 1960s staring Alan Bennett, Johnathan Miller and Moore’s old partner in fun, Peter Cook (see THE WORLD OF PETE & DUD [PA 39]). His musical style was of the more gentle design, his fingers, lightweight and loose, rendering an easy-listening type of

improvisation; one minute grooving in a midnight mood, the next awake and bouncing on standards such as ‘Blue Heaven’ and ‘Bauble, Bangles and Beads’ on THE WORLD OF DUDLEY MOORE (SPA 106) and ‘If You were the Only Girl in the World’ and ‘Fly Me to the Moon’ on THE WORLD OF DUDLEY MOORE VOL. 2 (SPA 286) as well as lesser known pieces. Lest we forget, however, Dud was a composer as well as an interpreter of other tunes and he wrote four tracks on SPA 106 and 2 on SPA 286. Finally, whilst the labels on both records credit The Dudley Moore Trio, only the back cover of SPA 106 does so. Just thought I’d throw that one in.

JACQUES LOUSSIER

The personnel of the Jacques Loussier Trio are Pierre Michelot on double bass, Christian Garros on drums and Loussier on piano and are more commonly known as the Play Bach Trio. Frenchman Loussier liked to experiment with the different ways that pieces of music

could be played and for fun, he used to set classical works by Jean (Johann) Sebastian Bach to the swing or beat style of contemporary jazz music. This new music took jazz audiences by storm and provided the trio with enough material to be able to tour it for 15 years. Well, if you do anything for 15 years, the novelty is going to wear off sooner or later. And so it did for Jacques who decided to rest from playing publicly in 1980 in order to pursue his own music but he was dragged back on the road five years later during the tercentenary of the birth of Bach so he gathered a new trio and toured pretty much all over the world. The withdrawal from playing was not wasted either as when the Bach malarkey was done, he attracted plaudits for his own symphonies and concertos etc. THE WORLD OF JACQUES LOUSSIER LIVE (SPA-R 475) features 6 Bach pieces including the ‘Italian Concerto’, ‘Invention No. 5’, ‘Sleepers, Awake’ and ‘Prelude Nos. 1, 2 and 12’; not your usual run-of-the-mill Bach. This is, in my opinion anyway, a fine LP.

THE TEMPERANCE SEVEN

From the three original members, Paul MacDowell (trombone), Phillip Harrison (banjo) and Brian Innes (drums), The Temperance Seven gradually grew to … nine! So, why the name? Well, 7 + 1 = 9 – 1 = 8. In about 1925, eight pints was considered, by military folk at least, to be a good volume of ale to imbibe and still feel OK. Nowadays it is called binge drinking, of course. A dictionary definition for ‘Temperance’ = ‘habitual moderation or total abstinence from alcoholic liquors’ so, whilst they can only kid us that there are just seven of them, they can at least,

claim to be temperate. When we discover that there are nine players, however, the truth is revealed that they are ‘one over the eight’, a phrase first referenced in print shortly after the Great War and meaning something like ‘regularly, boozily befuddled’. Anyway, the band apparently chose Temperance Seven over the Intemperance Nine but we know, don’t we? Hmm! That all made sense when I first committed it to paper but … now … ?

The Temperance Seven had four hits in the upper reaches of the UK charts; ‘You’re Driving me Crazy’ getting to No. 1 and ‘Pasadena’ reaching No. 4. Sadly, this success happened some time after their stay at the house of DECCA and so we can’t introduce these tunes into our lives via THE WORLD OF THE TEMPERANCE SEVEN (SPA 302). Still, there is plenty of their humorous trad-type jazz to amuse you here with ‘Yes Sir, That’s my Baby’, ‘The Eton Boating Song’ and ‘I’m Forever Blowing Bubbles’. Amongst the other nine tunes which were originally to be found on an LP entitled The Temperance Seven Plus 1 – Tiger Rag issued in 1957, their only DECCA recording except for SPA 302 which, if your following this, was the above record reissued in 1973.

THE NEW VAUDEVILLE BAND

THE WORLD OF THE NEW VAUDEVILLE BAND (SPA 364) contains three of the four chart

tunes achieved by The New Vaudeville Band; ‘Winchester Cathedral’, ‘Peek-a-Boo’ and ‘Finchley Central’ reaching Nos. 4, 7 and 11 respectively. There was a fourth called ‘Green Street Green’ that got to No. 37. So, what actually is vaudeville? Well, it’s kind of light, humorous theatre with songs and dancing and the way that The New Vaudeville Band do it, there is also a hint of trad jazz and music hall about it and the tunes are largely sung. If you remember ‘Winchester Cathedral’ you’ll know that the vocals were performed as though through a megaphone but in this case, the effect was achieved by singing into the cupped hands. Not really a mover and a shaker but rather a fine, inoffensive record.

LASZLO TABOR

In the late 1960s, accordionist Laszlo Tabor, along with arranger Sordo Gomez and a 60-piece orchestra, came together to record an album called Gypsy Romance which was recorded in Britain and released on DERAM in 1967. The conductor was Tabor himself and he was once in conversation with WORLD OF conductor Eric Robinson, who, not knowing Laszlo was involved, championed the authenticity of the music claiming that there was no doubt that the record was made in Hungary as it was just not possible to do it here in the UK. Praise indeed. In fact, praise for a goodly few of his own orchestra as they were on the record! Much mirth made Mr Robinson look a little foolish for a while. Jack Laroque Rothstein played all solo violin sections throughout the ten selections which were all arranged or actually written by Sordo Gomez except two, one of which, ‘Czardas’ is a well-known Gypsy piece, the title describing the style of tune; a slow introduction with a rapid, crazy finish. Jack Laroque, as he is known on THE WORLD OF GYPSY ROMANCE (SPA 117), a 1971 re-issue of the above-mentioned LP with two tracks in a rejigged order, was

Polish born but settled in London in his early 20s after the Second World War. He contributed to film and TV soundtracks including Last of the Summer Wine and Birds of a Feather. Into this story we must introduce an Englishman called Edward Benjamin (Tony) Osborne. Tony played trumpet and piano as well as arranging the music for stars of the 1950s and 60s such as WORLD OFs very own Gracie Fields, the Beverley Sisters and Max Bygraves. Though he also became the local accordion champion in his teens, it was as a trumpeter that he began his professional career playing with WORLD OF bandleader Cyril Stapleton. He also played in the BBC orchestra backing The Goon Show, also of WORLD OF fame. As the Tony Osborne Sound, he had two chart entries in the UK; in 1961 he had ‘Man from Madrid’ and then in 1973, ‘The Shepherd’s Song’ reaching 50 and 46 respectively. Whilst Mantovani and Melachrino, who are well-known to WORLD OF fans, were enjoying popularity, Osborne experimented with a name change to Melavano to record an album of easy listening tunes and then later (and here's a twist) he tried his luck as Laszlo Tabor and Sordo Gomez.

HENRY LOWTHER

Thomas Henry Lowther is a jazz trumpeter who features in the WORLD OFs on a

progressive rock LP playing with bluesman John Mayall … on violin. Not a jazz trumpeter at all, then! Not that week, anyway. Henry started his playing career with the Salvation Army and in these early days, he did study the violin and sometimes played it in concert so it was not so unusual to find him fiddling with someone else, so to speak. The appearance on THE WORLD OF PROGRESSIVE MUSIC: WOWIE ZOWIE! (SPA 34) doing ‘Where did I Belong?’ with Mayall is his only one in our collection. Don't worry Prog fans - we'll be doing this record in more detail later.

Finally this week, let's tidy up three of the Dance Band leaders.

DANCE

SIDNEY LIPTON

Sidney or Sydney Lipton was a dance band leader from the 1930s to the 60s and just a quick listen to ‘Dance Little Lady’, ‘Near You’ or ‘People Will Say We’re in Love’ on COME TO THE WORLD OF DANCING (SPA 98) will confirm that you are in the hands of an accomplished band. The smooth Glenn Miller style of these two fox-trots and one quick-step

(respectively) lend themselves to dancing or, to those rhythmically challenged,  playing a bit of crazy air sax to. Sid joined the Billy Cotton Band early on in his career and later had Ted Heath in his own band so these three were keeping it in the WORLD OF family.

BILL SAVILL

On SPA 98 (see above), Bill Savill seems to favour two-song medleys for his fans’ dancing pleasure. Waltz the night away to ‘I Give My Heart/Glamorous Night’ and ‘This Nearly was Mine/When I’m Not Near the Girl I Love’ then slip in a fox-trot, ‘September Song/Bewitched’. If you remember Music While You Work on the radio from 1946 for something like 20 years, you’ll already be familiar with the work of Bill Savill and his orchestra as it was they what did the theme tune.

CYRIL STAPLETON

Of the trio of bandleaders from SPA 98, Cyril Stapleton’s music is the most boisterous so pace yourselves if dancing to our record as ‘Opus 1’, the closing track, is a rousing jive-quick-step as is ‘Skyliner’. His first tune here, however, is a little more of a sedate beguine fox-trot, ‘Stranger in Paradise’. Stapleton and his band backed WORLD OF’s Matt Monro on his first appearance in front of an audience and in 1955 the Cyril Stapleton Orchestra with Julie Dawn peaked at No. 2 in the UK singles chart with ‘Blue Star (The Medic Theme)’.

Those of you that are still awake (ah, good, not just me then - thank you) may have noticed that a Mr Edmundo Ros also contributed to this LP but he has his own slot earlier on in this enterprise and so is not discussed here.

That's all, folks!

… and next week we will meet a composer who did not even write his most well-known piece and another who kept a starling as a pet which contributed ideas for his work. There, we'll also find a man who had 20 children and discover if one famous piece should have been entitled 'Fur Thérèse' rather than be entitled for someone called Elise? All will be revealed, but not now, Basil! We've run out of time ...

Bye bye, boys and girls. Until next time, bye bye ...

References available on request

Regarding the LP cover images, they are photographs of the records in my own collection and are taken by my own hand (which explains the slight wonkiness of some of them). All images are, however, copyright of Decca.

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of any image in any form is prohibited.

Any redistribution or reproduction of part or all of the text in any form is prohibited, restricted by permission of the author.