Essentially, the Golden Age Of British Dance Bands was pre-war and this collection concentrates on the fabulous Thirties. It was a time when well-drilled, competitive and hard working bands had the pick of the wealth of great songs which were being produced, it seemed almost daily, in America and to a lesser extent in the UK.
Sydney Kyte was already a musician/bandleader with several years experience behind him at the time of his impressive recording debut with This Is The Missus. Newly installed at the Piccadilly Hotel, Sydney remained in residence for nearly five years before embarking on a variety tour. Words And Music, which opened at the Adelphi Theatre in London on 16 September 1932, was the first joint C B Cochran-Noël Coward revue to make a loss. This was despite containing such songs as The Partys Over Now, Mad About The Boy and The Younger Generation. Ray Noble & His New Mayfair Orchestra were purely a house band with no existence outside the recording studios. Even so, the tremendous reception a lot of the bands superb records received in the USA (many with the legendary Al Bowlly), led to Noble and Bowlly travelling to New York in the autumn of 1934 for an extended visit. Bowlly returned to the UK in January 1937, alone. Over the next four years, until his tragic death in The Blitz in April 1941, he came back to the treadmill of record sessions and appearances in variety. Amongst his best recordings from this era, by general consensus, are those made with the bandleader Geraldo in 1938/9. Hear for yourself on Two Sleepy People.
A Cole Porter song aptly follows our Noël Coward offering; this ones called They All Fall In Love from a rather obscure film, The Battle Of Paris. Jack Hylton built up a tremendous following in the eleven years from 1927 as Europes greatest show band. His first track on this collection was made in the open acoustic of a large hall in Berlin (probably the Beethovensaal). After over ten years on the His Masters Voice label, both record company and bandleader had an acrimonious split when the latter went off to Decca for a couple of years. Hylton didnt record commercially at all during 1934 but came back to HMV for the last five years of his bandleading career. One, Two, Button Your Shoe from the film Pennies From Heaven features the marvellous vocal quintet The Swingtette, a group Hylton had discovered in Kansas City during his long sojourn in the United States.
The most prolific and one of the best of the dance band singers was Sam Browne (who toppled Al Bowlly from first place in the Melody Maker Popularity Poll in 1937). Sams first contribution is on the very lively Skirts with Billy Cotton & His Band. Cotton, unlike many of his contemporaries, maintained his position as a high profile working bandleader throughout the Fifties and Sixties, right up to his death on 25 March 1969. Vocal honours are shared between Sam Browne and Nat Gonella on Sweet Sixteen And Never Been Kissed, where both Romeos independently declare that the young lady in question has "...never been kissed by no-nobody but me". The Blue Mountaineers was a studio band, the nucleus of which comprised musicians moonlighting from Ambroses Orchestra!
Dublin-born Debroy Somers was the first musical director of The Savoy Orpheans from 1923 to 1926. Upon leaving, he formed his own touring band and although some of his recordings can sound a little ponderous and dated, Look What Youve Done from the Eddie Cantor film The Kid From Spain is an agreeable number enhanced by a vocal from Dan Donovan.
The popularity of Ambrose & His Orchestras Saturday night radio broadcasts boosted the bands fame. Ambrose remains in the opinion of many the top British bandleader of the 1930s. Its The Talk Of The Town, a popular standard from 1933, features the perennial favourite Elsie Carlisle. David Comers old instrumental warhorse Hors DOeuvres (dating from 1915) is