Electric Shock

by Peter Doggett

  Magazines such as Radio Pictorial (but not the BBC’s more reserved Radio Times) spotlighted the personal lives of Britain’s most prominent bandleaders, without ever the hint of scandal. Not that the genre was short on personalities. By far the most popular London band was led by Jack Hylton, the biggest-selling British artist before the Beatles. He knew the value of self-promotion, flying several members of his band around Blackpool Tower at the height of the summer season in 1927, and dropping leaflets on holidaymakers below to publicise his latest release, ‘Me and Jane in a Plane’. Hylton gauged the changing times by studying the sheet music for all the latest American hits, and then applying what he called mysteriously ‘the British touch27’ for his native audience. With a repertoire that extended from Gilbert and Sullivan’s musical comedies and light classics to songs from London’s hottest revues, he set out to appeal to all possible tastes without veering too dangerously close to the ‘nerve-torturing riot28’ of jazz.

  Billy Cotton (still the host of a TV variety show in the 1960s) built his reputation on his mastery of all the latest dances, and was a particular favourite of the ubiquitous Prince of Wales. While Cotton could barely disguise his anger when His Royal Highness insisted on taking over the drums, all London’s leaders knew that the royal imprimatur was a guarantee of success. The suave and sophisticated Ambrose (son of an East End rag-and-bone man) encouraged the young royals to attend his performances at Ciro’s or the Café de Paris. If you weren’t a royal, then Ambrose was less welcoming: while his band was a hotbed of musical talent, and his name a watchword for smooth entertainment, the leader was prone to lambasting his public on the slightest provocation. As his fellow bandleader Ted Heath recalled, ‘a person felt honoured29 if Ambrose deigned to reply to him; to be insulted by him was the accolade of social success’.

  With the royals, of course, deference took precedence over self-expression. As bandleader Jack Payne explained, ‘Royal interest can obviously30 be of untold value to a band, but woe betide any pushy young person who is foolish enough to presume. The Prince of Wales has sometimes asked me to play certain tunes – when “Two Little Worlds” was popular, he would sometimes like to have it played seven or eight times in an evening – but because he might do one the honour to come up and speak to one, it does not give one the right to ask him what he thinks will win the Derby.’ Embarrassing the prince was also an appalling faux pas: Geraldo, who made his reputation as the leader of the Gaucho Tango Orchestra at the Savoy, and offered what the British assumed was an authentic blend of South American rhythms, had to reveal himself as an East Ender called Gerald when HRH spoke to him in Spanish at the 1933 Royal Command Performance. Such subterfuge was common: Bertini was actually Bert Gutsell; Alfredo, with his band of gypsies, was Alfred Gill; Chaquito was Johnny Gregory; and Waldini was known to his mum as Wally Bishop.

  For a genuine taste of the exotic, dancers could relish the sound of the bandleader who billed himself initially as Leonelli Gandino, but enjoyed more success between 1926 and his death in 1980 as Annunzio Mantovani, from Venice. His flair for publicity put Jack Hylton to shame. He claimed to own a 200-year-old instrument, which he christened ‘the Violin of Death31’ because it had been ‘cursed with evil power’. To reinforce his reputation as the Alice Cooper or Ozzy Osbourne of the 1930s, he recounted how he had been hired at great expense to play at a private supper party. So private was the engagement, indeed, that only his host was present, demanding to hear a series of classical melodies. When Mantovani appealed for a break after an hour or two, his patron is said to have flourished a knife, and shouted ‘Continue! There is a singing32 bird within you, and if the bird dies, I must stab it!’ As Mantovani told the story, he might have been playing to this day had neighbours not burst in to rescue him. All of this was hardly in keeping with the light orchestral repertoire that was his reliable stock-in-trade, but it sold records and dance-hall tickets.

  Magazine readers of the era relished the exploits of Harry Roy,fn5 who devoted several years to courting a princess from Sarawak in Borneo, whom he had met at a Mayfair party. Their long-distance affair delighted the public, especially when he proposed by mail, prompting ‘Princess Pearl’ to make the perilous eight-day journey to London by flying boat to accept. They were subsequently seen together in the 1936 musical film, Everything is Rhythm. Harry Roy enhanced his fame by riding an elephant down London’s Oxford Street to publicise an appearance at the Palladium.

  In all the dramas surrounding the British bands of the 1920s and 30s, however, there was nothing to match the fate of Bert Ralton. His Havana Band (no more Cuban than Geraldo was Argentinian) secured a lucrative booking in South Africa over Christmas 1926, after which Ralton went on safari. While hunting game in the bush, he stepped backwards against a rifle held by one of his companions. It discharged, causing a fatal leg wound. As he lay bleeding on the ground, Ralton is said to have asked for his ukulele and sung repeated choruses of Irving Berlin’s ballad ‘Always’ until he fell unconscious.

  It is tempting to imagine that in the same situation, Jack Payne would have reserved his last moments of consciousness for cursing everyone around him. Between 1928 and 1932, he was the irascible leader of the BBC Dance Orchestra, which was in effect the national dance band. His outfit was invited to perform over the air so regularly that they amassed 650 hours of live broadcasts in 1931 alone. Payne believed that there was virtually no audience for jazz (a prejudice in which he was supported by both record sales and opinion polls in the UK), that ‘Many a tune has gone33 to its grave through being too complicated’, and that the infallible judge of a new song was an errand boy: if he whistled it, it was a hit. Despite enjoying an audience which was predominantly female, Payne had little time for women: it was ‘pointless’ for them to sing in front of a band, he declared, while he claimed to ‘loathe and abominate34 those sickly letters which some women send me’. The culprits were apparently ‘foolish flappers35 and silly spinsters’.

  Perhaps because of his unpredictable temperament, Payne was replaced in 1932 as Britain’s most influential musical personality by his polar opposite: the bespectacled, nervous, modest Henry Hall. Whereas Payne would probably have spanked any children within arm’s reach, Hall realised that they might be listening to the radio, and ensured that he added suitable material to his broadcast repertoire, such as the perennial ‘Teddy Bears’ Picnic’. When the BBC broke with Reithian tradition by allowing him to introduce his own numbers, his unassuming charm and gentle voice enchanted the public. He became something of a national idol, celebrated (as indeed Payne had been) by a hastily assembled feature film, Music Hath Charms. The sense of familiarity which he inspired in his listeners was evidenced by a letter sent to him from Aberdeen: ‘Dear Mr Hall36, Will you please get your band to play louder, as my batteries are run down.’

  All of these bandleaders, and dozens more, mirrored their American counterparts by maintaining a fiendish schedule of live performance, radio broadcasts, and recording. Jack Hylton, for example, accumulated his 7 million disc sales between 1923 and 1930 by making literally hundreds of records during that period – although none of them came remotely close to challenging the 750,000 sales of the Savoy Orpheans’ 1926 coupling of ‘Valencia’ and ‘The Student Prince’.fn6 While many of the American bands commanded a loyal British following, the reverse was rarely true: Hylton and Hall made a passing impression on the US market, but it was the record rather than the band that appealed.

  Such was not the case with Ray Noble, who like Harry Lauder in the vaudeville era, and the Beatles three decades hence, carried a distinctively British sound across the Atlantic and persuaded sceptical Americans that they had something to learn from the old country. He was, said the magazine American Music Lover in 1935, the ‘Jazz-King of England’, although the title was scarcely accurate; indeed, Noël Coward congratulated Noble on creating a dance sound that did not rely on ragtime and jazz. Cambridge-educated, Noble was recruited by HMV in London as both a classical pianist
and dance-band arranger, the former skill assumed to assist the latter. By his late 20s, he was functioning not only as a bandleader, songwriter and studio arranger, but also as the company’s recording manager, overseeing music from grand opera to low comedy. He led the company’s house band, the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, some of whose members were (according to the publicity department) polo players who regularly turned up for recording sessions in jodhpurs. Not that Noble required such PR gimmicks. As an American profile noted, while most bands based their success on ‘the constant use of certain mannerisms37 of orchestration and rhythm’ or ‘the more or less potent physical allure of the leader’, Noble’s secret was ‘a guiding musical intelligence of an exceptionally high order … Here, at last, was a dance band which one might be certain of being able to listen to without insulting one’s intelligence.’

  Every aspect of Noble’s work attracted praise, from the sonic clarity of his recordings (only possible in Britain, American reviewers insisted) to the sophistication of his arrangements – the subtle strokes of tone and colour with which he could enrich the most hackneyed of material. Amongst his generation of British arrangers, only the maverick Reginald Foresythe could match his delicate use of a dance band: emotions were described and released with gentlemanly control, in keeping with his near-aristocratic image. (He played up to his ‘posh’ origins with a dry version of Irving Berlin’s ‘Slummin’ on Park Avenue’, castigating his neighbours’ vowel sounds in appalled tones.) The buried eroticism of genteel romance was often apparent in his songs, three of which – ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’, ‘Love is the Sweetest Thing’ and ‘The Very Thought of You’ – have passed into the ‘standards’ repertoire.

  High among the Noble band’s attractions in the 1930s were the vocal talents of Al Bowlly, remembered today as Britain’s only viable rival to the American crooners. He was born in East Africa, and then apprenticed in South Africa, India and finally Germany before reaching London, and working with several of the era’s finest bands. To modern ears, Bowlly’s style can sound both stiff, like a Victorian balladeer, and as flexible as Sinatra, with an easy physicality which enhanced his sex appeal. Noble and Bowlly intended to take America by storm in 1934, but were prevented by union rules from importing their entire British band – the equivalent, perhaps, of Lennon and McCartney being forced to recruit American backup for The Ed Sullivan Show in 1964. Instead, Noble assembled a union-approved outfit which never quite matched the dexterity of his British crew, though it did provide the young trombonist Glenn Miller with a rapid education in arranging and band-leading.

  Beyond the bands, Britain’s most successful export was one of the last great stars to emerge from the music halls: singer, actress and comedian Gracie Fields. Like Al Jolson, she began her career as a pre-teen ‘stooge’ for an older performer, planted in the audience so she could ‘spontaneously’ deliver the chorus of Lily Turner’s songs. ‘This worked well38’, her biographer recounted, ‘until an irate theatregoer took her for a heckler and hit her with her umbrella.’ Given star billing at the age of 13, Fields built a lasting career out of her self-deprecating Lancashire humour, command of sentimental balladry, and apparent ability to synthesise the emotions of ordinary working folk. The British public relished her often saucy comic songs, especially when – as in the opening monologue of ‘In the Woodshed She Said She Would’ – she pretended to find them disgraceful. It was a rare talent who could sell novelties such as ‘Let’s All Go Posh’ and ‘What Can You Give a Nudist on His Birthday?’, and then reduce an audience to tears with a mournful tale of lost love. ‘Poor Gracie39,’ her record company lamented in a promotion for a song entitled ‘He Forgot to Come Back Home’, ‘tearful and lonely, destined to be the plaything of fate – and wicked men. Take her, neglected and forgotten, to your heart … and she’ll give you half-a-crown’s worth of honest glee every time you put the record on. Which will be very, very often.’ This pleasure-through-pain rhetoric resembled the way in which blues records were being sold in America. An authentic taste of Gracie’s ‘everywoman’ appeal was provided by a set of three 78 rpm discs made before an audience at the Holborn Empire in October 1933, one of the earliest ‘live’ recordings.

  On her initial trip to the US, Fields was billed as ‘The Funniest Woman in the World’, to the bafflement of those who could not decode her Lancashire accent. She recalled an embarrassing encounter with George Gershwin, who was the designated host for a New York show-business party in her honour: ‘There were lots of film stars40 there, and he was playing some of his own music on the piano. So I thought, “I’ll just show off and sing it with him.” I started to sing the song with him, and I suddenly got nervous in the middle and forgot every word. He was quite interested in me at the beginning, but when I forgot the words he looked at me with disgust. I felt proper daft!’

  If Gracie Fields traded on her fans’ feeling that they might encounter someone just like her in the corner shop, the radio also introduced them to music that sounded strangely, even dangerously, alien. While the BBC’s entertainment was carefully moderated to reflect Britain at its most reserved,fn7 more diverse fare was offered by the Continental stations which could easily be picked up by a short-wave set. Based in Luxembourg, Normandy, Paris, the Côte d’Azur and dozens of equally exotic locations, their programmes were sponsored, just as they were in America, by the manufacturers of such strange products as Zam-Buk (a herbal balm) and Bile Beans, an all-purpose pick-me-up which promised: ‘If you want to hear how young you’re looking, begin by taking nightly doses of Bile Beans.’

  While much of their output sounded sufficiently mild to appease BBC executives (‘Sea Shanties’, ‘Songs with a Guitar’, ‘Some Old-Fashioned Dances’), other programmes were more daring. Radio Paris offered the Murphy Minstrels with ‘A Real Nigger Minstrel Show’; Radio Normandy sampled the sounds of the steppes with ‘Balalaika Songs’; and Radio Luxembourg’s ‘Plantation Love Songs’ series promised that the listener would ‘Hear the nightingale singing down the old tobacco road and the Baccy Pickers over in their shanties’, with no American slavery-era cliché left untouched.

  The unchallenged king of esoteric broadcasting in the Europe of the mid-1930s was Carson Robison. Oxydol detergent presented his weekly show, declaring: ‘There’s romance in the far, far West.’ Robison was the self-declared ‘Hillbilly King’, the aural equivalent to the cowboy heroes of the early talking pictures. ‘I spoke the language41 of the country folk, who snapped ’em up and played my records every Sunday night (their night off) as regularly as they read the Bible’, he explained to his English fans. ‘Then city folk got the hillbilly craze.’ It was a craze rooted in the ideals of the distant past, and brought to life by the most modern of inventions: the radio transmitter.

  * * *

  fn1 To be strictly accurate, the instrument popularised in the Great War was actually an American offspring of the original Portuguese instrument, named the banjulele. It was said to be an especial favourite of the Prince of Wales, who in 1926 was ‘particularly partial7’ to a ukulele ditty named ‘Save Your Sorrow’. ‘Such a title’, a Melody Maker reviewer noted, ‘is bound to appeal to his sunny temperament.’ On such deference was the British Empire built.

  fn2 As a demonstration of the importance of understanding the microphone, compare DeLeath’s precise control on ‘Blue Skies’ with the over-modulation of May Alix, Louis Armstrong’s duet partner on the contemporaneous ‘Big Butter and Egg Man’.

  fn3 His real name was Hubert Vallee, and he adopted his stage name in tribute to a jazz saxophonist, Rudy Wiedoeft. He must surely have calculated the advantages, however, of sharing a name with silent-film star Rudolph Valentino, whose death in 1926 robbed America’s young women of their most sexually potent idol. As an aside: one British newspaper declared that Vallee could best be described as a ‘blues singer’, suggesting that the journalist in question had never heard a blues record.

  fn4 The Swedish Music Academy warned in 1961 that it was i
llegal to release pop interpretations of melodies by Edvard Grieg. Offending items were marked in the Swedish radio archives with a death’s head stamp, to ensure that they weren’t broadcast.

  fn5 Roy’s patron, Felix Mendelssohn, proved to be equally adept at influencing the public, falsely claiming to be a relative of the nineteenth-century Romantic composer. He formed the Hawaiian Serenaders, boasting that they hailed from the South Seas, with the aim of converting the UK to the delights of the steel guitar and the hula dance, although most of his musicians had a strangely British appearance.

  fn6 The most popular record in Britain during the inter-war period is believed to have been ‘Hear My Prayer’ by the Temple Church Choir, with more than 800,000 copies sold. William MacEwan’s ‘The Old Rugged Cross’ (1929) also outsold all but a handful of ‘pop’ releases during this era.

  fn7 In 1939, the BBC tried to straitjacket its bandleaders, by issuing them with a list of thirty-two songs, from which they had to select at least 40% of their output. This anticipated the Top 40 playlists of future decades, but proved so unpopular with musicians and public alike that it was dropped after a month.