Posted by PeterH on December 30, 2006 at 13:13:35 from 86.138.72.205 user Peter_H.
In Reply to: Re: Grammar posted by Peter Ceresole on December 30, 2006 at 11:43:51:
'The Kingdom of Swing' on www.live365.com, which plays wonderful stuff, some of which would certainly have been playing on the radio as the Margoletta sank into the Water...
I, too, like pre-war swing music, including some of the recordings by British bands, but it may console Peter Ceresole if I remind him that there was some awful rubbish recorded over here, and that's the sort of stuff I imagine being played aboard the Margoletta. Although I have never managed to trace a song with the lyrics 'I want to be a darling, a doodle-um, a duckle-um', I have heard some that were just as bad. Does anyone know if the lines of the song quoted in CC actually existed, or did AR create a pastiche?
Nor have I ever traced 'the Hoodlum Band'. BTW, I wonder if Peter has ever read The Dance Band Era by Albert McCarthy? AC had left-wing credentials and lost no time in pointing out the paradox 'in the position of musicians . . who came from a working-class or lower middle-class background playing night after night in surroundings of tawdry luxury and witnessing spending on a scale that must have shocked the more socially conscious amongst them'. Music for your ears, Peter! It is an excellent book, IMO, and well illustrated.