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Squadronaires
The Squadronaires is a Royal Air Force band which began and performed in Britain during and after World War II. The official title of the band was 'The Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra', but it was always known by the more popular title "The Squadronaires". History In 1939, the Royal Air Force implemented a plan to raise morale and entertain the troops during wartime, and The Squadronaires was one of the bands organized as a result. The band drew from some of the best musicians of the day. It became a popular jazz band and likely the best known of the British military dance bands of the time, with hits like "There's Something in the Air" and "South Rampart Street Parade." The Squadronaires played at dances and concerts for service personnel, and also broadcast on the BBC and recorded on the Decca label. The orchestra's first broadcast took place in January 1941. After D-Day, the Squadronaires went on to entertain service personnel engaged in the Northwest European campaig ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Cliff Townshend
Clifford Blandford Townshend (28 January 1916 – 29 June 1986) was an English jazz musician who played saxophone in the Royal Air Force Dance Orchestra, popularly known as The Squadronaires. He also played clarinet in the band. His eldest son, Pete, gained renown as guitarist and principal composer for the band The Who. Biography Cliff Townshend was born to Dorothy (née Blandford) and Horace Townshend on 28 January 1916. The couple married in 1910 in Brentford and were both musicians who played in Concert Party shows for the troops during World War I. Townshend showed an early interest in music and was in a band by 1932 while attending Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith, London. He was expelled from school for playing in his teens at "Bottle Parties", adult parties which involved smoking and drinking as well as innovative popular music. He played at such venues as the Stork Club and with the Billy Wiltshire Band. In 1940 Townshend enlisted in the Royal Air Force. Before endin ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Ronnie Aldrich
Ronald Frank Aldrich (15 February 1916 – 30 September 1993) was a British easy listening and jazz pianist, arranger, conductor and composer. Early life He was born Ronald Frank Aldrich on 15 February 1916 in Erith, England, the only son of a store manager. He started playing the piano at three years old and was educated at the Harvey Grammar School in Folkestone and learned violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. He travelled to India in the late 30s ahead of World War Two to play jazz and first gained fame in the 1940s as the leader of a Royal Air Force band called The Squadronaires who had a twenty-year-long career before they disbanded in 1964. Education and career Aldrich was educated at The Harvey Grammar School, Folkestone, and taught violin at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama. Before the Second World War, he went to India to play jazz and first gained fame in the 1940s with the Squadronaires, which he led from 1951, when the band was then billed ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Harry Lewis (musician)
Harry Lewis (born Harris Copperman; 11 January 1915 – 29 April 1998) was an English saxophonist and clarinettist, who was best known as the husband of singer Vera Lynn. Early life He was born to a Jewish family in Whitechapel, in the East End of London on 11 January 1915, and originally named Harris Copperman; his parents were Jack "Jacob" Copperman and Rachel "Ray" Cohen. Harris, who would be professionally known as Harry Lewis, had three sisters; Minnie, Betty and Lily. His father was also a musician, and the family lived in Hackney. Dance band career In April 1937, Lewis took part in a broadcast on BBC Radio as part of Bram Martin's Dance Orchestra. Lewis made his earliest recordings with a dance band as part of George Elrick's group that year, playing clarinet and alto saxophone on Elrick's recordings for Columbia from August 1937 to April 1938. Lewis subsequently joined Jack Harris and his Orchestra, and played alto saxophone on their Ciro's Club sessions for His Ma ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Blackpool Tower Ballroom
Blackpool Tower is a tourist attraction in Blackpool, Lancashire, England, which was opened to the public on 14 May 1894. When it opened, Blackpool Tower was the tallest man made structure in the British Empire. Inspired by the Eiffel Tower in Paris, it is tall and is the 125th-tallest freestanding tower in the world. Blackpool Tower is also the common name for the Tower Buildings, an entertainment complex in a red-brick three-storey block that comprises the tower, Tower Circus, the Tower Ballroom, and roof gardens, which was designated a Grade I listed building in 1973. Background The Blackpool Tower Company was founded by London-based Standard Contract & Debenture Corporation in 1890; it bought an aquarium on Central Promenade with the intention of building a replica Eiffel Tower on the site. John Bickerstaffe, a former mayor of Blackpool, was asked to become chairman of the new company, and its shares went on sale in July 1891. The Standard Corporation kept 30,000 £1 share ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Joan Regan
Joan Regan (born Joan Bethel or Siobhan Bethel; 19 January 1928 – 12 September 2013) was an English traditional pop music singer, popular during the 1950s and early 1960s. Biography Regan was born in either Romford, Essex, or West Ham, London, (sources disagree) the youngest of six children to Irish parents. She had rheumatic fever as a child which left her with a damaged mitral valve, although this did not cause problems until she was in her seventies. Regan married an American serviceman, Dick Howell, a friend of her brothers who met in the Navy. She and Howell married on her 18th birthday in 1946. For a time they lived in Burbank, California. They had three children, one of whom died at an early age. The marriage eventually broke down. Regan, a Catholic, was able to obtain a legal dissolution, rather than a divorce. Before becoming a singer, Regan worked at a number of jobs, including re-touching photographs. Her successful singing career began in 1953, when she made a dem ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
George Chisholm (musician)
George Chisholm OBE (29 March 1915 – 6 December 1997) was a Scottish jazz trombonist and vocalist. In the late 1930s he moved to London, where he played in dance bands led by Bert Ambrose and Teddy Joyce.Coln Larkin, ''Virgin Encyclopedia of Sixties Music'' (Muze UK Ltd, 1997), p. 112 He later recorded with jazz musicians such as Coleman Hawkins, Fats Waller and Benny Carter during their visits to the UK. In 1940, during the Second World War, Chisholm signed on with the Royal Air Force and joined the RAF Dance Orchestra (known popularly as the Squadronaires), remaining in the band long after he was demobbed. He followed this with freelance work and a five-year stint with the BBC Showband (a forerunner of the BBC Radio Orchestra) and as a core member of Wally Stott's orchestra on BBC Radio's ''The Goon Show'', for which he made several minor acting appearances, for example as 'Chisholm MacChisholm the Steaming Celt' in the 1956 episode 'The Macreekie Rising of '74'. Chi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tommy McQuater
Thomas Mossie McQuater (4 September 1914 – 20 January 2008) was a Scottish jazz trumpeter. Biography Born in Maybole, Ayrshire, McQuater was most notable for his work in the United Kingdom with Bert Ambrose in the 1930s, and also for some recordings made with George Chisholm and Benny Carter. McQuater showed musical talent from an early age. Largely self-taught, he began on the cornet and by the age of 11 was a regular member of the Maybole Burgh Band – a brass band that won several competitions in the late 1920s – and played at local events and dances. McQuater turned professional in his teens and got a regular position with Louis Freeman's Band, which played at Greens Playhouse in Glasgow. In 1934, aged 20, McQuater was offered a job with one of London's most renowned bands: the Jack Payne Orchestra, which played in London and Paris. The following year he joined Lew Stone's band and made the classic recording of "Pardon Me, Pretty Baby". In the 1940s, McQuater jo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Bert Ambrose
Benjamin Baruch Ambrose (11 September 1896 – 11 June 1971), known professionally as Ambrose or Bert Ambrose, was an English bandleader and violinist. Ambrose became the leader of a highly acclaimed British dance band, ''Bert Ambrose & His Orchestra'', in the 1930s. Early life Ambrose was born to a Jewish family in Warsaw in 1896, when it was part of Congress Poland within the Russian Empire. After a time the family moved to London. In the 1911 England Census, his father, Lewis, is shown as a "Dealer in rags" (wife, Becky, "Assisting in the business"), and Ambrose as Barnett, a "Violin student musician". He began playing the violin while young, and travelled to New York with his aunt. He began playing professionally, first for Emil Coleman at New York's Reisenweber's restaurant, then in the Palais Royal's big band. After making a success of a stint as bandleader, at the age of 20 he was asked to put together and lead his own fifteen-piece band. After a dispute with his employe ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Syd Dale
Syd Dale (20 May 1924 – 15 August 1994) was an English self-taught composer and arranger of funk, easy listening and library music. His music played an important role on television, radio and advertising media of the 1960s and 1970s and is still in use today. Biography Dale was born in York, and started as an apprentice technician at Rowntree's chocolate factory at 16. Soon big band music became his passion. He spent as much time as possible listening to bands and studying the arrangements. Three years later, in 1945, he left the factory and joined several local bands as pianist and arranger. In 1952 he was recruited as a pianist with The Squadronaires, the dance orchestra of the Royal Air Force, where he worked with the conductor Ronnie Aldrich. The band toured extensively. In February 1953 they recorded Dale's arrangement of "Jeepers Creepers," his first recording session. He also played in several London hotels, and later joined the Cyril Stapleton Show Band. Dale married h ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents of Earth#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Jazz
Jazz is a music genre that originated in the African-American communities of New Orleans, Louisiana in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with its roots in blues and ragtime. Since the 1920s Jazz Age, it has been recognized as a major form of musical expression in traditional and popular music. Jazz is characterized by swing and blue notes, complex chords, call and response vocals, polyrhythms and improvisation. Jazz has roots in European harmony and African rhythmic rituals. As jazz spread around the world, it drew on national, regional, and local musical cultures, which gave rise to different styles. New Orleans jazz began in the early 1910s, combining earlier brass band marches, French quadrilles, biguine, ragtime and blues with collective polyphonic improvisation. But jazz did not begin as a single musical tradition in New Orleans or elsewhere. In the 1930s, arranged dance-oriented swing big bands, Kansas City jazz (a hard-swinging, bluesy, improvisationa ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Imperial War Museum
Imperial War Museums (IWM) is a British national museum organisation with branches at five locations in England, three of which are in London. Founded as the Imperial War Museum in 1917, the museum was intended to record the civil and military war effort and sacrifice of Britain and British Empire, its Empire during the First World War. The museum's remit has since expanded to include all conflicts in which British or Commonwealth forces have been involved since 1914. As of 2012, the museum aims "to provide for, and to encourage, the study and understanding of the history of modern war and 'wartime experience'." Originally housed in the Crystal Palace at Sydenham Hill, the museum opened to the public in 1920. In 1924, the museum moved to space in the Imperial Institute in South Kensington, and finally in 1936, the museum acquired a permanent home that was previously the Bethlem Royal Hospital in Southwark. The outbreak of the Second World War saw the museum expand both its coll ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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