Dance bands on Radio 2 Dance bands on Radio 2
- popular music of the 1920-1940's
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British dance band records from the 1930's can also occasionally be heard on the shows presented by Desmond Carrington, Russell Davies and Sheridan Morley. The later Britsh and American swing bands of the 1940's - present day are featured on the second half of Malcolm Laycock's show (10.30 - 11.00pm Sunday)
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Acknowledgements:
this page first published 22 August 2005
last updated 22 October 2007
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Back in 1968 Radio 2 broadcast a few special programmes celebrating the popular dance bands of the 1920's and 1930's, hosted by Alan Dell. Featuring the bands of Ambrose, Lew Stone, Jack Hylton etc. these programmes proved immensely popular, after all most listeners over 45 in 1968 would have danced to these bands as youngsters. Soon Alan Dell was presenting a regular programme Dance Band Days and by the time I began to tune-in (1975) Alan's show was on Monday nights at 7.30pm, somehow competing well with Coronation St. After the death of Alan Dell in 1995 the show was presented by Malcolm Laycock, and Malcolm continues with the show now on Sundays at 10.00 - 11.00pm, with the first half hour devoted to British dance bands from mid 1920's - mid 1940's. From 1995 to September 2005 Malcolm was aided by producer Roy Oakshott, but since October Bob McDowell has been the produce. All I know about Bob was that he was a producer of the BBC Big Band in 2003.
In the last 15 years there have been numerous CD's issued of British dance band music, benifitting from the audio restoration technology that can be applied to 78rpm records using computers and noise-reduction software. Many of the tracks played on Malcolm's show are from new commercial CD's. Nowadays though, computers and audio software are available in many homes and record collectors can restore some of their own old record collection and send the results to Malcolm. On every show he plays one or two rare tracks that have been restored by collectors, including yours truly here. 
