The library concerned is not the reference one, or your local
one, currently facing an uncertain future, but publishers’ music
libraries of recorded music likely to be useful for documentary
or entertainment films. The proliferation of such material in
the 1940s and 1950s has been profitably exploited by Guild,
and it now returns for more offerings from specialist labels
set up for this purpose, labels such as KPM Music, Francis,
Hunter & Day, Chappell (of course), Harmonic/Charles Brull,
and the rare birds of Conroy and Impress. Alongside them, you’ll
find Paxton, always a happy hunting ground for the Classical
cum Light Music maven.
Guild has sub divided this disc into chapters; ‘Marches’, ‘Romantic’,
‘Animals’, ‘National Character’ — you get the picture. Some
chapter headings are represented only by a single track, as
is the case with ‘Humorous’, whilst others have spawned a whole
sub genre of adherents, as is the case with ‘Light Atmosphere’.
There are the expected big name composers and band leaders and
also some much less well known personalities and bands — the
conductor-less (or if there was one he’s not mentioned) Group-Forty
Orchestra, for example, which has appeared on Guild before but
I suspect it will still be a mystery to most.
There’s plenty to invigorate, as ever in this splendidly annotated
series. King Palmer courts the Elgarian in his With Pomp
and Pride — the first part of the title being a none-too-hidden
allusion to the fact that he’s mining Elgar’s Fourth P &
C March. The Harmonic Strings get quite sassy on Lovely Day,
directed by the composer himself, Tom Wyler, whose real name
was Toni Leutwiler, the Swiss born, ex fiddle player who died
a couple of years ago. Farnon directs a lusty version of Looking
Around with the Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra whilst stalwart
Dolf van der Linden, masquerading as the more Anglophone ‘Paul
Franklin’, presents a zippy piece called Making Merry
with witty panache.
It’s unusual to hear Farnon play some cod Dixieland for Chappell
— under Guild’s rubric ‘Dance Music’— but the fellers in the
band seem to have listened to all the right people; Benny Goodman,
Bud Freeman and George Wettling from the sound of it. I wonder
who these English musicians were in ‘The Dance Band’, back in
1948?
Clive Richardson’s teasing arrangement of ‘Knick, Knack, Paddy
Whack’ comes out as This Old Man but surely Jos Cleber’s
Rickshaw Ride is altogether too cosmopolitan to quality
as a real ‘National Character’. Mind you, and fortunately, it’s
followed by John Foulds’s Le Cabaret, one of Walter Collins’s
plentiful Paxton 78s. Van der Linden gets as avant-garde as
the genre could get in his own Man from Mars (filed under
‘Novelty’) where Holstian elements prevail. Lovers of Ronald
Binge’s evergreen The Watermill will be amused that the
performers, the very English sounding Lansdowne Light Orchestra
were, in all probability, the very German Stuttgart Radio Orchestra
under its equally Teutonic director, Kurt Rehfeld. It’s certainly
quite a fast running stream: I’d play it quite a bit slower.
There’s a touch of La Valse in Ronald Hanmer’s Blood
and Sand March and some chic chicanery in Charles Williams’s
A Machine Ballet, which is more ballet than machine,
I think.
All these mono tracks sound good, albeit some of the earlier
ones are just too dampened down for my own tastes. Otherwise,
no quibbles about this one.
Jonathan Woolf
Tracks:
With Pomp and Pride by Cedric King Palmer [2:36]
London Promenade Orchestra/Walter Collins
Happidrome, for pops orchestra by Paul Fenoulhet [2:21]
Group-Forty Orchestra
Lovely Day by Tom Wyler [2:32]
The Harmonic Strings/Tom Wyler
Rue de la Paix by Laurie Johnson [3:02]
Group-Forty Orchestra
Looking Around (The Appleyards theme) by Lloyd Thomas
[2:31]
Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Robert Farnon
Making Merry, for pops orchestra by Cyril Watters [2:37]
Dolf van der Linden and his orchestra
Wide Horizon, for pops orchestra by Cecil Milner [2:51]
The Symphonia Orchestra/Curt Andersen
Dog Gone, for pops orchestra by George French [2:40]
Group-Forty Orchestra/Eric Cook
Little Debbie by Trevor Duncan [2:05]
New Concert Orchestra/Dolf van der Linden
Secret Serenade, for pops orchestra by Reg Owen [1:42]
The Club Quintet
Dixielander, for pops orchestra by Robert Farnon [1:51]
The Dance Orchestra/Robert Farnon
Transcontinental, for pops orchestra by Anthony Mawer
[2:33]
The Connaught Light Orchestra
Holiday Excursion, for pops orchestra by Peter Yorke
[2:39]
Telecast Orchestra/Peter Yorke
This Old Man, children's song arr Clive Richardson [3:31]
Group-Forty Orchestra
Rickshaw Ride, for pops orchestra by Jos Cleber [3:09]
The Grosvenor Studio Orchestra
Le Cabaret, Overture to a French comedy, Op.72a by John
Foulds [2:46]
London Promenade Orchestra/Walter Collins
Sea Piece, for pops orchestra by Jack Beaver [3:13]
Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Robert Farnon
Ascot Parade by Jack Strachey [3:14]
London Promenade Orchestra/Walter Collins
Buffoonery, for pops orchestra by Van Phillips [3:05]
The Connaught Light Orchestra
Man from Mars, for pops orchestra by Dolf van der Linden
[3:05]
Dolf van der Linden and his Metropole Orchestra
The Watermill, for oboe, harp & strings by Ronald
Binge [2:56]
The Lansdowne Light Orchestra (probably Stuttgart Radio Orchestra)/Kurt
Rehfeld
Luccombe Common, for pops orchestra by Trevor Duncan
[2:31]
The Symphonia Orchestra/Curt Andersen
The First Waltz, for pops orchestra by Robert Farnon
[3:01]
Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Robert Farnon
Quality Street, for pops orchestra by Fredric Bayco [2:15]
Group-Forty Orchestra
Stratosphere, for pops orchestra by Eric Spear [3:08]
The New Century Orchestra/Sidney Torch
Shades of Destiny, for pops orchestra by Wilfred Burns
[2:39]
Regent Classic Orchestra
Blood and Sand, march for pops orchestra by Ronald Hanmer
[3:08]
The New Century Orchestra/Sidney Torch
A Machine Ballet, for pops orchestra by Charles Williams
[3:16]
Queen’s Hall Light Orchestra/Charles Williams
Various orchestras and conductors, rec. 1946-60 
