The BBC's wartime ban on certain singers and songs amounted to a radio blitz on popular music for Melody Maker.
It all began with a deal between the BBC and the then Sir John Reith who, in the early days of the war, was Minister of Information.
But why were some songs banned and others not?
And what was it that excluded a vocalist from the airways?
In this first of two programmes, veteran broadcaster Frank Gillard goes back to the outbreak of hostilities in 1939. Producer Christopher Stone