He was the king of string, the maestro of sweet music. Forget Chuck Berry and Buddy Holly : Annunzio Mantovani and his cascading violins provided the soundtrack to postwar suburban life, with 20 chart entries in six years, and huge success in America as the biggest-selling British artist before the Beatles. But no other music has fallen out of fashion so far, so fast: Mantovani is derided as elevator music or aural chewing gum, and is hardly ever played on the radio now. In the month of the centenary of his birth, Catherine Bott talks to the surviving members of his bands and probes the reasons for his spectacular success and equally dramatic eclipse. Producer Jolyon Jenkins
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