BBC Radio 2 is a radio channel that started transmitting on the 30th September 1967. It replaced Light Programme.

BBC Radio 2

Radio 2

Russell Davies

Music: Easy Listening, Soundtracks & Musicals

BBC Radio 4 Extra

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama

Your digital radio entertainment station showcasing the best in comedy and drama. With recent favourites from BBC Radio 4.

Russell Davies celebrates the art, craft and inspiration of the popular song

Russell Davies: 17/04/2011

Music: Jazz & Blues

17/04/2011

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Russell Davies, 17/04/2011

Russell Davies remembers songwriters Carmen Lombado and Jack Yellen, and singer Al Bowlly.

Russell Davies remembers songwriters Carmen Lombado and Jack Yellen, and singer Al Bowlly. The featured recordings include Dean Martin, Dinah Shore, Peggy Lee and Harold Arlen.

This week, Russell focuses on a number of topics. First up is Carmen Lombado, brother of bandleader Guy Lombardo and a songwriter of some note, who died on this day 40 years ago. We open the show with Dean Martin's version of his Powder Your Face With Sunshine, following it with two more of his - A Sailboat in the Moonlight and Coquette. 

The next topic is the sad death, by wartime bomb in Jermyn Street, of singer Al Bowlly whom the show commemorates in two contrasting performances. There's a mid 30s appearance in New York with Ray Noble's specially-assembled American band and - later in the programme - a very early rarity with Fred Elizalde's Savoy Hotel band.

We then head back to 1951, the date of the copyrighting of an outfall from Frank Loesser's Guys And Dolls - his re-working of Fugue for Tin Horns, Three Cornered Tune (we hear Dinah Shore's version). And songwriter Jack Yellen departed this life on this date in 1991 and from hereon Russell displays five songs that Yellen left us, in versions by Tony Bennett, Peggy Lee, Ella Fitzgerald, Robert Crumb (and his Cheap Suit Serenaders) Barbra Streisand and Harold Arlen. The show concludes with another Arlen song - this time in the company of his regular collaborator, Ted Koehler.

Amazing music. Played by an amazing line up.

Radio 2: Amazing music. Played by an amazing line-up. The home of great music, entertainment and documentaries

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17/04/2011

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