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: 20/11/2011

Music: Jazz & Blues

20/11/2011

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Russell Davies, 20/11/2011

The show features Frank Sinatra, Christiane Legrand, Bessie Smith and many more.

Russell Davies celebrates the art, craft and inspiration of the popular song. The show features Frank Sinatra, Christiane Legrand, Bessie Smith and many more.

Russell opens with the 50th anniversary of a very famous, if curious, Frank Sinatra recording - Hoagy Carmichael's Stardust without the chorus - then devotes much of the show this week to an investigation of comeback songs. 

He unearths a few mysteries as he does so, like the plethora of alternative lyrics by anonymous hands to Torna A Surriento (Come Back To Sorrento). We hear the most famous exhibits - Alan Jay Lerner's Come Back To Me (Dusty Springfield) Hammerstein & Romberg's Lover Come Back To Me (Annette Hanshaw), Irving Berlin's You Keep Coming Back Like A Song (Georgia Gibbs) and many more.

Russell pays tribute to Christiane Legrand, an early member of The Swingle Singers who died recently, and remembers Bessie Smith, whose last contracted record for Columbia was made on this day 80 years ago. We hear it: Need A Little Sugar In My Bowl.

The programme is full of contrasting highlights, including Anita O'Day with Gene Krupa, one of Nat King Cole's biggest hits and ditto one by Les Paul.

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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Russell Davies

20/11/2011

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