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: 02/09/2012

Music: Jazz & Blues

02/09/2012

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Russell Davies, 02/09/2012

Russell Davies plays Bobby Darin, Frankie Laine, Bing Crosby, Septimus Winner and more.

Russell Davies celebrates the art, craft and inspiration of popular song, opening with a Bobby Darin number before taking in Frankie Laine, Bing Crosby, Septimus Winner and more.

With onset of September and the return to school of his children, Russell opens with Bobby Darin's Multiplication, a song that he explains is not about maths but "almost a rock'n'rollish update of Cole Porter's Let's Do It". 

Noting that Darin and Charlie Gracie shared the same birth-date, he follows with Gracie's Butterfly. Born 2 September 1924, Tony Mammarella, aka Anthony September, was co-writer of Butterfly. This leads to the US Payola scandal of 50 years ago, in honour of which we hear Stan Freberg's Old Payola Roll Blues.

More autumnal references follow with September In The Rain from Susannah McCorkle and, in a medley, My September Love from Joan Regan. Via Mack The Knife, also in the medley, we reach the subject of ships. Kurt Weill's My Ship (Wesla Whitfield), Kahn & Donaldson's When My Ship Comes In (Eddie Cantor), Rodgers & Hart's A Ship Without A Sail (Lee Wiley) and two lesser-known ones: A Capital Ship sung by Frankie Laine and I'm Waiting For Ships That Never Come In (Bing Crosby).

A second Wesla Whitfield number, Lovers and Losers, is coupled with James Darren's Here's To The Losers. Then a brief glimpse of Louis Armstrong gives us Listen To The Mocking Bird - by Septimus Winner - which winds up the show.

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

02/09/2012

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