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

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Russell Davies

Music: Easy Listening, Soundtracks & Musicals

BBC Radio 4 Extra

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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: 28/10/2012

28/10/2012

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Russell Davies, 28/10/2012

Opening with Tom Lehrer and featuring Bing Crosby, the Beatles, the Chordettes and more.

Russell celebrates the art, craft and inspiration of the popular song. Tonight he opens with Tom Lehrer and features Bing Crosby, the Beatles, the Chordettes and more.

In answer to recent press suggestions that it was either James Bond or The Beatles that marked The Modern Age, Russell posits a different date-line: The Cuban Missile Crisis. In memory of this, he opens with Tom Lehrer's So Long Mom, (I'm Off To Drop The Bomb).

A brief line from this - "Little Johnny Jones" - sends him to the musical origin of that. And it turns up first in George M Cohan's Give My Regards To Broadway. Mention of the economy and we're into Bing Crosby and Brother Can You Spare A Dime? swiftly followed by another message-carrying song Remember My Forgotten Man (Maude Maggart sings).

For Black History Month, Russell plays singer-turned-campaigner Etta Moten, whom we glimpse in The Carioca, from Flying Down To Rio. A new release - 50 Songs That Shaped The Beatles - gives us the next four songs. Then a Beatles composition, A World Without Love, starts a little stream of "world" songs: The Chordettes' Let The Rest Of The World Go By and Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World.

Finally, two new releases, Gary Williams' Carry On Screaming for Hallowe'en; and Teddi King singing The Touch Of Your Lips, just because it's excellent.

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

28/10/2012

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