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Russell Davies

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

Russell Davies: 21/04/2013

21/04/2013

BBC Radio 4 Extra - Russell Davies, 21/04/2013

Trains, axes and Hot Lips provide Russell Davies with subject matter.

Russell Davies's dip into Song History reveals some axe-wielding characters, some Hot Lips, courtesy of Shakespeare, Ray Noble etc., and a Brown-eyed, Handsome Man.

Trains and Axes and Lips are the main themes of Russell's ramble through the rich back-catalogue of Popular Song this week starting with a visit to one of Louis Armstrong's classic LP sessions from sixty years ago on April 21st 1953, with the great Sy Oliver directing the orchestra through 'April In Portugal'. This being the centenary of the birth of Dr Richard Beeching who axed so many of Britain's railway branch-lines and with Russell coming from a railway family, as he reveals, it's no surprise that next is Flanders & Swann's elegy for those lost stations - 'Slow Train'. Thoughts of Beeching's 'hatchet job' leads to the story of Lizzie Borden, the murder of whose parents created a song introduced in the Broadway revue 'New Faces Of 1952': We hear Chad Mitchell's Trio sing it. Then there's a very famous popular ditty about an axe - a 'forest razor' as Phil Harris describes it. 

Taking us back to the studios of 85 years ago, Russell tells of the eclipse of Whiteman's star trumpeter, Henry Busse, by the 'newer fellas' like Bix Beiderbecke, prompting him to walk out (no, he wasn't axed) and this gives an excuse for Spike Jones' send-up of Busse's theme 'Hot Lips'. Trumpeter Hot Lips Page is on display with Artie Shaw; Doris Day and Johnny Ray singing 'Candy Lips'. Russell finds a Shakespearian take on Lips ('Take, O Take Those Lips Away') by Maxine Sullivan; there's a new release by Jane Morgan with hips as well as lips; and a memento of Nina Simone: 'Brown-eyed Handsome Man' Russell saves the last word for a final memory of those lost railways with The King's Singers' 'I'm A Train'.

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21/04/2013

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