Forgotten Musical Masterpieces REVISITED (Series 1 Part 1)

Forgotten Musical Masterpieces, the acclaimed vintage music series on BBC Radio 2 hosted by Barry Humphries, ran for six series from from 2016-2022.

The show aimed to transport listeners back to a bygone. Each episode celebrated music and artists from the first half of the 20th century.

Producer Clair Wordsworth recalls some highlights from Programme 1 of Series 1, broadcast in January 2016.

H'Lo Baby - Jack Hylton & His Band provided the ebullient opener.

Jack Hylton with his band was a massive star of the 1920s and 30s. His first claim to fame came when he was still a boy in the early 1900s. He was billed as 'the singing mill boy', touring around theatres in the north of England, dressed as a mill worker complete with clogs, singing popular songs of the era.

In 1913, Jack met Ennis Parkes, who later become his first wife (they remained married until her death in 1957, although Jack was known to have numerous affairs with other women). HIs first position as a dance bandleader was at a club on Old Bond Street. The 400 Club later became The Embassy Club. During the same period but during the day, he worked as an cinema organist. It was an exceptionally lucrative time for talented, hard-working musicians who liked their music to swing. Tracks by Jack Hylton's Band featured through the six series of FMM, so I'll return to Jack's story another time.

Things Are Looking Up - Fred Astaire

This positive song was one of Barry's favourites. He loved Fred Astaire and this song was selected by Barry as one of his Desert Island Discs.

"I consider Fred Astaire to be one of the great artists of the 20th century,"  he said, "not only was he a wonderful dancer, he was a splendid singer and interpreted the songs of the Gershwins [George & Ira] beautifully."

Barry's love of old music began during childhood illnesses, when he was allowed to listen to his parents' radio in his bedroom. "My parents wireless gave me the first impressions of world far away from Melbourne. During childhood illnesses, my mother would put the Radiola set in my bedroom and I'd turn the Bakelite knob from station to station. Mumps, measles, hooping cough... I hoped these illnesses would never end because I loved listening to the radio so much."

The Umbrella Man - Flanagan & Allen

Another of Barry's favourites. It was evocative of the Second World War era, when he was growing up 13,000 miles away from Europe.

As Time Goes By - Rudy Vallee

This was the song that held special memories for the characters Ilsa and Rick (played by Ingrid Berman and Humphrey Bogart) in the movie Casablanca. As Time Goes By is now a classic, but it had been a long forgotten composition of the early 1930s, until it featured more than a decade later in that Second World War movie.

Rudy Vallee was the very first artist to record the song and countless other singers have since taken it to their hearts. Set in Morocco in World War II Casablanca was actually filmed in California. Plus, the infamous line 'play it again Sam' never featured in the script. And Sam the piano player never actually played the piano. Dooley Wilson, who played the part of Sam, was himself a professional drummer, so all the piano playing the film was done by a pianist called Elliot Carpenter, who sat behind a curtain tinkling his ivories, while Bergman, Bogart and Wilson were recorded on screen for posterity.

Heute Nacht Order Nie (Tonight or Never) - The Comedian Harmonists

The Way You Look Tonight/A Fine Romance - The Comedian Harmonists

The Comedian Harmonists (also often referred to as The Comedy Harmonists) were the German singing sensation of the 1920s and early 30s. Banned by the Third Reich, most of their members were forced to flee abroad. They've now become the subject of a Broadway musical by Barry Manilow entitled The Harmonists.

Nessun Dorma - Joseph Schmidt composed by Puccini, this is probably the world's best known operatic aria.

A Star Falls From Heaven - Joseph Schmidt

Given his outstanding international fame when he was alive, the song A Star Falls From Heaven is a fitting tribute. In the 1920s and 30s, the voice of this renowned pre-war Austro-Hungarian Tenor was hardly off the wireless. His voice was the voice of Europe before the terror and it was a Jewish voice. He enjoyed his greatest international success during the rise of the Nazis, who went on to prohibit artists of that faith from working. When the Second World War broke out in 1939, Joseph was caught in France as the Germans invaded. He attempted to escape to Cuba, but was instead interned in a Swiss Refugee Camp, near Zurich, where he died of a heart attack in 1943. He was just 38 years old.

Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans - Noel Coward

The Germans were not the only ones to ban songs from being performed. Noel Coward's Don't Let's Be Beastly to the Germans initially made it through the BBC's internal checks, but was subsequently banned due to public demand.

Winston Churchill was said to be fan of this song, but radio listeners wrote to the BBC in their droves to complain the song didn't support British troops fighting the enemy. This is proof, if any were needed, that irony is lost on the masses!

Someone who could do no wrong was the forces sweetheart Vera Lynn and her rendition of When the Lights Go On Again All Over the World is wonderfully evocative and melodic. Born Vera Margaret Welch, she became the biggest British female singer of the Second World War and enjoyed a long and happy life.

Dedication (theme to the British movie Idol of Paris) performed by Mantovani & His Orchestra with the theme's composer Mischa Spoliansky also on piano.

Russian born Mischa was a musical prodigy. As a young man, he moved to Berlin where he composed songs for the likes of Marlene Dietrich. In 1933, he was forced to flee again, this time to London, where he began a second career as a film composer. From the 1970s onwards, he was a close friend of Barry Humphries. Barry visited Mischa often at his flat near Piccadilly Circus. Mischa spoke to Marlene (who by that time was residing at The Ritz in Paris) on the telephone every day at 5pm.

A Nightingale Sang in Berkley Square - Dorothy Carless with Geraldo

Barry arrived in London in 1959 - on 1st June in fact, a baking hot day. By that time there sadly were no longer any nightingales left in Berkley Square. Nonetheless the song retains its charm. We could have filled the programme with different renditions of the song. Ann Shelton, Bing Crosby, Hutch, Tony Bennett, Vera Lynn are just a few of the artists who recorded it. Barry, however, chose to play Dorothy Carless singing it, accompanied by Geraldo and his orchestra.

Barry grew up in Australia but he believed for most of his childhood that he was living in a distant and rather sunny part of the English Home Counties, somewhere near Cheltenham. As a young boy, Barry found it easy to pinpoint the exact location of many English towns and cities - Huddersfield, Bristol, Cheltenham and Leeds - on a map, but would have found it impossible to do the same for places in Australia, even the cities of Sydney, Perth and Adelaide.

The wireless was full of songs about England too. Peter Dawson sang about Old Father Thames and Glorious Devon, Gert & Daisy sang about the Court of Good Queenn Bess and Marriot Edgar gave us his unique take on the Norman Conquest of 1066 in his amusing Battle of Hastings - "it's better than the Beyeux Tapestry any day!" said Barry.

"The singers and performers on my parents wireless painted such a romantic view of England, I couldn't wait to get a taste of the old country for myself. I found growing up in Melbourne a little depressing. I longed to get back to the old country, to antiquity, to England, the home of my ancestors," recalled Barry.

When Barry arrived in London in 1959 there was a sense that the capital was on the verge of change. He was just in time to witness the last days of the music hall and before a new generation - such as Joan Littlewood, Lionel Bart, Spike Milligan & the Beyond the Fringe Brigade - made its mark on British theatre. It was an exciting time certainly certainly, but during his first months in the British capital at the end of the Fifties, it was unclear what his future would be.

Barry's first job in the UK was doing nightshifts in an ice-cream factory in Acton, where he was tasked with stirring the raspberry ripple mix night after night. This enabled him to pay rent on basement rooms in the far from fashionable (at that time) Notting Hill (basement of No. 2 Pembridge Gardens to be precise) and at the same time still manage to attend auditions for roles in the West End during the day.

Winning the role of the undertaker, Mr Sowerberry, in 1960, in the original London production of Oliver! was a turning point for Barry Humphries. And, he went with the show when it transferred to Broadway.

The rest, as they say, is history!

Read highlights from programme 2 (series 1) here.