All language subtitles for BBC Dancing Through The Blitz Blackpool_s Big Band Story.srt - 2

70 years ago, after six years of bloody fighting,

Nazi Germany finally surrendered to the Allied forces.

The people of Britain knew how to celebrate -

with the music of the big band.

This was the sound that saw us Brits through the Blitz.

It was the country's darkest hour.

It was the music that kept our spirits up.

Blackpool was at the heart of the nation's war effort.

Bombers were built here, troops were trained here and the beaches

and the ballrooms offered a respite from the horrors of war.

Even Hitler had his eye on the nation's favourite holiday resort.

It's said that Blackpool escaped being bombed by the Luftwaffe

because the Fuhrer planned to turn it into his personal

playground after his proposed invasion.

# Blue skies smiling at me... #

Where Hitler failed, another force had been successful.

It came from America and it was the sound of music.

Hitler thought it was degenerate but we just loved it.

This fantastic invention was the big band.

Britain fell in love with the big band in the 1920s

and that love affair continued into the 1950s and beyond.

- LEN:
- In this film, we're going to bring that amazing world of

big band in wartime Blackpool back to life.

Taking over the historic Empress Ballroom, Jools and his

orchestra are going to perform some of the greatest hits of the age.

JOOLS: I'll be telling the story of some of the musical greats,

the amazing artists who led the big band phenomenon from here

and across in America.

And Len and Lucy will be looking at how the sound of the big band

weaved its way into the fabric of people's lives.

How the music kept in sync with the massive social changes Britain

was experiencing.

And how we dressed to impress

and danced our way through the horrors of war.

Together, we want to show that for all the planes,

guns and battleships of the Second World War, one of Britain's greatest

weapons for boosting morale was the epic, brassy sound of the big band.

APPLAUSE

What is a big band,

what are those amazing elements?

What is its configuration?

It is at the centre, there are the drums of Gilson Lavis.

We have the bass of Mr Dave Swift...

When I discovered big band music it was one of the most exciting

things I've ever heard.

We have the sweet organ of Mr Christopher Holland...

..whooshing and gushing away.

And the groove guitar of Mr Mark Flanagan.

Let's introduce the five saxophones that make this beautiful sound.

We join on top of that the trombones.

We join on top of that the trumpets, three of them.

Oh, yeah!

To be in a room where there's 17 people swinging away,

it's unlike anything.

Singing with a big band behind you is something that you have to

experience to understand it.

- # I hear music in the air
- (I hear music in the air...) #

It is like a punch in the face. It's incredible.

APPLAUSE

BIG BAND FINISH

To really tell the story of the big band,

you have to rewind to 20 years before the war.

Just where did big band music begin in Britain?

As the country recovered from the trauma of the First World War

life had never seemed sweeter, at least for the well-off.

Cocktail bars and jazz joints

and nightclubs flourished offering the Bright Young Things every

opportunity to dance the night away to a new kind of music.

It was syncopated.

British big bands came to dominate our popular music,

creating a melodic, exuberant sound influenced by jazz from America.

JAZZ PLAYS

This was a style of music that emerged in the early 1900s

as the traditional songs that had arrived in America with

the African slaves morphed into blues, jazz and Ragtime.

It was the perfect soundtrack to the 1920s.

But to some figures in authority,

this radically new sound was debauched...

HE PLAYS A FEW NOTES

..even dangerous.

SINISTER FLOURISH

MUSIC: The Charleston by James P Johnson

I guess in the '20s, everything was shocking,

so when people were doing the Charleston, there were certain

parts of society that thought that was disgusting and perverted.

So when new music comes along, there's always going to be

an echelon of society that thinks that's not good, that's not right.

The American big bandleaders of the '20s have largely been forgotten,

but the young musicians who

played in their bands, like Duke Ellington, Louis Armstrong

and Count Basie went on to shape the big band and become world icons.

People know those names,

even if they're not familiar with their music.

The earlier ones are now kind of lost more to the general public,

but there's one called Benny Moten,

maybe a lot of people don't know about, but he was pretty fantastic.

Benny Moten's early innovative arrangements came to define

what a big band sounded like.

Benny Moten, for me, is one of the great unsung heroes,

because he gave the ammunition that went in the guns, the musical guns.

People like that aren't around now, so he should be in the history

books, right next to all these guys that we're talking about.

He died and Count Basie took over his band

and that's what became the Count Basie Band.

Basie's band was very much thought of as a goodtime band,

it had this relentless kind of...dum-dum-dum-dum chug

to the beat and you hear it and you're on your feet

and smiling, tapping... It was the epitome of happy music.

Count Basie's a person I've studied a lot

because I just really liked a lot of the things about him.

I didn't want to sound like him, but I wanted to learn about what

he was doing and sometimes I do copy what he does, which is very minimal.

You don't realise, doing all of this...

..isn't necessarily the best thing to do. Sometimes just doing...

And a big gap... And then huge horns doing this in the big gap. It was great.

You realise, you listen to the music

and suddenly you went, "Hey, there's a space here."

Mr Robert's Roost by Count Basie.

The great thing about this is it illustrates better

than any other piece that he did the thing of having the big gaps.

'During rehearsals, Jools convinced me to have a go

'at this one, so from now on, I shall be known as Count Lucy.'

But the heady excitement of the 1920s couldn't last for ever.

There were dark clouds on the horizon.

By the end of the decade, the world would be

in the grip of the worst depression of the century.

What that meant of course was very high unemployment,

and underemployment.

People on very low wages, there was a great deal of poverty

and a great deal of sort of despair.

On the other hand, the other side of the coin was,

particularly young people had been through so much

and in many ways had lost four years of their youth,

wanted to enjoy themselves, wanted to have some fun.

In the early part of the '30s,

the soundtrack to those good times was boogie-woogie.

At the time, it was often referred to as fast blues, but whatever

you call it, boogie-woogie was the father of rock and roll.

All right, then. I love to have a boogie.

I'm going to play something by one of the people that was a boogie-woogie king

and the inventors of boogie. This is written in the 1930s.

By Albert Ammons and Big Joe Turner.

One of the people I really loved was Albert Ammons, and Albert Ammons

and Pete Johnson were two of my favourite pianists.

They were just amazing pianists

and they really invented a lot of stuff and are very much forgotten.

# Blow that horn, boy

# Play on that horn

# Blow that horn, boy

# Go and play on that

# Play that, son, until we drop out... #

In the '30s, the craze for dance halls was gripping the nation

and the music followed the trend.

MUSIC: Stompin' At The Savoy by Benny Goodman

The rhythm that became dominant was the one that everybody wanted

to dance to.

And that rhythm was swing.

Swing music really is all about dancing.

It was music to dance to.

SWING MUSIC PLAYS

One of the kings of swing was this man, the great Duke Ellington.

Duke Ellington was very popular in Britain and he led a band

of incredible soloists who always sounded cohesive, never competitive.

I mean, Count Basie always said about Duke Ellington

he was the greatest of all time, and I think Duke Ellington,

in many ways, he was such an extraordinary composer.

He worked with a man called Billy Strayhorn that did

the arrangements for him.

With Ellington, you know who it is, instantly.

That's because of his piano style, his composition style

and also the arranging style of a genius like Billy Strayhorn.

Thanks very much, that was Midriff, one of Billy Strayhorn's

compositions and now, the Afro-Bossa - it's a kind of a gutbucket bolero.

We start it all around a primitive rhythm,

execute it in a rather pre-primitive manner through the hands.

The hands of Sam Woodyard.

If you read about what Duke Ellington's

views on music in general are,

he's kind of so gentle

and welcoming to all music that he's a great guru, I think.

Not only for a big band person, but anybody that's interested in music.

You create something interesting

and you find an audience that's sensitive,

then you have accomplished a great deal

and you make a big profit in joy.

SWING MUSIC

One of the most popular swing artists of the 1930s

was clarinettist Benny Goodman.

DANCERS WHOOP

This song, Roll 'Em, was a huge hit written by the extraordinary woman

and big band composer and arranger, Mary Lou Williams.

Of course, that was before rock and roll.

Swing was our rock and roll at that time -

we didn't know what rock and roll was.

Benny Goodman's big band became known as the training ground for many

major names in music, not least Gene Krupa.

His extraordinary drumming was the stuff of legend and made him

a national celebrity.

Certain people like Gene Krupa would do the drum solos

and the different big bands had their own great drummers.

There would be a spot where they'd do the solo and everybody would stand back, so we do that too.

Because we've got Gilson, and he's the greatest.

BAND JOINS IN AND AUDIENCE WHOOPS

Britain fell in love with the American big band

and then went on to create its own unique sound.

All the American big bands were obviously popular in the UK,

thanks to radio, but there were British dance bands who

were very much copying the American bands

but they did have - by default really because they were

made up of British guys - they did have their own sound.

During the 1930s, most British jazz musicians

made their living in dance bands and this coincided with the public's

growing appetite for music both on record and on the radio.

And that concludes the programme of dance music

played to you by the BBC Dance Orchestra, directed by Henry Hall.

Goodbye, everyone. Goodbye!

And here's to the next time.

Of course, not only was the big band performing live,

but there were gramophone records and there were broadcasts

and there were outside broadcasts.

I mean, the BBC would send out a team to broadcast performances

either in big ballrooms or in nightclubs.

All these big bandleaders had their own radio slots every week

and that's how audiences got familiar with them and the material.

Once you had the big band, it was a big sound,

but then people wanted songs as well and the vocalists came along.

Although they were kind of secondary to the band - it wasn't

like now we have such and such a singer and the band behind them,

you'd have a big band and they'd have a guest vocalist.

One notable British bandleader was Ray Noble, who wrote lyrics

and music for some of the best-known songs of the era,

notably for Al Bowlly,

a popular jazz crooner.

# Goodnight, Sweetheart

# All my dreams are of you

# Goodnight, Sweetheart

# I'll be watching o'er you... #

Britain's ambassador of song,

the Great British Crooner, they called him.

He came from South Africa.

He had a Greek father and a Lebanese mother!

The Great British Crooner!

But he had a unique style.

He was very good-looking and he had...

Croon means to whisper and it is very...

I mean, it comes from the word "to whisper" and it is very seductive.

The whole idea about crooning is it gives the impression it's

being directed at you and only you.

# I see your face in every flower

# Your eyes in stars above

# It's just the thought of you

# The very thought of you, my love... #

It brings back exactly the period.

It was a great voice.

# Without a love of my own. #

A new generation of extraordinary singers were beginning to

make their mark.

Vocalists had been a component of the big bands from the beginning,

but they were used sparingly and weren't the stars of the show.

By the '30s, this had all changed with

the arrival of some of the 20th century's most legendary singers.

# It don't mean a thing If you ain't got that swing

# Boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah

# It don't mean a thing All you've got to do is swing

# Boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah, boo-wah

# It makes no difference if it's sweet or hot... #

Ella Fitzgerald was one of the great stars who became bigger

than the band she was in.

She entered a talent competition at the Apollo Theatre,

she went along actually as a dancer, but she was standing

in the wings ready to go on and got nerves and wouldn't go on and dance.

Someone said, "Look, you've got to do something",

so she went on and sang and the prize was that she got to

sing with the big band that was in situation there.

She eventually joined Chick Webb's band and she was like 16, 17 years old.

Eventually she ended up leading the band when Chick Webb left,

so she became a bandleader really by default.

But she grew up listening to big band musicians and learning about

phrases from all those musicians, as so many singers of that period did.

Bammi Rose!

# Pretending is ending

# This time it's real

# For ever and ever

# Time will reveal

# Oh, we were lucky, darling, yeah

# When fate turned the wheel

# I know it, I feel it

# This time it's real

# Whoo-oo-oo, it's real, yeah

# Whoo-oo-oo, it's real, yeah

# It's real

# Whoo-oo-oo... #

In Britain's dance halls,

the late '30s were a golden period.

To ordinary people, this seemed like the first proper fun they'd

had after the Great War and the Great Depression.

But it wasn't to last long.

ARCHIVE: It is only after many vain attempts to remain at peace...

..that we have been at last forced to go to war.

When war broke out on 3rd September 1939,

all places of public amusement were compulsorily closed,

but the entertainment blackout didn't last long.

The government reversed its decision when they realised that cinemas

and theatres and ballrooms were essential for raising morale.

When the nation's dance halls reopened,

it was the sound of the big band that lured in the crowds.

MUSIC: In The Mood by Glenn Miller and the Dorsey Brothers

Soon after war was declared, Blackpool swung into action,

training troops by day and entertaining them at night.

For a while, so many London-based musicians moved to Blackpool

that there was even an accommodation crisis!

The journey north was made doubly attractive by the opportunity

of regular work without the terror of the bombs

that were falling in London.

The town changed with the war.

There was a huge flood of young men coming into Blackpool

because it was the RAF's largest recruitment and training area.

In the ballrooms, the occasional big band member could be seen

performing in his service uniform.

Blackpool played a considerable part in the war efforts.

There was munitions work, aircraft construction,

three quarters of a million RAF trainees had their initial

training in Blackpool through the war.

It was a logical place to be.

Lots and lots of wide-open spaces,

lots and lots of large indoor spaces,

and lots and lots of accommodation in town.

That made a huge difference, because at any time, there might be

tens of thousands of people in town undergoing training, all of

whom wanted to go out in Blackpool at night and enjoy themselves.

Going to the cinema, going to the theatre,

going to Blackpool's fantastic ballrooms.

Blackpool provided a haven from the war.

Some of the big names in Britain's big band scenes

stayed in London, despite the bombing.

Bandleader Ken "Snakehips" Johnson

died dramatically

while performing during the Blitz right here...

in the Cafe de Paris.

But even among the death and destruction here,

one survivor retained his sense of humour - after being

pulled from the rubble and carried out on a stretcher,

shouted to the crowd, "At least I didn't have to pay for my dinner!"

Ken "Snakehips" Johnson!

Not a bad name, is it?!

He had a good band - all-West Indian band, it was.

He was really a dancer.

He was just gyrating his hips

in a slithery kind of,

amazing way that not a lot of people could...

could, um...emulate.

He was very lithe and I suppose, in a sense, he was the Elvis Presley

of his day, and that's how he got his nickname, "Snakehips" Johnson.

He was performing at the Cafe de Paris...

MUSIC: It Was A Lover And His Lass by Ken "Snakehips" Johnson and His West Indian Orchestra

It was supposed to be the safest place in London as a nightclub,

because it was very deep underground, but of course

a bomb hit it and very few places

are safe from a direct hit.

In fact, the bomb went straight through the floor

and into the restaurant

and "Snakehips" Johnson was killed,

which broke a lot of hearts.

In the confusion of war for a while,

it was thought that number one crooner Al Bowlly had died

in the same bomb attack as dear old "Snakehips" Johnson.

Well, everybody THOUGHT that,

and the reason they thought that was because in amongst all

the wreckage, they found his band parts in a little folder...

"Al Bowlly."

All burnt round the edges and everything.

They said, "Well, he must have been there, you see."

But he wasn't there, he wasn't there that particular night.

But, as it turned out, Al Bowlly's lucky escape was only temporary.

He met his end just a few weeks later in another air raid.

Well, he went to bed one night because his girlfriend said

"You must go to the shelter," which he never would.

He thought he was so lucky... to have escaped the Cafe de Paris,

well, he thought, "That's it, I'm fine now.

"I've missed my air raid, so that's it," and sadly, it wasn't.

They found him sitting up in bed with a cowboy book in his hand,

which he was reading and the blast had killed him.

People always say everything happened to Bowlly

at just the wrong time.

He just snuffed it when the star of all those sort of band shows

was going to be the singer.

And he never quite did that,

he just snuffed it before he should have done.

Wartime in Britain, and particularly London,

was of course a harrowing time for most people.

For some children, though, the constant calls of the air raid

shelters became a nightly game of dare.

My sister and I were living just outside London,

and we used to see the German bombers going over

every night,

we could set our clocks, they were very, very precise in their timing.

And we used to watch all the dogfights going on, er...

It was, I suppose, a strange life,

but we found it absolutely normal,

because that's the way it was, you know?

We didn't ask any questions,

we didn't quite know what war was all about.

But it ruled our lives,

that's very true, yes.

Air raid sirens, you know,

jumping into the air raid shelter.

Especially with the V1s

and...our timing was very good,

we'd know exactly when to jump. It became a game of chicken, you know -

the engine would cut out

and you'd got a few seconds to get to the shelter.

It became a game.

So that was... our experience of the war.

In London, the BBC would broadcast messages to the troops overseas

from family members, often from children.

But for one little girl,

that one radio appearance would be the start of a lifelong career.

This show was done from the Criterion Theatre, which is

an actually underground theatre in Piccadilly.

During the war, the BBC used to use this theatre as a studio, because

it was full of sandbags, it was like being in an air raid shelter.

We went along to do this,

I was going to send my message to my uncle, Dudley,

and during rehearsal, there was the most enormous air raid

and a lot of the kids who'd come from the country were a bit nervous and I

was sort of used to it - London kid -

and somebody said would you like...

"Would somebody like to come up and sing a song,

"say a piece of poetry, just to calm things down?"

Nobody volunteered, so I said, "I will."

So I went up on the stage and they put

a box in front of the microphone,

so I could reach it

and I sang.

And, er...they had it in the control room

and said, "Yes, that's a good voice for radio,

"would you like to sing your song as well as your message?"

I was like, "Yes!" Of course, there was a band there, too!

Just like in the movies, they all joined in with my song,

which was Mighty Like A Rose.

# Don't know what call him

# But he's mighty like a rose

# Looking at his mammy

# With eyes so shiny blue... #

And there was a huge reaction from the troops to that

and that was really the beginning of my big career as a child performer.

I was about eight.

Petula would entertain the troops both on the radio

and live at military bases throughout the UK.

She was so popular that she became something of a mascot

for the British Tommies.

- ARCHIVE:
- When the postman brought little Petula Clark

a pile of letters after her first broadcast, she was surprised.

She's used to it now, because she's become a regular star

with a regular fan mail.

MUSIC: GI Jive by Glenn Miller

The war created a huge demand for music to entertain the troops

and boosted the appeal of military bands.

ARCHIVE: No.1 Balloon Centre RAF turn on a dance at their camp.

Audience and orchestra is 100% Air Force.

The bandleader is Corporal George Beaumont,

once well known to London's Prince of Wales Theatre-goers.

The Squadronaires were the RAF band and, my God, they were good.

MUSIC: High Society by the Squadronaires

They got them all together, formed a band

and they said, "You're going over to France to entertain our boys

"doing the fighting over there," so they all got together

and they did their basic training as ordinary airmen.

While they were doing that, France fell,

so they had to stay in England, which they spent their time

rehearsing and getting the band right, and everything,

and they turned out possibly

the best band that ever came out of the war.

ARCHIVE: Another picture that speaks louder than words

of Anglo-American solidarity.

The arrival in Northern Ireland of the first contingent

of the United States Army to stations in the United Kingdom.

The war had been raging for more than two years before Pearl Harbor

pulled America into the action and boatloads of GIs to Britain.

There were suddenly a few hundred thousand more troops

to keep entertained

and some American big band stars came over to help.

In 1942, Glenn Miller was at the peak of his career as one

of America's favourite bandleaders.

At 38, he was too old to enlist,

but he was still determined to

use his music to boost wartime morale.

After pulling some strings, he won a commission,

formed a Forces band and became a superstar

of US Army entertainment.

He was a very patriotic man and he wanted

so much to come over

and help out by boosting people's morale.

He transferred to London in 1944

to be closer to the fighting,

but the city was a dangerous place.

When Glenn saw the conditions and the bombs falling,

and so on, he said, "I want my guys out of here."

They said, "Yeah, yeah, fine - we'll..."

"No, no - I mean NOW."

So he pulled a bunch of strings - next morning, trucks were there,

they loaded 'em up, off to Bedford,

where he spent the rest of the war billeted up there

and that night,

Sloane Square was hit by a bomb

and it killed like, 70 people, I think,

and took the corner off the building.

That was where the band was staying.

So he got them out just in time.

The band started touring military bases, performing

around 800 concerts to over a million service personnel.

ARCHIVE: For the second time in a generation, the youth of America is

marching off to war, but this time to new and livelier rhythms -

a new style of bandsman like Captain Glenn Miller.

This is the wartime tempo of a fighting but light-hearted nation.

Glenn Miller even performed at a training camp

just outside Blackpool.

MUSIC: Flying Home by Glenn Miller and The Army Air Forces Training Command Band

It was General Hap Arnold, I think, that said,

"Glenn, your music...

"..is next best thing to a letter from home."

MUSIC: Chatanooga Choo Choo by Glenn Miller

The first-ever gold record,

which was some PR guy's idea -

"You sold a million records,

"of Chattanooga Choo Choo -

"we'll publicise this by having a gold record made."

So that's where the gold record started, it was the first one ever.

I loved Glenn Miller.

It was so musical -

it was swing,

but it was also romantic

and the way he wrote for the woodwinds...

MUSIC: Moonlight Serenade by Glenn Miller

That immediately brings back memories of that time.

MUSIC: Tuxedo Junction by Glenn Miller

Tuxedo Junction, a lot of people will know by Glenn Miller,

but, originally,

it was done by Erskine Hawkins.

MUSIC: Tuxedo Junction by Erskine Hawkins

And he just did this great version.

I bought a 10-inch record and put it on and just started

playing along to it and realised it was kind of really bluesy.

I hadn't realised that before, what a blues thing it was.

During World War II, female musicians were given new opportunities

when the men were called up to fight.

Ivy Benson and her All Girl Orchestra topped the bill around the country.

All of them were girls.

She did say at one time, she said,

"Ivy, I do get some rather doubtful men coming dressed as women!

"But I won't have them." I said well, if she gave them a medical...

I don't know!

But she wanted to prove, Ivy -

cos she was a damn good musician herself -

she wanted to prove that girls could play as good as blokes

and I think they did during the war.

Well, it didn't matter about quality in those days.

But, to me, it mattered and I think that was my incentive,

to try and break out on my own.

I wanted it to be...

..equal to a male band. I wanted it to sound the same.

Yes, it was very much a man's world,

but Ivy Benson did well and...

..and compared very well with the other bands, she was good.

Ivy's signature tune was...

They all seemed to have signature tunes, in those days,

and hers was Lady Be Good.

She said, "That was advice to the girls in my band,

"as much as anything else!"

# Sweet and lovely, lady be good

# Oh, lady be good to me... #

We used to play a lot of the American bases, you know,

she said, "And I always worried about whenever we played

"an American base, I always lost at least two musicians!"

These GIs used to sweet-talk them

and they thought, "I think I'll go to America,

"much easier than being in the back of a bus with Ivy and the girls."

The other great woman that we are sort of focusing on,

or the music of, is Sister Rosetta Tharpe.

# Didn't it rain

# Children

# Rain, oh, yes

# Didn't it, yes, didn't it, you know it did

# Didn't it Oh-oh, yes, how it rained... #

What's great about her is that she had a foot in several musical camps.

She was gospel, blues, rhythm and blues and when you chuck all those

things together, you end up with someone who has their own voice.

This music, if you didn't put labels on it, I thought

it was just rock and roll, because it was so exciting.

- # I said four or five times
- Four or five times

- # Oh, four or five times
- Four or five times

# How he's my king, he makes me sing four or five times... #

There's a period where she works with the Lucky Millinder big band.

# Look down, look down

# That lonesome road

# Before you travel on... #

Lucky Millinder, his intention was to lift people up,

because I think people had had a hard time.

They'd roll into town on their bus, people'd come into the dance hall

and they'd need something to go, bosh! Let's lift up! Whoa!

"We're alive," you know.

# Look down that lonesome road

# Before you travel on. #

She was on stage one night, singing, and there was a guy in the audience

who was the programme seller,

selling programmes, beer, peanuts...

He started singing along with her and she was

so impressed with this programme seller she said, "Come on stage

"and sing with me," and that programme seller was Little Richard.

Let's do that again!

She not only influenced Little Richard, but her amazing

guitar playing was to inspire Johnny Cash, Jimi Hendrix and many others.

Johnny Cash, he used to hear Sister Rosetta Tharpe on the radio when he was growing up.

We had a 78 in my house of Sister Rosetta Tharpe - I thought it was her playing the piano.

It wasn't, it was her playing the guitar, I didn't know that.

I later learned it was Sammy Price on the piano,

but it was my mum's treasured 1940 78 of Sister Rosetta Tharpe that

inspired me to want to play Up Above My Head.

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # I hear music in the air
- I hear music in the air

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # Oh, I hear music in the air
- I hear music in the air

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # Oh, I hear music in the air
- Whoa-oh-oh-oh-oh, oh-oh

# Hey, I really do believe that there is a heaven somewhere

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # Oh, I hear trumpet in the air
- I hear trumpet in the air

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # Oh, I hear trumpet in the air
- I hear trumpet in the air

- # Up above my head
- Up above my head

- # Oh, I hear trumpet in the air
- Ooh-ooh-ooh, whoa

# I really do believe it

- # There is a heaven somewhere
- There is a heaven somewhere... #

But it wasn't just on stage that women were now doing jobs that had

once been for the boys.

Millions joined up to do things,

from working the land, to building tanks.

They came from all over the country to Blackpool to join

the Women's Auxiliary Air Force,

an elite group of female pilots

even took to the skies, to deliver planes -

Spitfires like this one - from the factories to RAF bases.

The people who looked after the planes gave them nicknames

and I particularly approve of this one because it was called Lucy.

# Straighten up and fly right

# Straighten up and fly right

# Straighten up and fly right

# Cool down, Papa Don't you blow your top... #

The effect of the Second World War on women

depended I think very much on your age and your situation.

If you were a mother and a housewife, if you had children

under 14, you weren't required

to do anything for the war effort.

Younger women, I think, a lot of them

had quite a lot of fun in the war because a lot of them who had

been expected to live at home

until they married were able to leave home either to

go into the Forces or to go onto the land, the Women's Land Army,

or to go into war production factories

and they'd often live in hostels.

You know, then they'd meet RAF cadets

and they'd meet soldiers and it was a liberating time.

They earned some money

and they just had a much freer life than they'd had before the war.

When their work was done, women rushed to the dance hall.

It was an evening's haven from the horrors of war.

The old-time dances that topped the bill - the waltz, the tango,

the foxtrot - were nostalgic reminders of a prewar age.

But they were adapted now to the huge

and irresistible sound of the big band.

MUSIC: Get Happy by Harold Arlen

People wanted to be together.

They wanted to dance, they wanted to move about.

Anything to take their mind off the war,

and the big bands came in with those marvellous sounds and everything.

They came in and they did the same job as the old music halls did.

But the difference was, things had advanced to a certain degree

because boys and girls wanted to touch each other!

They wanted to dance together!

Not sit in rows and that just singing Daisy Daisy,

they wanted to be part of the show, very much so.

SLOW TUNE PLAYS

The atmosphere of the halls was highly charged,

highly charged sexual feeling.

You looked around and you looked for a partner,

someone to dance with and hopefully maybe something a bit more as well!

It was like a mating place, really.

MUSIC: I Only Have Eyes For You by Geraldo

You wanted to pick out a good girl or boy, you know, and that was it.

That was the atmosphere, and when the band started that terrific music

and you danced together,

it was a magic time.

It became a ritual for girls to stand in a usual spot

so that the men they danced with the previous night

could find them again, if they'd had a good time.

So Fred, what was it like to come into this ballroom in the '40s?

What would you see, what would you hear?

I couldn't leave it alone, I had to get every chance I could.

- And you won prizes, did you?
- No, no.

- I think I won a torch, once.
- A torch?

Well, that's a prize!

Had a bit of a dance and I really, really enjoyed it.

Now, I was told that you met your wife at a ballroom dance.

- I met in the Tower.
- In the Tower, you met her HERE? In this room?
- Yes!

Over there, one of those pillars.

By that pillar?!

- By that pillar over there.
- You met your wife-to-be?
- Yes!

So your first words to your future wife were, "Will you dance with me?"

"Can I have this dance, please?"

And she said yes, but I'd weighed her up well before that!

I knew she could dance!

I wasn't getting on that floor if she couldn't dance!

- It's too romantic!
- It really was wonderful. I'll never forget it.

But not everybody was in love with the dance floor.

One angry lady even wrote in to the Evening Gazette

complaining that the atmosphere in Blackpool was

rather like that of a huge party

instead of a country at war.

She does have a point.

If you flick through the Evening Gazette, there's a story about a boy

missing in action, then on the next page,

what's on at the dance hall.

MUSIC: Crazy Rhythm by Victor Silvester

Music and dance were a crucial part of everyday life for so many people.

When they feared a night at the dance hall could be their last,

it's no surprise that they partied hard.

A serviceman on a 48-hour pass would make the most of every minute.

MUSIC CONTINUES

Dropping of bombs did not stop people going out to dance,

and I think when they lost themselves

in the music and the dancing -

and that's what you do, you actually live like there's no tomorrow -

that's what it was during the war.

I mean, the war, apart from being a dangerous time,

was also a gloomy time. You had the blackout, you had rationing.

You know, you needed some sort of distractions.

The blackout didn't help,

because of course a lot of dances were held in the evening,

so you got more afternoon and early evening dances

because of that.

- ARCHIVE:
- The latest dance is the Blackout Stroll, and here it is

demonstrated by experts before the rank and file take it up.

In a minute, you'll see the point.

MUSIC PLAYS

The main idea is to change partners during the blackout.

Practically anything might happen!

Blimey, my wife! Oh!

MUSIC: Lambeth Walk by Eddie Cantor

Also included in a night's entertainment would be

sequence dances, such as the Palais Glide, the Blackout Stroll,

Lambeth Walk, and believe it or not,

Under The Spreading Chestnut Tree.

It appears these dances were included in an evening's programme

to allow the shy or those with two left feet

to get a grip with the opposite sex.

It put me off, even though I was quite young,

because I was very shy - it put a lot of shy guys off.

They thought, "Oh, dear, what do I do -

"what if no-one wants to dance with me? It's all going to be terrible."

Just like girls, they didn't want to be wallflowers.

# Underneath the spreading chestnut tree

# I loved him and he loved me

# There I used to sit upon his knee

# 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree

# I said, "I love you and there ain't no ifs or buts"

# He said "I love you"

- # And the blacksmiths shouted
- # "Chestnuts!" #

King George VI was very good at that at Scout camps. He'd sing that

and when it came to "nut", he'd obligingly tap his head, so...

# Oh, how happy I should be Under... #

ARCHIVE: The Queen and Princess Margaret

watching the King out of one eye

and the singing director out of the other win our sympathy

by getting some of the actions wrong!

With the campers, we hope that they'll put in some practice

at Balmoral and come again next year!

# Oh, how happy I should be

# Under... #

- How was that?
- Fine(!)

# Underneath the spreading chestnut tree, I loved him and he loved me

# There I used to sit upon his knee

# 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree

# There beneath the boughs we used to meet

# Oh, his kisses were so sweet

# All the little birdies went tweet, tweet

# 'Neath the spreading chestnut tree. #

ARCHIVE: New dances in the tradition of the Lambeth Walk continue

to reach the ballroom. The latest is an animated accompaniment

to the Siegfried Line song.

Washing hangs out on the line, as the steel-helmeted dancers step it out.

Dancing was so important to the morale of the nation that

the BBC began broadcasting lessons on the radio, called Dancing Club.

RADIO: It's time for 40 minutes with the BBC Dancing Club.

Britain's most popular bandleader, Victor Silvester, encouraged

thousands of beginners to take to the floor, slowly dictating

the steps followed by a helpful pause

so listeners could write them down.

Hello there, everyone.

We give you another hearty welcome to our Dancing Club.

This evening, I'm going to begin

by telling you how to do the natural turn in the waltz.

Write these steps down as I call them out.

Start with the feet together...

then, this is what you have to do.

One...

Forward right foot.

And of course things like Melody Maker,

which had been started at the end of the 1920s,

and even the Radio Times, did elaborate sort of diagrams

showing people how to dance, so they could listen to the wireless and

do these steps and then they could take them on to the ballroom floor.

RADIO: You'll find a diagram of this figure on page 19 of the Radio Times.

Woody Herman's Woodchopper's Ball

was one of the biggest 1940s dance hall hits.

Woody Herman, who was one of the great jazz

clarinettists as well as a big bandleader -

what I love about his bands,

you know, a band like Count Basie or

Duke Ellington would play popular hits of the day.

Woody Herman's band, they were a bit more variety, there was

loads of blues in there, so the early Woody Herman bands,

for my money, are some of the greatest blues bands of all time.

This is a piece by Woody Herman entitled the Casbah Blues.

Woody Herman led a very popular big band,

and one of the pieces he did was kind of...

It all goes weird and everything goes like this

and it's quite good - you need the dynamics.

In fact that's the whole point of a big band -

you need the dynamics and different flavours and colours

and I think that Casbah Blues is the best example of something like that.

Britain might have been in the grip of severe rationing...

But when it came to nights out at the dance hall, the women

of Britain prided themselves on keeping up appearances.

For the menfolk, it was easy, as a... (ahem)

..uniform made them all look like David Niven.

# You're as pretty as a picture

# Has anyone ever told you before? #

Clothes and beauty as well were very important,

they kind of took on a heightened air of importance, really,

during the war,

as it was seen to keep women's morale high

and also keep men's morale high as well.

If they were returning to the home front, or if they were still working

on the home front, then it was seen as something of national importance.

Women had to make do obviously with what they had,

but I mean, I'm sure young girls were very inventive.

I mean, they had some clothes of course from before the war,

but they would like nice things, things like ribbons.

People were trying to jazz up their clothes.

Why not get together with your friends,

and form a make do and mend group?

ARCHIVE: With a little ingenuity and a large pair of scissors, you can

turn hubby's hat into a hat for his sweet little wife.

# You're as pretty as a picture

# A beautiful exhibition of art

# When I say you fairly take my breath away

# Just picture what you have done to my heart. #

Women had to make the most of their utility dresses,

bought with saved up coupons.

But some essentials were missing, particularly silk stockings.

All the silk had gone off to be made into parachutes,

so the more adventurous would stain their legs brown with tea,

and for the seam up the back they'd use a device like this - yes,

it IS a screwdriver, a bicycle clip and an eyebrow pencil.

To recreate the appearance of stockings,

women were known to dye their legs with tea, or maybe with gravy -

I mean, it's not that different from fake tanning today,

really, when you think about it.

And also of course, drawing a line up the back of your leg with

sort of eyeliner pencil, which must have actually been very,

very difficult to do, to keep it straight.

It really must have been difficult, I think!

Well, let's put the device to the test.

Well, that's reasonably straight, isn't it?

Cosmetics were in very short supply, so you did what you could,

you melted your lipstick down.

If you couldn't afford lipstick,

because it had a very high tax put on it,

then you could use beetroot juice to stain your lips, or you could use,

you were encouraged to use, boot polish for mascara.

Clothes rationing, it was difficult, and of course if you needed

working clothes, you couldn't spend your coupons on frivolities.

But I'm sure that they made their best to look pretty.

Another big change that happened during the war was that

trousers on women became much more prevalent, more popular.

Fashion magazines initially really didn't like this -

they talked about slackers in slacks,

saw it as very unfeminine means of dress, but really

by the sort of second or third year of the war

there'd been a sort of turnaround, a real shift,

and people were encouraging this as a way of women dressing.

When America entered the war at the end of 1941,

the nation's dance floors were invaded by an army of GIs.

They had two advantages over their British rivals -

they were better paid, and they were better dressed.

They also had a couple of secret weapons to sweep

a girl off her feet -

they were chocolates, and nylons!

CHEERING

Naturally we were grateful for America's, shall we say,

rather last-minute assistance in preventing

the end of the Free World. However,

there were some resentments caused by these swashbuckling heroes with

their chewing gum and casual manners copping off with our womenfolk.

It was said they were "overpaid, oversexed and over here".

They said we were "underpaid, undersexed and under Eisenhower".

We shared many jokes like this, and became great friends.

Derek, did you have a special dancing partner?

There were the twins, Madeleine and Mary.

You had a pair of twins?

They were twins, yes.

After about 12 months one of them said to me,

"This is the last time we're going out with you, Derek."

So I said, "Why, what's wrong?"

She said, "Well, we've met two Americans

"and we're going out with those instead."

So that was the end of a lovely friendship, after 12 months!

What was the attraction of these dastardly Americans?

Well, they had a lot more money, and they could get the girls

nylon stockings, which were very important during the war.

Let me tell you, Derek, if they left you for a pair of stockings,

they were just shallow.

- They got fed up with me after 12 months!
- Aw!

American GIs I think were very attractive to Englishwoman, partly

because they had money, and were generous and would splash it around.

A lot of them were very young.

And they used to slip the odd pair of nylons, all those gags,

you know, to the girls and say this and that.

They got away with murder and what would we offer them?

Spam!

That's about it!

Also, because the Army authorities in the States knew that

basically the American public were not happy with their men

being over here, so the American troops had a lot of facilities

over here to keep them happy.

Dances were put on at their base,

and British girls were vetted usually, and shipped in by bus -

well, you didn't want unsuitable types.

Well, the Americans soon became very popular figures

in the ballrooms of Blackpool.

They soon became magnets for the English girls.

Not always to the pleasure of local lads, and particularly after

one or two letters appeared in the local newspaper,

thanking local ladies for being kind enough to receive them

and dance with them. And when these newspapers were posted to

British servicemen abroad, they weren't always too impressed.

The Germans tried to stir up trouble between the allies by dropping

propaganda leaflets down onto the British Army in Italy.

These leaflets showed a topless British girl embracing a GI,

and she was saying, "Oh, you Americans are so different!"

The Americans had great uniforms.

Gabardine, their uniforms were made of.

People generally thought that the American GIs uniforms were

a lot smarter, a bit flashier than the British counterparts,

so they really were seen as

the sort of epitome of the war hero at this time.

The Americans looked so modern and so smart when they came over, but if you

compare a British Tommy in his khaki and an American,

one looks the future and the other one looks...

You know - muddy.

Along with their exotic luxuries,

the GIs brought exciting moves to our dance floor.

They launched a craze for a totally new type of dance. The Lindy Hop

was a form of jive developed by the black dance halls in Harlem.

When it became a hit with the white folks too,

they renamed it the jitterbug!

Whoo-hoo!

MUSIC: Jitterbug by Cab Calloway

I think Jitterbug was intrinsically linked with the big band sound.

The dancers fed from the musicians,

the musicians fed from the dancers,

and it could be pure joy

and frenzy and music and dance

and getting totally lost in the moment.

# Doug the jitterbug

# Just a silly lug

# It ain't no shame He's not to blame

# He's Doug the jitterbug... #

The women sometimes showed their underwear,

so you felt, you know, a bit naughty, really!

- LEN:
- The jitterbug was seen as decidedly un-British,

and was even banned in some dance halls.

There were some posters up sometimes in halls saying,

"No jitterbugging."

Why wasn't jitterbugging allowed?

The ballroom would be that busy, and when they were jitterbugging

they kicked their legs up,

and the Tower authorities thought that was dangerous

because the floor was that full of people dancing.

How do you actually stop somebody from jitterbugging?

Well, it did happen, especially in the corners

if there was no attendants near.

Then the attendants would walk around and stop them,

and as soon as the attendants went away, it all started up again!

It was mostly Americans that did it.

Another letter to the Evening Gazette asked,

"Is it not possible for the managers of ballrooms in Blackpool

"to come to some arrangement, just for one or two nights,

"for couples to dance the jitterbug?"

One or two jive numbers, OK, but a full evening session? Never!

# It ain't no shame, he's not to blame, he's Doug, the jitterbug! #

JOOLS: Amid the jollity, though,

the war continued to claim its victims from the big band world.

1944 brought the news that the great Glenn Miller was missing,

presumed dead.

Glenn had left Britain for Paris,

where he was due to entertain the troops, who had liberated the city.

But his plane went missing,

and the exact details of what happened

remains a mystery to this day.

My uncle Glenn was a prolific letter writer,

and one of the last ones he ever wrote

was to my father, and...

..it says, "Take good care of Mother.

"By the time you get this I'll be in Paris,

"making billeting for the band.

"Barring a nosedive into the Channel!"

Now, that was prophetic.

LEN: The British loved their American big bands,

not least vibraphone player Lionel Hampton.

It fascinated me that somebody could get that music

out of that instrument! It still fascinates me.

He was a bit too difficult for me to follow, I must be honest,

because he was a lunatic at these vibes.

Lionel Hampton is someone who is a vital component

in the history of music, really, because he's got a foot

in the big bands, but he's also the vital link to rock and roll.

Charlie Watts told me that he went to see him

at the Hammersmith Apollo,

and it was so exciting -

it was like a rock and roll gig

because the whole balcony upstairs was going boom-boom-boom...

And there was a lot of smoke.

I'm not sure what sort of smoke it was,

but the whole place was like this.

You know, some people sort of thought he was an insensitive yob,

the way he played, and that's what I love best about him!

"Whoargh!" You know.

Lionel Hampton started out his career as a drummer,

and first played the vibraphone with perhaps one of the greatest

stars of all time - the great Louis Armstrong.

MUSIC: Dinah

You take someone like Louis Armstrong, who transcends all

genres and types of music, because he is a genre on his own.

And whether he's reading out the phone book,

the shopping list or any song, you know it's him immediately

and even if it's something like Zip-a-Dee-Doo-Dah which he recorded,

he makes it sound like this incredible work of art.

Because of his vocal style, his timing, his trumpet playing...

He was a complete one-off. And you can spend all day studying him -

never, ever going to sound like him.

MUSIC: Tiger Rag

Louis Armstrong is not only a great iconic person because people

know him from his films and his records and everything,

but as a musician and an artist

he's actually one of the greatest of all time.

# Oh, when you smilin'

# When you smilin'... #

The more I look at his life and the more I talk to people who really know

about music, the more you look at his sound, the more things you find.

You find more of him doing a version of a song and you go, "Wow,

"I never liked that song until he did it." And he brings you to songs.

# You got to accen-tuate the positive and

# Elim-inate the negative and

# Latch on to the affirmative

# But don't mess with Mr In Between

# You've got to spread joy up to the maximum and

# Bring gloom down to the minimum and

# Have faith

# Or pandemonium's liable to walk upon the scene

# To illustrate my last remark

# Jonah in the whale, Noah in the Ark

# What did they do just when everything looked so dark?

# Man, they said you got to accen-tuate the positive and

# Elim-inate the negative and

# Latch on to the affirmative

# But don't mess with Mr In Between. #

Five years ago, I promised you blood, toil,

tears and sweat.

And your untiring response brought us,

in the end,

victory over Germany.

Finally, on the 7th of May 1945

V-E Day arrived, marking victory in Europe.

London was packed with ecstatic crowds.

King George VI and Queen Elizabeth appeared eight times

on the balcony of Buckingham Palace while their daughters, the

Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret Rose, mingled with the crowds below.

The entire nation celebrated.

There were fancy dress parades for children, gallons of beer

for everybody else, and there was singing and dancing in the streets.

# Blue skies smiling at me

# Nothin' but blue skies do I see. #

British people were given two days off - I mean, that day,

V-E Day and the day afterwards - as a sort of public holiday

and the pubs on V-E Day ran dry by eight o'clock in the evening.

But nevertheless there was a great deal of rejoicing

and celebrating and bonfires -

a bonfire even in Piccadilly,

burning effigies of Hitler, hanging effigies of Hitler from lampposts...

- ARCHIVE:
- London suddenly had

as much right as anywhere to celebrate victory -

and London certainly did!

It was the celebration of the century,

and the music people wanted to dance to was the big band.

MUSIC: A Little On The Lonely Side by the Squadronaires

Went along to Buckingham Palace, where there was an enormous

throng already assembled all round the Victoria Memorial,

so I got the trumpet out and I started to play, and people made

a circle and started to dance,

and musicians appeared out of the blue.

There was a trombone player turned up,

and a sailor who had what looked like

the horn of one of those

enormous old-fashioned gramophones, into which he sort of

blew raspberries and it made a sort of tuba sound.

And there were various sort of people with percussion things

and so we'd got a small band together.

My nan's piano was pushed into the street,

where she treated the neighbours to some lovely music hall songs.

And here in Blackpool, the town came to a virtual standstill -

the Tower Ballroom was jammed with revellers, ready to dance all night.

MUSIC CONTINUES

After the war, Blackpool returns to being what it's always been -

a place for fun.

Churchill had saved Britain in its hour of need,

but the population were hungry for change.

He and his Conservative government

were voted out at the next election.

# I'm a little on the lonely

# A little on the lonely side... #

- ARCHIVE:
- Labour will now have a majority over all parties

in a House of 640.

JOOLS: Meanwhile, the thousands of American servicemen based in Britain

were going back home.

Some had formed romances in the ballrooms

and took our womenfolk away with them.

Others returned empty-handed.

But Britain was broken, too.

The cities were in ruins, and we were deeply in debt to America.

The men who survived the war came home to unemployment

and uncertainty.

There continued to be tremendous shortages,

rationing continued until 1954.

The winter after the war was absolutely bitter, people

were really, really cold, there was still a shortage of petrol, coal...

But in Blackpool, things were a bit different.

They blatantly ignored the austerity.

They weren't going to let a little thing like sugar rationing

get in the way of producing their signature sweet.

# With me little stick of Blackpool rock

# Along the promenade I stroll... #

The black market was huge,

and many rock workers' families didn't go hungry.

The authorities tried in vain to stop the practice...

..but they didn't succeed until the end of sugar rationing,

when long queues were reported in the resort sweet shops

as people stocked up on the now legitimate Blackpool rock.

After the war, Blackpool benefited from a steady flow of visitors

and a healthy black market in nylons, petrol, sausages, innuendo

and Blackpool rock.

But it was not until 1949

that the illuminations shone again.

The music of wartime meant so much to so many people

that the public still demanded this music to dance to.

But the days of the big band were numbered.

Ted Heath captured this nostalgic feeling

and led the way in Britain's post-war big band era.

He recorded more than 100 albums, which sold over 20 million copies.

Like many of his contemporaries, Ted Heath started out in the

big band boom of the '20s, playing in London's famous Kit Cat Club.

Then, the success of Glenn Miller during the war

led Ted to formulate his own version of the smooth swing sound.

Glenn was impressed with Ted Heath,

and he said to Ted...

"You really got something."

He said, "When I get back from the continent,"

he says, "I'll give you a dozen arrangements to get you started."

Well, he obviously didn't do that,

but on the strength of that statement

Ted and Moira started their own band, and...

the rest is history.

I'm a massive, MASSIVE fan of Ted Heath.

Ted Heath was a very nice, gentle man, you know,

conducting this...

not very gentle kind of band.

You know, they were very energetic,

playing some very complicated arrangements.

He did it right, Ted,

he understood the business, he understood how to handle a band.

He had great ideas, he had great arrangers.

We used to know the names of all the band at one time, and I can't

remember them now, but they were as admired and adored as someone

like I suppose One Direction and things like that are at the moment.

# The man who lives next door to me

# Is rich, as rich as rich can be... #

JOOLS: Petula Clark went from Forces' sweetheart to film star,

often singing with British big bandleaders Geraldo and Ted Heath.

# Miser, miser, counting gold

# What you gonna do when you grow old?

# Miser, miser, keep your change

# That old man won't give a dime away

# Miser, miser You're getting worse

# Shake all the moths from out of your purse

# Miser, miser, say you can

# Spend a few coppers on your fellow man. #

My first experience of that kind of music was singing with Ted.

Yeah, that was great.

Meanwhile, in the big bands' homeland of America,

their popularity was going into decline.

Even Duke Ellington had to downsize and use his recording royalties

to subsidise the running costs of his band.

MUSIC: Take The A Train by Duke Ellington

Of course there are many, many

places around the world where you can

take a trio or quartet and, you know,

you can work for two or three weeks

because they're little places

and there isn't a big overhead so it's easy, you know.

But with these guys, and I have so many expensive people

in the band, you know, it's

the highest-paid band in the world -

I mean, they get the money, I get the kicks!

APPLAUSE

JOOLS: Whilst big bands were declining in America,

many successful singers like Frank Sinatra toured in Britain

and started booking British big bands to perform with them.

In the early 1950s,

sales of American records dominated the British charts.

When Frank Sinatra came to Britain, he was the highest ever paid

performer, with an enormous fee of 2,000 quid per show.

And one of the few places he played in Britain was right here

at the Blackpool Opera house.

# Saturday night is the loneliest night of the week

# I sing a song that I sang for the memories I usually see... #

Frank Sinatra had emerged from the Tommy Dorsey big band

and went on to be one of the best selling artists of all time.

MUSIC: New York, New York by Frank Sinatra

I'm taking a drive with the man who was chauffeur to the stars

back in the heyday of the big bands in Blackpool.

When were you first aware of big bands, Frank?

Big bands? Oh, from 1940.

Tommy Dorsey, Jimmy Dorsey, all the other big bands.

What, the records, or the actual people?

No, no people - we got the music.

- 78s.
- You're going back a long way.

Well, there were no CDs in those days, no.

It was vinyl records!

So people loved the big band music, but the Americans,

they didn't really...

American big band styles didn't really come here, is that right?

No. Ted Heath was one of the biggest bands that came.

Ambrose, Geraldo...

They came to the Winter Gardens and played for summer season.

So you had one very special American artist come and join you,

- didn't you?
- I did indeed, Jools. It was Frank Sinatra.

# Come fly with me

# Let's fly, let's fly away

# If you can use... #

He came in 1950, and he came in 1953.

He came twice to Blackpool, I drove him twice.

His reputation had gone down slightly in America,

but when he saw the people jumping on the Buick, banging

on the windows, he just said, "They love me in this town, don't they?"

I said, "Yes, they do, sir."

He said, "I could become mayor!"

I said, "Well, yes - you could!"

But he talked to me all the time.

And what sort of thing did he say to you?

Well, we mentioned about Blackpool promenade, we're just on the

promenade at the moment, mentioned the Blackpool Illuminations.

He said yes, he was amazed at that,

all the street lights lit up.

# It's my kind of town... #

Frank, were there lots of girls waiting for Mr Sinatra?

Oh, yes - lots of girls waiting outside, there were, yes.

One in particular - Frank came out,

I opened the limo door.

He was getting in, just turned round and caught somebody in his eye

and said, "Are you waiting for me, honey?"

She said, "No, I'm waiting for the driver." It was my missus!

# She's the right girl for me... #

And what was the atmosphere like when the big bands were playing -

- I mean, in the war and that, what was it like here?
- Oh, terrific.

Blackpool was going like a bomb.

They thought everything in Blackpool was going to stop,

but we had the RAF parked here.

Every hotel round Albert Road were all RAF personnel.

And the town was booming, it was great - there were bands coming,

dances every night, everywhere. It was great.

Do you think people were living a bit like there was no tomorrow?

Well, yes. That was it. The war was on, 1940, Battle of Britain.

Oh, yes, Liverpool got bombed. We got bombed in Blackpool.

Well, it's great being up here driving you around, because it is

an honour to drive you because you've driven so many of the great people.

Well, thank you, Jools, very much.

It's the first time I've been driven in a limousine, Jools!

You're doing very well indeed. I must congratulate you.

Well, thanks very much.

That's high praise from the guru!

FRANK LAUGHS

# That long, long road... #

In 1952, the Queen came to the throne.

After the years of post-war austerity,

the new reign seemed to mark the beginning of an age of hope.

# Forget your troubles and just get happy

# You better chase all your cares away... #

With the booming of the economy,

Brits had more paid holiday time than ever before,

and fond wartime memories of Blackpool kept bringing them back.

In the 1950s, up to 17 million visitors a year were coming here.

- ARCHIVE:
- Blackpool, known to millions of Britons

and millions from overseas.

Hundreds of special trains bring thousands of people daily

to this Mecca of pleasure.

Not such a good harvest this year.

To weigh up any situation there are always the scales.

She's eager to know the result.

Couldn't possibly tell you what SHE said!

The '50s were a time of massive immigration into the UK.

There was an influx of musicians from the Caribbean,

and in London, new jazz clubs started to open up,

including Ronnie Scott's.

The big bands had become expensive and music was becoming more diverse.

Skiffle, ska, modern and traditional jazz all had a following,

and boogie-woogie had transmorphed into rock and roll.

But the big bands weren't dead.

In the early '50s,

they provided the backing for scores of top singers.

It was only when rock and roll

took the country by storm that the big bands finally bailed out.

But for those who had lived through the war years,

there was really only one kind of music.

I think that the golden age of the big bands had more glamour...

- APPLAUSE
- ..and excitement

than any other music in history.

The joy the big band sound brought to the British

in their darkest hour still resonates today.

# I'll be seeing you

# In all the old familiar places

# That my heart embraces

# All day through

# In a small cafe

# Park across the way

# The children's carousel

# The chestnut tree

# The wishing well

# I'll find you in the morning sun

# And when the night is new

# I'll be looking at the moon

# But I'll be seeing you

# Oh-oh-oh. #