 Albert Sandler.
Albert Sandler was a Londoner, born in 1906. From his earliest days he longed to play the
fiddle, and his first job was with a cinema orchestra. By the mid 1930s, he was no longer a struggling musician,
and indeed played a Stradivarius which cost him £2000, which was a very tidy sum in the 1930s. As a musical
director and violinist he made his first appearance on the air in 1925. Sandler scored his most notable
successes from the Grand Hotel, Eastbourne, and the Park Lane Hotel, London, and also appeared in vaudeville
and on concert platforms all over the country. |
 Scott and Whaley.
Scott and Whaley were both Americans. Harry Clifford Scott came from Cleveland, Ohio, and
Eddie Peter Whaley from Montgomery, Alabama. Whaley started out as a dentist, while Scott was a tinsmith and then
a black-faced clown in a circus. They met about 1905. They first broadcast in about 1928, and very soon there was
not a listener who did not know "Pussy-Foot" (Scott) and "Cuthbert" (Whaley). They also broadcast with these names
with the Kentucky Minstrels. Cuthbert liked football. Pussy-Foot played piano. |
 J.H. Squire.
J.H. Squire was a man with a well-oiled publicity machine. He claimed to be the man who
introduced Jazz to England in 1909. The story goes that it was he who bought Irving Berlin's first song. His
orchestra, the Celeste Octet, was established in 1913, and claimed the record for the largest sale of gramophone
records of any "straight" orchestra. At one time J.H. Squire was the musical director of no less than six West
End theatres at the same time, all under opposition managements. |
 Debroy Somers.
Debroy Somers was the son of an Army band-master, and was born in Dublin in 1890. He could
play every instrument in the orchestra or the military band. He was an absolute master of seven instruments; the
oboe, cor anglais, piano, harp, clarinet, saxophone and xylophone. Being a band leader, composer and arranger
must have come easily to him. He was one of the first dance band leaders to broadcast, and was the originator of
the Savoy Hotel Orpheans. |
 Stainless Stephen.
Stainless Stephen, the popular Yorkshire broadcaster, was born at Sheffield. His real name
was Arthur Clifford, and he started out as a schoolmaster, but when the first world war came along, he joined up
and served with the York and Lancaster regiment on the Western Front from 1914 to 1919. He had a very topical
and spontaneous wit. He was the inventor of "punctuated" humour. He was heard on the radio for the first time in
January 1924, when he broadcast from Sheffield Relay Station. His one man pantomimes were perhaps his greatest
success. |
 Christopher Stone.
Christoper Stone could claim the title of being the first Disc Jockey, though as one who
compered recitals of gramophone records on the BBC, he would surely have shunned that term. Even in the mid 1930s
he was able to boast that he had broadcast over five hundred times, and at the time he had a collection of over
12,000 records, quite apart from the contents of the BBC record library which were at his disposal for
broadcasting. He was for many years the London editor of the Gramophone magazine, which was started by his
brother-in-law Compton Mackenzie.
Christopher Stone was another of the university men at the BBC, being educated at Eton and Oxford. |
 Lew Stone.
Lew Stone was one of Britain's highest paid dance band leaders. He started out playing in a
small night club in London, and then went to South Africa as pianist with Bert Ralton's Band. When he came back,
he did some orchestrations for Ambrose, and then became Roy Fox's pianist at the Monseigneur. While Roy was off
sick one day, Lew took over the management of the band, and having jumped to the front of a band, he stayed there.
His own band played some great and innovative arrangements, of which many were his own work. |
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