Writer, George Marshall was a miner at Whitburn Colliery, Co Durham, having earlier fractured his wrist, went back to work in 1918, and a roof fall resulted in near-fatal injuries. A recovery meant that he was able to take up composing for Salvation Army Brass Bands and Songster Brigades, and continued to conduct and play in South Shields, despite being confined to a wheelchair and unable to walk, his music and words remain challenging and inspirational.

http://www.salvoaudio.com/audio/sermons/ser_701.mp3



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For those of you who may not be so familiar with the 1930s and the artists : this copy is EXTREMELY RARE. A hard to find and very wanted collectors item.

FRIEDRICH HOLLÄNDER : an important compser of shows and cabaret songs in Berlin in the 20s and 30s. He started working for the UFA movie Der blaue Engel (1930) per chance, when the role went to Marlene Dietrich. Apart from very famous Berlin 'Revue Shows, he also directed a lot of well known movies in those days. After the Nazis came to power on January 30, 1933 he immigrated via France and England to Hollywood, where he got a three months contract. There, he wrote songs and scores for various movies (Sometimes he collaborated with Leo Robin, Frank Loesser or 'Sam Coslow (most mentionable The Boys in the Backroom). RKO signed him as director for the Western "Bullets and Ballots". After the decline of musicals in the mid 50s he returned in 1956 to Germany, where he continued working for shows and cabaret, this time in Munich. As composer/lyricist he retired in the 60s, but he kept writing books till the 70s.

MARLENE DIETRICH was best known for her sultry, sex appeal. She was a major leading lady in the 1930s and 1940s. Dietrich’s career in Germany began to take off in the late 1920s. Making film history, she was cast in Germany’s first talking picture Der Blaue Engel (1930) by Hollywood director Josef von Sternberg. An English language version, The Blue Angel, was also filmed using the same cast. With her sultry good looks and sophisticated manner, Dietrich was a natural for the role of Lola Lola, a nightclub dancer. The film follows the decline of a local professor who gives up everything to have a relationship with her character. A big hit, the film helped make Dietrich a star in the United States.

In her personal life, Dietrich was a strong opponent of the Nazi government in Germany. She had been asked to return to Germany by people associated with Hitler in the late 1930s to make films there, but she turned them down. As a result, her films were banned in her native land. She made her new country her official home by becoming a U.S. citizen in 1939. During World War II, Dietrich traveled extensively to entertain the allied troops, singing such songs as "Lili Marlene" and others that would later become staples in her cabaret act. She also worked on war-bond drives and recorded anti-Nazi messages in German for broadcast. By the mid-1970s, Dietrich had given up performing. She moved to Paris where she lived out the remainder of her life in near-seclusion. In the mid-1980s, she did provide some audio commentary for Maximillian Schell’s documentary film on her, Marlene (1984), but she refused to appear on camera. Dietrich died in 1992, in her Paris home. After the funeral, she was buried next to her mother in Berlin.
WEINTRAUB SYNCOPATORS aka The Weintraubs (translation: the grapes) : A German Jazzband, highly rated by (a.o.) Louis Armstrong. They were one of Germany’s most popular and successful jazz bands, founded in 1924 and so in demand that they played on Marlene Dietrich’s landmark 1930 film, The Blue Angel. Their repertoire consisted mainly of hot jazz and novelty comedy songs. Ever since their records have been highly in demand with most collectors of 1930s jazz and dance music.


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I've asked for A Side detail now changed but I had typoed a ' . Both Labels now scanned


"The Referee" I find was not a music hall or pub as I imagined , and I thought it would be difficult to search for on the internet with so many other references to sports match officials, but I find.

" Looking casually, recently, at the back page of the " Referee," where entertainers generally set out their qualifications for the inspection of those on concert giving bent, the writer noticed an announcement in which the following words occurred : "Another record--ii shows in two nights with the aid of a trusty motor." Considering that the average turn takes from so to 15 minutes, this struck one as being sufficiently out of the way to merit investigation, and, accordingly, an early opportunity was taken to call upon Mr. Graham, the user of the car, at Brixton. Mr. Graham, who is known as the " human marionette," presents a show in which the use of some bulky stage paraphernalia is necessary. The popularity of his performance was the direct cause of the motor being utilised, for, as Mr. Graham's turn became more arid more widely known, he found himself in the position of having offers for three or four entertainments on the same evening, all of which he could have accepted but for the fact that it was physically impossible to transport himself and his stage backwards and forwards in the time between turns. He, therefore, got a motorcar" Source : http://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/11th-april-1907/34/what-the-motor-means-to-a-music-hall-artist.

And for a mere £60.00 on abebooks http://www.abebooks.co.uk/IDOLS-HALLS-Being-Music-Hall-Memories/139537320/bd by CHANCE NEWTON, H. ("Carados" of The Referee). With a Foreword by Sir Oswald Stoll.

So The Referee was a paper , a bit like World's Fair , Variety or The Stage.


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The original, horribly pedestrian recording of "Oh Happy Day" by Don Howard (omitting his surname), accompanied only by his barely-competent skills on acoustic guitar, is on YouTube. On the page, you can read the story of how it came to be recorded, and how, despite his name and photo being on the sheet music, it wasn't actually written by Koplow in the first place. The 17-year-old learned it from his girlfriend, who learned it from the woman who wrote it, Nancy Binns Reed, who played the song for her charges when she was a leader at the summer camp that Koplow's girlfriend had attended some years previous. In the accompanying YouTube video, a newspaper clipping is shown of an article about the record, in which a local DJ hated it so much, he recommended playing the 45 at 78. Nonetheless, it became a local hit that picked up national distribution, and that's how it came to the attention of Lawrence Welk.

The song is given a classy treatment here by the Welk band, who with basso Larry Hooper turn it into a proper hit record. I believe this was Hooper's recording debut, and he sounds so nervous, you can hear him trembling. "Oh Happy Day" would become his signature song.

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