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Topic: A Collector's Quest

14th Apr 2024, 12:28 PM
	Mike Wilson1 Musicologist Member since Dec 2019 26 Points	The book “British Hit Singles – January 1940 – October 1952 The Missing Charts by Steve Walters was published in 2013 and I, along with many other enthusiasts, welcomed with open arms the chance to confirm the “charts” of the war years with concrete evidence……..Initially I read the book from cover before deciding that it would not be too difficult a task to collect at least a recording of all the songs mentioned in the book, to have as a library all the recordings of that era…..Here we are some 11 years later and the project has still not been finalised. I was led on many a wild goose chase by wrong information, wrong titles, wrong artists, wrong catalogue numbers etc but set forth with a will to firstly go through my own extensive collection and contacting other collectors to begin the huge task of making a catalogue of the books content and after listing & consecutively recording a few thousand sides got down to the fact that of all the recordings made between 1940 -1949, I now had all but 32 of them……And so began the quest for the 32 sides that for one reason or another had eluded me……Trusting that the book was basically correct was still fraught with some danger as I used as a yardstick the fact that I had to have physically seen the record or a photograph of the record to believe it was available somewhere…..Found 15 photographs from the list of 32……Which meant there were 17 tracks that I could not find nor see a photo of the record……This is getting difficult !!!!......So that 32 !!!.....9 from Turner Layton, 7 from Joe Loss, 5 from Billy Cotton, 2 from Geraldo & His Orchestra and one each from Issy Bonn, Phyllis Robins, Beryl Davis, Billy Thorburn (as The Orchestra, The Dance Band & Me), The RAF Dance Band Orchestra, Jay Wilbur, Eric Winstone, Cyril Stapleton and The Squadronaires……..No idea why Turner Layton should be so difficult to locate nor why amongst the many releases by Joe Loss, 7 should be hiding !!.........Am I the first to try to do this ?......Did you start and give up ???.......What pitfalls came your way ?.....What was your hardest to locate ?......If anyone can help me locate any of the 32, I am happy to post a list