A lightweight Palace with an hour of the carefree music that could be heard in abundance on the radio, film soundtracks and in newsreels in the 1940s and 1950s
Lighthearted, but often made by people with a solid education in classical music: Charles Shadwell (who led the BBC Variety Orchestra for three decades), grandmaster of light music (but trained in classical music), Leroy Anderson, the Catalan violinist and bandleader Xavier Cugat, who lead the house orchestra of the Waldorf Astoria Hotel, Les Baxter (once one of Mel Tormé’s Mel-Tones), former conservatory student Henri Rene and De Wapiti’s from the Netherlands. Furthermore: Skitch Henderson (who got his first name from his ability to ‘re-sketch a song in a different key’, Percy Faith, Frank Chacksfield, Robert Sharples, André Popp and also ‘aeroplane music’ by Helmut Zacharias.
