What with recent posts about radio and today being the first of May, my fancy lightly turns to thoughts of Russell Davies (above). For many years Mr Davies hosted a weekly programme on Radio 2 until it was decided that retaining the regular services of this witty and literate musical authority was an expense too far for the BBC.
Once, a few years before that dread event, I analysed an edition of the show for pointers; I was considering a podcast equivalent of this blog. I didn't get much farther than buying a microphone but the exercise gave me a keener appreciation of that much-missed programme.
The Russell Davies Song Show, for those who don't know anything about it, was a successor to Benny Green's, aired in the same slot on a Sunday and taking a similar approach: concentrating on the Great American Songbook, drawing attention to forgotten or neglected numbers within that capacious tome and making unexpected connections between songs. During my short-lived quest to uncover The Secret of Broadcasting Man's Red Fire, I paid special attention to the way in which Mr Davies linked his musical selections together.
Another, older, broadcaster, Ken Sykora (the young Paul McCartney had listened to his programme Guitar Club on the Light Programme in the 1950s), had come to my attention in the early 1970s when he joined the new independent station Radio Clyde, based in Glasgow. His show for Clyde covered many diffferent genres but he had found an easy solution to the problem of imposing coherence on his choices: he called it Serendipity with Sykora, which meant that provided some associative process, however tenuous, could be cited then just about anything went.
Serendipity with Sykora was my introduction to Spike Jones, among many others, and one of Jones's masterpieces of musical mayhem happened to feature in the edition of the Russell Davies Song Show I put under the spotlight, broadcast on Radio 2 on Sunday, the second of May, 2010.
Below are my summaries of Mr Davies's rationale for each selection, followed by some further observations I made at the time.








