Hello Goodbye to Berlin: How the Beatles Peppered the Melting Pot (new book by David Hamm)

Scan the famous faces who populate the Sgt. Pepper album cover and one may seem conspicuous by his absence: Irving Berlin, regarded by many as the father of twentieth century American popular song, fusing together elements of a range of musical genres to pen the opening pages of what we know today as The Great American Songbook.

It was fifty years - oh, alright, fifty years and one day - ago today ...

50 years ago yesterday, the talent show Opportunity Knocks was the last programme to be broadcast from ABC's studios in Didsbury, a Manchester suburb, before the company merged with Rediffusion to become Teddington-based Thames Television, home to Hughie Green's show for a further ten years.

Gnome Thoughts ... 39 (Liltin' Hilton or Wherefore to Bradfooord?)

I thought this blog's series of posts about the early David Bowie, entitled Gnome Thoughts, had come to a natural end but today I heard Ronnie Hilton's version of The Laughing Gnome, recorded in 1967, for the first time, and could not stay silent.

My Old Man's a Fireman/Soldier/Dustman (strike out whichever is not applicable)

Some time ago I looked into the origins of My Old Man's a Dustman, the 1960 song by Lonnie Donegan which helped broaden his appeal.

I didn't look hard enough.