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Sunday, January 12, 2020

Just For You - Cyril Stapleton

I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now
Just For You
Cyril Stapleton and His Orchestra
London PS 109

From the back cover: Few can be more aware of the magic power of music than Cyril Stapleton. He is himself an accomplished artist of the most romantic of instruments and is as much at home in the repertoire of the classics as he is in the field of light music. He made his first broadcast at the age of 12 playing as a solo violinist on the old 5NG radio station at Nottingham, the town where he was born. He must indeed be one of the youngest veterans of radio for he broadcast regularly for B.B.C. Birmingham studios in the years between 1928 and 1932. By this time, having reached the age of eighteen, he went to Czechoslovakia to study briefly under Seven, the famous teacher of the violin. On his return to England his early study and outstanding talent were rewarded by a scholarship to the Trinity College of Music in London.

At the same time as he entered the college, Cyril Stapleton joined up with Henry Hall and his newly formed B.B.C. Dance Orchestra and under his baton took part in the first transmission ever to go out from Broadcasting House. In 1935 he transferred to Jack Payne's Orchestra and took part with it in an extensive tour of South Africa. It was in 1937 at the age of 23, that he first set out on his own, forming a small orchestra which played regularly at the West End restaurant. His first broadcast with his own band took place in March 1939.

The outbreak of the war caused Cyril Stapleton temporarily to set aside his musical career and he insisted in the R.A.F. where he remained for the next five years. The end of this period, however, found him as a member of the R.A.F. Symphony Orchestra and following demobilization he chose to free-lance for a while, playing with nearly every broadcasting orchestra and appearing regularly with the Philharmonia and National Symphony Orchestras.

The rest of the story is well known to radio listeners, for Cyril Stapleton's new orchestra formed in 1947 was soon to occupy the key spots of the B.B.C. programs. As conductor of the B.B.C Show Band he became famous not only as the creator of all that is best in light music, but also as a popular and quick witted broadcasting personality.


I'm Forever Blowing Bubbles
Bye Bye Blackbird
Tell Me Tonight
April Showers
Ain't She Sweet
For Me And My Girl
Charmaine
I Wonder Who's Kissing Her Now
If You Were The Only Girl In The World
Beer Barrel Polka
Anything Goes

3 comments:

  1. Sample is definitely not Cyril. Sounds like Herbert Rehbein.

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  2. The title is in fact "When I Fall in Love" by Victor Young. Sincerely, PO

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  3. Complete album is on YT. If you listen to it, as I did: It is Stapleton AND title is the good one, not «When I Fall in Love».

    ReplyDelete

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