“And now we take you to the Palm Court of the Grand Hotel…” as the announc­er used to say, intro­duc­ing a pro­gramme of fine light clas­si­cal and dance music from the Grand Hotel in East­bourne, on Britain’s South Coast.

Today we take you back to the dance-halls of the ear­ly to mid­dle 20th Cen­tu­ry, from around the mid-20s to the 50s, char­ac­terised by the BBC radio series, Grand Hotel. We’ll also be hear­ing some clas­sic big-band record­ings and much more.

Join us at noon or 4pm Pacif­ic, 8pm or mid­night in the UK, for the lat­est episode in our Sec­ond Life trav­el­ogue series, “Where Have You Been?”, where we fea­ture For­ev­er Tourist, A Sec­ond Life Explo­ration Game.

Broad­casts of light clas­si­cal music on the BBC start­ed in 1925 from The Grand Hotel in East­bourne and fea­tured, to quote the Radio Times of the era, ‘Music of the Palm Court Orches­tra’. The Lounge Hall of the Grand was used — the hotel did not actu­al­ly have a Palm Court.

We’ll be fea­tur­ing the mod­­ern-day Palm Court Orches­tra — in fact sev­er­al dif­fer­ent ones, includ­ing the Palm Court Orches­tra of the Stock­holm Phil­har­mon­ic! Much of the music you’ll hear today is instru­men­tal, but there are some vocal num­bers; sim­i­lar­ly, the record­ings are a mix­ture of authen­tic 1920s-40s dance-band record­ings from the Charleston era and lat­er, and mod­ern light clas­si­cal dance tunes and oth­er pieces.

The Grand Hotel pro­gramme itself ran on Sun­days from 1943 to 1973 and was gen­er­al­ly broad­cast live, usu­al­ly from the Con­cert Hall at Broad­cast­ing House but occa­sion­al­ly on loca­tion. It was host­ed by vio­lin­ist Albert San­dler until ear­ly in 1948 when he was tak­en ill and left the pro­gramme, being replaced by Tom Jenk­ins. Both had pre­vi­ous­ly been musi­cal direc­tors of the Grand Hotel East­bourne  (San­dler 1924–28 and Jenk­ins 1938–40). How­ev­er oth­er hotels were also used, notably the Roy­al Bath, Bournemouth and these pro­grammes were not called ‘Grand Hotel’.

The pro­gramme lapsed for a cou­ple of years before return­ing for its final series in 1951 when it was pre-record­ed and intro­duced by Tom Jenk­ins with the Palm Court Orches­tra and guest bari­tone Alfred Swain. Max Jaf­fa took over in 1956, suc­ceed­ing Jean Pougnet, and stayed to the end. Regi­nald Leopold direct­ed the Palm Court orches­tra for 17 years, until 1973.

The pro­gram­me’s sig­na­ture tune was the “big tune” from Strauss’s Ros­es from the South.

Some orig­i­nal peri­od record­ings may con­tain neg­a­tive stereo­types or lan­guage now regard­ed as offen­sive. Such mate­ri­als should be seen in the con­text of the time peri­od and as a reflec­tion of atti­tudes of the time. The record­ings are part of the his­tor­i­cal record, and do not rep­re­sent the views of Vir­tu­al Com­mu­ni­ty Radio.

Text based on the entry for Grand Hotel in Whirligig, http://www.whirligig-tv.co.uk/radio/musicprog.htm The pic­ture shows Regi­nald Leopold and his Orches­tra rehears­ing for Grand Hotel