Brian Ebbatson tells me that Radio 3, this morning, played a couple of tracks with furlough in the title.
One was A Fellow on a Furlough by Glenn Miller and the Army Air Force band and the second was Furlough Blues by an Earl Hines Big Band in 1945.
Brian, understandably, prefers the Hines disc although the Miller recording has a vocal by Johnny Desmond who, had he been able to dodge the draft with a punctured eardrum, could have been a contender in the 1940's heartthrob stakes. As it was he did earn the title of The Creamer and it wasn't necessarily for his voice!
The Hines disc also has a vocalist. A singer with a deep heavy vibrato not too far removed from Billy Eckstine. Lord Essex was his stage name. Essex? Eckstine? could this have been Mr B using a pseudonym? After all he did start out with the Hines band.
However, further research revealed that "Lord Essex" was actually Scott Essex. The story that got around was that Hines' manager thought Scott Essex sounded too ordinary so he said, "We've got a Duke, a Count and an Earl so let's have a Lord" which put the mockers on my theory!
Still, the research gave me something to do whilst on furlough!*
Lance
*I've actually been furloughed for the past 20 years!
1 comment :
I was listening to this item in the car on the way to work - "furlough" is actually from a Dutch word - verlof, apparently.
Furlough is/was also used in the context of missionaries returning to the UK (or elsewhere) from the mission field for a period of leave.
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