Make Way for Music

One of the mainstays of the BBC Light Programme were the shows featuring the in-house orchestras, whether it was the Concert Orchestra on Friday Night is Music Night or the Midland Light Orchestra with a medley of Morning Music. But by far one of the most popular, even making the transition to television, was Make Way for Music. Featuring the talented musicians of the Northern Dance Orchestra, the conductor Alyn Ainsworth, singer Sheila Buxton and, most of all, the announcer Roger Moffat, became household names in the late 1950s and early 1960s. This is the story of that show. 

When Make Way for Music premiered on the Light Programme in 1955 the music was provided by the BBC Northern Variety Orchestra. After the string section was disbanded in 1956 it became the Northern Dance Orchestra, a title it retained until 1974. The Northern Variety Orchestra had been formed in 1951 and started broadcasting from April that year. It had been brought together under the direction of composer, arranger and conductor Ray Martin. As Ray was London-based, he was also working for EMI at the time, he handed over the baton to Vilem Tausky, with Alyn Ainsworth (pictured below) as his deputy.  When Tausky was appointed associate conductor of the Northern Orchestra in October 1952 his place as principal conductor of the NVO went to Ainsworth.

There was, in fact, another short-lived Northern Variety Orchestra formed in 1948 with conductor Toni Script (always billed simply as ‘Toni’) who’d been music al director of Blackpool’s North Pier Orchestra. It was wound up in the spring of 1949.  

Alyn Ainsworth’s first taste of show business was in the late 1930s as a boy soprano (‘the boy with the wonder voice’) with the Herman Darewski and his Band. Post-war he was an arranger for the Oscar Rabin Band (see my blog post Go Man Go) and Geraldo and led the big band The Falcons. His first radio broadcast was with The Falcons in the North Home Service in June 1950. By the following year he was conducting the Northern Variety Orchestra on programmes such as Melody Highway and the popular Blackpool Night (on the Light) and the variety show The Spice of Life (Home Service).  He also conducted for BBC TV’s The Good Old Days and Top Town, both produced by Barney Colehan, and Morecambe and Wise’s first radio series You’re Only Young Once.

In 1954 Ainsworth started to work with announcer Roger Moffat and singer Les Howard on the Light Programme early evening entertainment The Night is Young, the forerunner to Make Way for Music. His arrangements for the NVO and NDO were described as “impressive, often spectacular and always original”. (The Stage) He resigned from the NDO in 1960 due to ill health (chronic neuritis) but later that year signed up with Granada TV as musical director on Spot the Tune. This was the start of a long association with TV shows, as musical director for BBC Light Entertainment in the 60s and at LWT in the 80s. He was the regular conductor of the BBC Radio Orchestra between 1974 and 1978.   

A billing from 26 March 1960

Make Way for Music first appears on the Light on Friday 13 May 1955 with Roger Moffat making the announcements and with singers Les Howard and Barbara Law, both regular singers with the NDO. Les and would continue to appear with the Orchestra into the early 1970s. The show aired on Friday teatimes, usually 5 o’clock, until December 1957 when it moved to Friday lunchtimes. The shows were recorded in the BBC studios at the Playhouse Theatre in Hulme, Manchester.  

The singer most associated with Make Way for Music was Manchester-born Sheila Buxton. She’d already broadcast for BBC radio on Worker’s Playtime, Midday Music Hall and with Jimmy Clitheroe in Call Boy, as well as dozens of TV appearances for both the BBC and ITV before joining the show in January 1957. In 1958 she signed to Bob Monkhouse and Denis Goddwin’s agency and shortly after with the Top Rank record label.

But what set aside Make Way for Music from the other BBC music shows were the humorous announcements and banter with musicians and singers from staff announcer Roger Moffat, “spelt with one T – I’m fussy about that”. As he told the press in 1959 “I have a warped sense of humour. I enjoy sticking my neck out. I find it fun”. He opened each show with the announcement “Wherever you are, whoever you are, make way for music.”

Roger Moffat illustration by Jan Parker for
the Sunday Mirror 5 March 1973

Moffat had joined the BBC’s announcing team in Manchester in July 1951(after a spell at Radio Luxembourg) doing the usual mix of continuity announcing, news reading and programme introductions. He first worked with Alyn Ainsworth and the NVO on the aforementioned The Night is Young and continued to appear with Alyn and the NDO on shows such as This is You Saturday Date, Melody Matinee, Star Train and Saturday Night on the Light. In the 50s and 60s Roger made hundreds of appearances introducing  programmes on both the Light and Home Service too numerous to list but they included Laughter Incorprated, another forgotten Morecambe and Wise show, Music-Hall, Music on the Menu, Northern editions of Worker’s Playtime, Music on the Move, Stay Late and Midday Spin. He made the introductions on dozens of episodes of The Clitheroe Kid. In 1960 Roger appeared in the first TV series for Pinky and Perky called Pop Parade with Roger playing the announcer at Station P.O.P. who is constantly interrupted by the porcine puppets.

By the mid-60s Roger was now London-based covering the usual mix of continuity work, reading bulletins and taking turns hosting regular music shows like Music Through Midnight and Double Spin. He was on duty for the last night of the Light Programme and made the closing announcement in the early hours of Saturday 30 September 1967. He continued to work for Radio 1 and Radio 2 on Night Ride, The Joe Loss Show and Things are Swingin’. But the ad-libs and on-air buffoonery all came to an end in July 1971 when he was given the sack after some joking with colleague Keith Skues about the shipping forecast. Apparently jokes about Gale Force 28½ were beyond the pale. He spent the next two years on the dole before Keith Skues, now Programme Director at ILR station Radio Hallam, offered him a job on the breakfast show. He quit Hallam in December 1981 but worked briefly for BBC Radio Sheffield two years later. A notoriously heavy drinker, he died in impecunious circumstances in 1986.        

Radio Times billing for the first TV broadcast of
Make Way for Music 14 January 1959

I’ve leapt ahead of the story of Make Way for Music. Such was its popularity on the radio that in October 1958 a television pilot was filmed which was given the green-light for a series by light entertainment executive Eric Maschwitz. The first TV version aired on the BBC on 14 January 1959 in an initial run of four fortnightly shows. That run kept getting extended and it was broadcast through to December, with a further short series following in the summer of 1960, clocking up 26 programmes in total.

Ahead of the first show the Manchester Evening News set the scene for the TV version which ‘aims to show the orchestra in its working clothes-the players grouped as they would be for a radio show in a shirt-sleeves-and-sweaters atmosphere. Cameras will move round picking up unexpected expressions and odd angles. The music-crisp, clean and often witty-speaks volumes for the group’s cheerful teamwork. And it fits the mood of the feature which gives the show its special flavour – the unscripted, off-beat and often insulting comments of announcer Roger Moffat in between the numbers’.    

Sheila Buxton featured in Picturegoer 5 April 1958

The TV version featuring the vocal talents of Sheila Buxton plus Roberto Cardinali. Tenor Cardinali (who also performed under the name Vincent Roberto) had first appeared in the North Region’s Time to Celebrate programme in January 1959 and flew over from Zurich, where he was in cabaret, for the recordings. The producer was Barney Colehan.

Following the first TV broadcast of Make Way for Music 800 letters poured in and there were thousands later. Moffat told the press: “I don’t earn any more money. I’ve reached the salary limit for my job as a BBC announcer.” He got offers from ITV and also American TV companies. “These were short-term contracts and if I did not come up to their expectations I should find myself out of a job eventually. But the main reason is that I don’t want to break away from the NDO. I have worked with them for years, and I know them and their families as friends. My life is bound up with them. I don’t like working from a script. Usually I have no idea what I am going to say until the show starts,”

Check out Richard Cawson’s 1960 documentary This is the BBC on YouTube and you’ll spot Alyn Ainsworth and the NDO starting at 26 minutes in with their rendition of On Ilkley Moor bar t'at accompanying shots of Judith Chalmers, David Coleman and others in the BBC restaurant. Roger Moffat appears about two minutes later.

The final radio edition of the original run of Make Way for Music aired on the Light on 29 April 1960. It did, however, return for eight shows in 1970/71 on Radio 2, each one recorded at a different venue in the north of England.  The NDO was now conducted by Bernard Herrmann and the guest singers included Sheila Buxton and Les Howard. The shows were introduced by Stuart Hall, Gay Byrne and, back for four of them, by Roger Moffat.

Little exists of Make Way for Music in the BBC’s archives but some shows were issued by the Transcription Services for overseas stations, though this means they were cut down by about 15 minutes to under 28 minutes duration. It’s one of these shorter versions that was repeated as part of The Golden Days of Radio on Radio 2 in May 1994. Appearing are Sheila Buxton, vocal group The Zodiacs, organist Jimmy Leach and violinist Norman George, who’d led the NDO from the start and would retain this position until 1971 when he joined the Northern Concert Orchestra. This edition is undated other than it was first broadcast in 1960.

The NDO continued to broadcast for the next 14 years featuring in their own programmes such as The N.D.O. Melody Show, contributing to Breakfast Special, Music Through Midnight, Night Ride, Late Night Extra and Top Tunes, as well as providing the music for Ken Dodd and Roy Castle’s comedy shows. In 1974 it was renamed the BBC Northern Radio Orchestra but was disbanded six years later as part of a number of BBC cuts. There’ll be more about the NDO and the NRO in a future post.