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. 

Put Out the Light

Fifty years ago this month, on Friday 29 September 1967, the BBC Light Programme closed down, in name if not entirely in spirit, to be replaced by Radio 2. Regular listeners to the Light wouldn't have been too disturbed by the changes brought about by that young pop upstart Radio 1. Sure Music While You Work and Housewives' Choice had been dropped but you could still get you fill of Max Jaffa, The Dales and the Frank Chacksfield Orchestra.

So how what was offered up on the final day on the Light? Well I've dug out my Radio Times  back issue and taken a look.

I can't be certain if the Light Programme was still using the Oranges and Lemons theme to gently usher in the day, but if it did it may have sounded a little like this. 

The broadcasting day started at 5.30 a.m. (you'll notice a few programmes starting at half past or a quarter past the hour; drawing up the schedule was a considerably more complex task back then) with Breakfast Special. This was always presented by one of the staff announcers, today the turn of Peter Latham. Whilst there are off-air recordings of Breakfast Special with Paul Hollingdale, Ray Moore and John Dunn I've heard nothing of Peter. So instead here he is reading the news on Radio 1 and Radio 2.

David Hamilton once wrote that "my BBC bosses gave me the job of burying the Light Programme". And sure enough he features at either end of the day. "I wondered if the BBC were trying to tell me something".  David had been appearing on the Light since The Beat Show in 1963 ("the band with the beat that's reet") but on the final day "I was tucked away in the basement hosting the very last week of Housewives' Choice... Everybody who was anybody had presented that programme, but it looked as though I would be the only one to do so and then be instantly forgotten."  No recordings of David on Housewives' Choice exist but  we can hear how David sounded in September 1967 thanks to this recording from Friday 8th of Music Through Midnight (more of which below).

One BBC radio stalwart that played out for the final time was Music While You Work. Introduced in 1940 "specially for factory workers to listen to as they work" the Corporation had decided it'd run its course. Featuring on that final show was a musician who'd appeared on the first day too, Jimmy Leach.  A composer, pianist and organist, just before the war Leach had joined forces with the trio Organola, who a year later would become The Organolists. The group went on to appear in 256 editions of Music While You Work. Remarkably that final edition has survived and comes from the archive of Brian Reynolds. You can download it from this page on his Masters of Melody website. Amongst all the traditional tunes the one nod to pop is Penny Lane. The opening announcer is Brian Hudson and rounding things off is Paul Hollingdale.       

Orchestral music was still the order of the day, from light music to the more 'poppy' end of the musical scale, with the BBC Scottish Radio Orchestra, the BBC Midland Light Orchestra, the Joe Loss Orchestra and the BBC Concert Orchestra all featuring at different time of the day. The Midland Light Orchestra was one of the BBC's most prolific in-house orchestras, broadcasting every week, sometimes two or three times a week, from 1947 until the late 1960s - it was eventually disbanded in 1973. On 29 September they were part of the Music in the Air programme under the direction of their regular conductor Gilbert Vintner. This is how they sounded in 1963 performing one of their regular morning sequences of music.  

Some of the former pirate DJs had already come back to dry land before the start of Radio 1 and got a try-out on the Light Programme. That list included Tony Blackburn and Dave Cash plus, and appearing here, Pete Brady with Midday Spin and Keith Skues on Swingalong. 

The cast of The Dales after the final recording in 1969 (Getty Images) 

The Dales, Roundabout - this week with Desmond Carrington - and News Time would transfer to Radio 2. Newly Pressed would become What's New on Radio 1. There's a rather curious programme at 7.30 pm called Movietime. This was a long-running series, it started in 1961 though there'd been similar programmes before that, which provided adapted film soundtracks for a radio audience. One can only imagine how Gordon Gow managed to cut down the nearly two-hour action-packed You Only Live Twice to a meaningful 30 minutes of radio.  

Friday evening sees two programmes that still grace the airwaves five decades on: Any Questions? which would shift over to Radio 4 in 1970 and Friday Night is Music Night, then in its 14th year. The recording of Friday Night is Music Night I can offer nearest to this date is from 25 July 1969. The setting is The Assembly Hall in Worthing. Many of the participants are the same as you'd have heard in September 1967: the BBC Concert Orchestra conducted by Sidney Torch, William Davies at the piano, The Friday Knights directed by John McCarthy and the announcer Jimmy Kingsbury.  

Diddy David was back in the evening for Music Through Midnight, which would become Late Night Extra on Radios 1 and 2, though, initially at least, without David. By the time midnight arrived it was party time in the rather packed studio. In the nine minutes of off-air audio that survives the DJs who pop in, and most seem to have consumed a fair amount of BBC plonk, include Johnny Moran, Miranda Ward, Duncan Johnson, Tony Blackburn, Chris Denning, Roger Moffat, Bruce Wyndham, Mike Lennox and Bill Crozier plus Cindy Kent of The Settlers.

The task of closing the Light Programme after 22 years fell to staff announcer Roger Moffat with It's One O'Clock. In this clip you'll hear an off-air recording of Roger chatting to his old Make Way for Music chum, the singer Sheila Buxton. We then get the final 2 am news bulletin and closedown which the BBC did keep: "There we end broadcasting in the Light Programme, not just for today but, as it seems, forever..."

Later that morning witnessed, in the words of station controller Robin Scott, "the strident birth-pangs of a much-heralded and rather bouncy new radio network - or, rather, the emergence of two new programmes, one resembling in many respects the old Light (but with a number of new features), the other brand new in style (but sharing some of the most popular features of the other)". It was welcome to the world BBC Radio 1 and BBC Radio 2.

In the summer of 2015 I wrote about the Light Programme. You can read the first in a series of nine posts here.    

BBC Radio 2 remembers the days of the Light Programme in the two-part documentary The Story of the Light the first of which airs this evening. The series is produced by Made in Manchester.  

Standby for Switching

“Standby for switching. Get tuned to Radio 1 or 2. 5, 4, 3, Radio 2, Radio 1, go!” Surely one of the most played pieces of radio archive: Robin Scott’s countdown to the launch of Radio 1 at 7 a.m. on Saturday 30 September 1967.  But what was happening over on Radios 2, 3 and 4? Was there an exciting new range of programmes as part of the biggest shake-up of the radio networks since the immediate post-war period? Or was it just business as usual?

The relabeling of the old Home, Light and Third had been prompted by the BBC’s promise to fund a new pop service to replace the offshore pirate stations. This had first been mooted in 1966 and work started in earnest in January 1967 when, Johnny Beerling recalls, producers in the Popular Music and Gramophone Departments were asked whether they wanted to work on Radio 1 or 2. Beerling would then work alongside Derek Chinnery, Teddy Warwick and Angela Bond in thrashing out ideas for the pop station, reporting to Robin Scott who was appointed controller a month later. 

In fact at that time the new station still didn’t have a name, that decision was made later that summer. Amongst the names considered by the BBC’s Sound Broadcasting Committee were “Popular Music Service”, “Radio 247”, “Radio 67” (which would surely be out-of-date come January 1968!), “Radio Elizabeth”, “Radio Skylark”, and “Radio Pam”. By May 1967 the use of numbers was first suggested such as “Radio One” and “Light One”.  The numbering of the networks led Home Service controller Gerald Mansell to express concern that the new Radio Four could “imply demotion”.

So what about Radio 1? As ever funds were short so to make the new service look like it had a full schedule there was loads of simulcasting with Radio 2. There was also the trick of billing former Light Programme shows as being on Radio 1, even when also going out on Radio 2. Confusing! This happened for Saturday Club (but dropping Brian Matthew in favour of Keith Skues), Family Favourites with Michael Aspel, Country Meets Folk with Wally Whyton and The Jazz Scene with Humphrey Lyttelton. Even that old warhorse Housewives’ Choice became a Radio 1 show re-titled Family Choice. Some Radio 1 shows such as Late Night Extra and Night Ride would later become long-running Radio 2 programmes.

This was the line-up on Radio 1’s launch day:

0700 Tony Blackburn with a Daily Disc Delivery
0832 Leslie Crowther with Junior Choice (renamed from Children’s Favourites that had ended the previous weekend with presenter John Ellison)
0855 Crack the Clue with Duncan Johnson
1000 Keith Skues with Saturday Club
1200 Emperor Rosko with Midday Spin (Midday Spin being an old Light Programme title)
1300 The Jack Jackson Show
1355 Crack the Clue
1400 Chris Denning with Where It’s At (a Light Programme transfer)
1500 Pete Murray
1600 Pete Brady
1730 Country Meets Folk
1832 Scene and Heard with Johnny Moran
1930 as Radio 2
2200 Pete Murray with Pete’s Party (another Light Programme refugee)
0000 Midnight Newsroom
0005 Night Ride with Sean Kelly
0200 News and closedown

You’ll find audio of Tony’s first show online so I’ll not post it again here. But imagine the shock of any Light Programme listeners who stumbled across Midday Spin – the previous Saturday it had been a special Holiday Spin with Michael Aspel -  and heard the whoops and shouts from Emperor Rosko. Here’s a scoped version of part of that show:

In 1967 the Light Programme was allowed to stay up late and didn’t close down until 2 a.m. It fell to announcer Roget Moffat to have the last word. He was that night’s presenter of It’s One Clock, a hour-long music show with a different host each weekday – in that final week you’d also have heard Jon Curle, Sean Kelly, Wally Whyton and Adrian Love. 
 

In contrast to Radio 1’s full Saturday schedule, Radio 2’s was a little light. It was continuity announcer Paul Hollingdale who was the first voice on the new networks when Radio 2 opened at 0530. He’d been chosen by controller Robin Scott to host that morning’s edition of Breakfast Special in place of the regular Saturday presenter Bruce Wyndham. In fact Bruce was working that morning anyway, but over on Radio 4 reading the early morning news, such was the swapping between networks of continuity announcers at that time. So the timings were:

0533 Breakfast Special with Paul Hollingdale
0832 as Radio 1
0955 Five to Ten with Paul Simon and Colin Semper
1000 Max Jaffa and Sandy MacPherson with Melody Time
1200 Marching and Waltzing introduced by Jimmy Kingsbury
1300 as Radio 1
1832 Those Were the Days introduced by Bill Crozier
1935 Million Dollar Bill with Joe Brown as that week’s guest speaking to Robin Boyle
2015 Spotlight 1 and 2 in which Kenneth Horne previews some of the shows and voices on the new stations
2115 Caterina Valente Sings
2200 as Radio 1

This is the intro to Spotlight 1 and 2:

In 2007 Paul Hollingdale recalled that first Radio 2 edition of Breakfast Special. And if you want to know the first record played on the station here’s the answer:  

Listeners to the new Radio 3 will have noticed absolutely no difference to their daily programmes. Saturday under the old regime was broken down into different strands: 0700-1230 Music Programme, 1230-1800 Sports Service and then 1800-2315 Third Programme. This continued on 30 September and remained the general format of the station until April 1970 when it became more of a cohesive network.

Friday 29 September had been The Third Programme’s twenty-first birthday and the whole evening was dedicated to a performance of The Tragedy of King Lear with John Gielgud in the title role. Closing down proceedings after the Market Trends report (an odd piece of scheduling with financial news on the Third whilst over on the Home Service they had a music programme) was announcer Cormac Rigby. He was also on duty the following morning to usher in Radio 3, whose schedule for the day was as follows:

0800 News and weather
0804 Record Review with John Lade
0900 News and weather
0904 La Clemenza di Tito, a performance of Mozart’s opera in two acts
1014 Ravel’s Piano Music played by Colin Horsley
1040 La Clemenza di Tito – Act Two
1200 Jazz Record Requests with Steve Race
1230 Sports Service introduced by Michael de Morgan with golf, swimming, racing from Ascot,  second-half football commentary and Sports Report
1800 Bach – four piano pieces played by Charles Rosen
1855 An Idea and Its Icon – a talk by Geoffrey Webb on theology and iconography in the Middle Ages
1910 Folk Music of Czechoslovakia compiled and introduced by A.L. Lloyd and produced by Douglas Cleverdon
2000 BBC Symphony Orchestra – a concert from the Berlin Festival with the Orchestra conducted by Pierre Boulez
2105 Personal View – John Maddox with a talk on current affairs
2125 Concert - Part 2  
2205 Abraham Cowley – selections of his poetry introduced by Anthony Thwaite
2235 Mozart – String Quartet in F major played by The Weller Quartet
2300 News
2315 Closedown

Closing the Home Service “for today, and for all days” on the Friday evening was David Dunhill, who’d obviously taken some care in preparing his final announcement.


The last programme on the Home Service was Jazz at Night with records played by John Dunn. Jazz at Night became the only show to move from the Home Service to Radio 1, finding a home just after midnight on Friday nights. John Dunn, of course, would then pop up during Saturday reading the news on Radio 1 and 2 and making that now infamous “here is the news, in English” intro to the bulletin during Rosko’s show (see above).

It was David Dunhill who opened up proceedings on Radio 4 the following morning welcoming listeners to “Radio 4, the Home Service”, a billing that remained for many months to ease the transition. The schedule was exactly the same as the previous Saturday with the sole exception of the renaming of Lightening Our Darkness as At the Close of the Day. Reviewing the line-up I’m struck by the sheer volume of, necessarily, short programmes. There must have been nearly fifty continuity junctions. This is the schedule for the London area, there were regional variations in the Midlands, North, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland and South & West.

0635 Farming Today
0650 Ten to Seven – prayers and meditation
0655 Weather and Programme News
0700 News
0715 On Your Farm
0745 Today’s Papers
0750 Outlook – a Christian angle on the news  
0755 Weather and Programme News
0800 News
0815 From Our Own Correspondent
0845 Today’s Papers
0850 Voices – archive material introduced by Leslie Perowne
0900 News
0915 The Weekly World – a review of the weekly news magazine by Geoffrey Howe
0920 A Choice of Paperbacks chaired by Cliff Michelmore
0945 In Your Garden – introduced by John Hay
1015 Daily Service
1030 Science Survey with a talk on Protection Against Disease
1045 Study Session with programmes on The Artist at Work, Music Questions and Divertissement Francais
1200 Motoring and the Motorist – chaired by Bill Hartley
1225 All the Best from Today – clips from the week’s Today programme linked by Jack de Manio
1255 Weather and Programme News   
1300 News
1310 Round the Horne – repeat of an April edition on the Light Programme
1340 Desert Island Discs – Roy Plomley talks to castaway Roy Castle
1415 Afternoon Theatre – with Floral Tribute written by David Bartlett
1515 Home for the Day – a Saturday supplement to Woman’s Hour with Marjorie Anderson
1600 Music at Four – with music by Haydn, Mozart and Stravinsky played by the BBC Welsh Orchestra and a Ravel quartet played by the LaSalle String Quartet
1755 Weather and Programme News
1800 News and Radio Newsreel, followed by Regional News
1830 Sports Session (other regions had their own sports programmes)
1900 Steptoe and Son – a repeat of Crossed Swords from the Light Programme in July
1930 Gala Night at the Opera – Sandra Chalmers introducing a programme of music recorded at the Huddersfield Town Hall played by the BBC Northern Symphony Orchestra and the BBC Northern Singers
2030 Saturday Night Theatre with Paul Daneman and Maragret Rawlings in Adventure Story by Terrence Rattigan
2158 Weather Forecast
2200 News
2210 A Word in Edgeways presented by Brian Redhead
2255 At the Close of the Day – a meditation by Stanley Pritchard
2310 Music at Night – Scarlatti sonatas played by Alan Cuckston
2342 Weather forecast, news summary and coastal waters forecast
2348 Closedown