Music While You Work 110 (1943) Jay Wilbur

MOONLIGHT AND ROSES ~ [0:00]
PHIL THE FLUTER’S BALL ~ [3:00]
Jay Wilbur and his band
Decca MW 110 (17 September 1943)
This is a curiosity, and way out of my preferred period and style.
Music While You Work was 30 minutes of purposeful background instrumental-music in the form of a BBC radio programme begun in June 1940 as an aid to the war effort. It was strict-time music for playing over loudspeakers to workers in factories. There were morning and afternoon broadcasts and, for a while, an evening one. Its signature tune was ‘Calling All Workers’ by Eric Coates. It long outlasted its time and dragged on until September 1967, when BBC radio was given a thorough overhaul.
Wynford Reynolds was the MWYW musical supervisor at the BBC until 1944. He is credited as supervising this Decca record, one of many the company made for playing in factories when the radio programme was not being broadcast. Note the strobe-markings on the label to get the rpm and the tempo right. Presumably, the dead studio acoustic was to allow for the workshop-floor acoustic environments into which the record would be played.
This record is from Jay Wilbur’s penultimate UK recording session as listed in Rust and is certainly not one of his dance-band peaks. He is not the pianist. Debroy Somers arranged PHIL THE FLUTER.
Jay Wilbur has very recently caught my interest. He seems to be another of those familiar dance-band stalwarts about whom little seems to be known; and, from my researches so far, what is quoted as ‘known’ is often muddled and downright wrong about important facts - most glaring is the fact that few biographers have even bothered to investigate the man’s correct given name, and place and date of birth.
The standard of biographies of bandleaders and vocalists can be woeful. It amazes me that a significant female name in band music (and broadcasting) could state in her 1997 book that Ambrose emigrated to the USA with his parents! A 1998 book, by another author, refers to Ambrose ‘dying a bachelor’ (his estranged-wife and two daughters had quit the UK for New Jersey). So many articles merely recycle anecdotes from the usual, past, sources with the authors seeing no responsibility for cross-checking claimed facts (so easily done these days with access to digitised archives). Re-reading anecdotes in others’ books is not fact-checking. In old interviews, the subjects can have mis-recollected or, for personal reasons, have applied spin or obfuscation, or even just lied.
Older 78s all have blank outer rims with the groove silent for the first few turns, but this 1943 pressing has the inward-spiralling catch-groove familiar on 45 and 33⅓ rpm records of later decades. Do read the labels! Despite France being occupied in 1943, someone at Decca still felt it necessary to put ‘Fabriqué en Angleterre’ on their labels! And why would someone stick little fabric pads to the label? Any suggestions? (Who’s read this far?)

[@MikeThomas78]

The fabric pads on the labels (yes, I did read to the end!) may have been put on to prevent slippage when playing on an autochanger record player. Having said that, I often played 78s on an autochanger in the 1960s and never had any problem with them slipping.

[@JonathanHolmesjazz]

I've always been confused by the seeming popularity of "Phil The Fluter's Ball". It was even played by the reformed Jack Hylton Orchestra in the 1960's TV documentary devoted to his life - out of all the better songs they could have chosen!

[@6dBperOctave]

The record brought back the dull ghastliness of MWYW. As a primary kid in the mid 1950s (you do the maths), I used to get home in time to hear the end half of the 15.45 to 16.15 edition of MWYW on the Light Programme (followed by Mrs Dale's Diary)! Terrible if the weather was bad and one couldn't go out to play! Who were the execrable Big Ben Banjo Band?