Much of the archival and interpretative work for this article was undertaken in spring and summer 2007 at the Jack Hylton Archive (JHA), Lancaster University, supplemented by research at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France, Paris (especially the Collection Rondel, with its many press cuttings on Hylton). For this stage of the Jack Hylton and France Project, I am grateful for funding from Lancaster University and PALATINE, for the generous response of Helen Clish and Liz Fawcett at Lancaster's Rare Books Archive, which houses the Hylton collection, and for the excellent contribution of my research assistant, Adam Greig. I should also like to thank Derek Scott and the two anonymous readers for their comments and suggestions, which helped me to clarify some of the ideas presented here.Google Scholar

1 L. R., ‘Deux artistes américains [sic] “bien parisiens” sont décorés par le gouvernement français’, Paris Presse (24 August 1930), International News Cuttings (Jack and Band), 1 March 1930–15 August 1930 (JHA): ‘C'est que Jack Hylton […] est atteint de “parisomanie”. Cette maladie terrible ne se saigne pas mais on a cherché à la lui rendre plus douce par la pastille violette qu'il porte à sa boutonnière. […] Hope Hampton et Jack Hylton sont officiers de l'Instruction publique! C'est très juste … et très parisien.’ (All English translations are my own.) The ‘Officier’ award comprised a violet rosette and ribbon worn in the button-hole, hence the pun. Hope Hampton sang with Los Angeles Opera and made her French début at the Opéra-Comique.Google Scholar

2 A more conservative estimate, closer to three million, was given by Alasdair Fenton, quoted in Peter Faint, ‘Jack Hylton: His Life in Music’ (M.Phil. dissertation, Lancaster University, 1998), 25.Google Scholar

3 Despite the French links, Hylton was summarily dismissed by André Hodeir, in Jazz: Its Evolution and Essence (New York, 1956), 7. After a longish silence, however, there has been some acknowledgement recently of the British dance band and Hylton's role; see the pioneering article of Mark Hustwitt, ‘Caught in a Whirlpool of Aching Sound: The Production of Dance Music in Britain in the 1920s’, Popular Music, 3 (1983), 7–31; Sheila Tracy, Talking Swing: The British Big Bands (Edinburgh, 1997); James Nott, Music for the People: Popular Music and Dance in Interwar Britain (New York, 2002); and Jim Godbolt, A History of Jazz in Britain 1919–50 (London, 2005). Especially relevant are: Brian Rust and Sandy Forbes, British Dance Bands on Record, 1911 to 1945, and Supplement (2nd, rev. edn, Harrow, 1989); Jeffrey H. Jackson, Making Jazz French: Music and Modern Life in Internar Paris (Durham and London, 2003); and Catherine Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz in Britain, 1880–1935 (Aldershot, 2005). More specialized studies include: Pamela W. Logan, Jack Hylton Presents (London, 1995); Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’; Liz Fawcett, ‘The Jack Hylton Archive at Lancaster University’, Brio, 41 (2004), 32–6; Jeffrey Richards, ‘Salvaging Jack Hylton’, The Archive Hour (BBC Radio 4, 7 August 2004). In the final stages of preparing this article, I discovered a further contribution: Andy M. Fry, ‘Jack à l'Opéra’, in ‘“De la musique nègre au jazz français”: African-American Music and Musicians in Inter-War France’ (D.Phil. dissertation, University of Oxford, 2003).Google Scholar

4 On this, see Derek B. Scon, ‘Music, Culture and Society: Changes in Perspective’, Music, Culture and Society: A Reader, ed. Scott (Oxford, 2000), 1–19; Simon Frith, Performing Rites: On the Value of Popular Music (Oxford, 1998); Popular Music: Critical Concepts in Media and Cultural Studies, ed. Derek B. Scott (New York, 2003); and Robert Walser, ‘Valuing Jazz’, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. Mervyn Cooke and David Horn (Cambridge, 2002), 301–20.Google Scholar

5 Scott, Derek B., ‘Incongruity and Predictability in British Dance Band Music of the 1920s and 1930s’, From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology (New York, 2003), 80–100.Google Scholar

6 Reception studies also reveal variation in public and critical responses to popular music; as Scott has made clear, it was not simply a case of ‘a mass audience passively consuming the mass- produced commodities of a “culture industry”': ‘Music, Culture and Society’, 1.Google Scholar

7 Leighton Lucas, ‘What I Hate in “Jazz”’, Melody Maker and British Metronome (February 1928), 137–9 (p. 137). See too, Hustwitt, ‘Caught in a Whirlpool’, 15–16. Nott regards ‘light music’ as ‘a vague and peculiarly British category’ (Music for the People, 60).Google Scholar

8 Nott, Music for the People, 169. Non offers excellent coverage of this topic.Google Scholar

9 Ibid., 197: Nott supports this view of Hylton as ‘the most popular’, and one ‘whose success was phenomenal’.Google Scholar

10 Julien Vedey, Band Leaders (London, 1950), 45.Google Scholar

11 Ibid., 13.Google Scholar

12 Ibid., 152.Google Scholar

13 See the listing of ‘JH arrangers’ in the JHA, which also contains 120 volumes of press cuttings, 43 boxes of programmes, about 2,000 sorted (and 2,000 unsorted) sets of MS band scores/parts, printed music, around 200 78rpm records, plus numerous reel-to-reel cassettes (in need of restoration), and about 5,000 photographs (mainly unsorted). Although it contains Hylton's appointment diaries, unfortunately it does not include personal correspondence.Google Scholar

14 Faint, in interview with John Hylton, ‘Jack Hylton’, 98. Hustwitt, ‘Caught in a Whirlpool’, 17–18, offers more general insights about playing in a dance band.Google Scholar

15 Chris Hayes, Leader of the Band (Blackpool, 1994), 119; Billy Munn, interviewed by Tony Clarke, The Band that Jack Built (BBC Light Programme, 14 September 1965); see Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 120.Google Scholar

16 Hylton's engagement with hot styles is corroborated by Parsonage (The Evolution of Jazz, 199–200), who points out that ‘an impression of hot jazz could be created by drawing as much on the skills of the arrangers as the individual musicians’ (p. 199).Google Scholar

17 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 65. While British bands sounded very similar, each had its quirks. Hylton rejected Lucas's arrangement of Stravinsky's Mavra because it did not conform to this sound.Google Scholar

18 [Writer unknown], ‘Britain Crazy on Dance Bands’, The Star (18 April 1925): Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 1923–1914–1925 (JHCU 970002). Unfortunately missing author credits are a recurrent issue in this collection, sometimes resolved by comparison with sources elsewhere.Google Scholar

19 See Peter Faint's biography of Hylton at <www.petefaint.co.uk/jackhylton/BIOFULL.HTM> (accessed 1 February 2007). (accessed 1 February 2007).' href=https://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=See+Peter+Faint's+biography+of+Hylton+at++(accessed+1+February+2007).>Google Scholar

20 See above, note 3.Google Scholar

21 Nott, Music for the People, 162, 201.Google Scholar

22 Jack Hylton, ‘The British Touch’, Gramophone (September 1927), 146. Hylton's comment downplays the role of Paul Whiteman as catalyst: see below.Google Scholar

23 Non, Music for the People, 225.Google Scholar

24 Hylton made a rearrangement of Rhapsody in Blue, recorded in November 1933 (Decca F-3673), which illustrates that British ‘accent’. While obviously similar to that orchestrated by Ferde Grofé and recorded by Whiteman in 1924, Hylton's version has a smoother, more refined and romantic sound, as well as being significantly shorter. The indisputable advances in recording technique do not fully account for the differences.Google Scholar

25 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 12; Vedey, Band Leaders, 7. For Whiteman's general influence on British dance bands, see Hustwitt, ‘Caught in a Whirlpool’, 16–17.Google Scholar

26 Jack Hylton, ‘The High Finance of Jazz’, Rhythm, 13/136 (January 1939), 3–7 (p. 5).Google Scholar

27 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 13.Google Scholar

28 Joshua Berrett, Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman: Two Kings of Jazz (New Haven, CT, 2004), 62, 168. In turn, this duet inspired Fletcher Henderson's 1924 hit, ‘Go ‘long, mule'.Google Scholar

29 Jackson, Making Jazz French, 110–11.Google Scholar

30 Berrett, Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman, 185.Google Scholar

31 Nott, Music for the People, 212.Google Scholar

32 Ibid., 138, 219.Google Scholar

33 Source: JHCU970002. Given the fluidity of early groupings, it is not possible to identify exactly which players are referred to here.Google Scholar

34 ‘A New Waltz Success’, The Ball Room, 5/4 (May 1924): JHCU970002.Google Scholar

35 Gustave Fréjaville, ‘Chronique de la semaine’, Comædia (31 December 1925), Collection Rondel, Ro 16443. For more on Fréjaville's criticism, see Fry, ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’.Google Scholar

36 See Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 24, 132.Google Scholar

37 Many war1mly embraced jazz as American (and therefore not implicated in the war's atrocities), but a minority of French critics like Arthur Hoérée and André Suarès either denied the African-American origins of jazz, or saw in it a serious threat from degeneracy: see Jackson, Making Jazz French, 95–6.Google Scholar

38 Constant Lambert talked disparagingly (with anti-Semitic overtones) about ‘the sweet nothings of George Gershwin’: Music Ho! (London, 1934), 154.Google Scholar

39 Nott, Music for the People, 59–60.Google Scholar

40 Ibid., 129. For an interesting study of the underpinning black/white perspectives in Britain, see Parsonage, Catherine, ‘A Critical Reassessment of the Reception of Early Jazz in Britain’, Popular Music, 22 (2003), 315–36.Google Scholar

41 Lambert, Music Ho!, 150, 166.Google Scholar

42 Robert William Sigismund Mendl, The Appeal of Jazz (London, 1927), 97–8. See also Jackson, Making Jazz French, 3–4. On defining jazz, see Reading Jazz, ed. David Meitzer (San Francisco, CA, 1993).Google Scholar

43 Nott, Music for the People, 128–9. See also Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz, 143–62.Google Scholar

44 Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz, 143; Berrett, Louis Armstrong and Paul Whiteman, 62.Google Scholar

45 Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 86. On British misconceptions of jazz and especially blues, see too Hustwitt, ‘Caught in a Whirlpool’, 10–13.Google Scholar

46 See Gustave Fréjaville, Au music-hall (Paris, 1923). On the Parisian jazz background, see Jackson, Making Jazz French, 19–20, 111, 120–1.Google Scholar

47 See Jean Wiéner, Allegro appassionato (Paris, 1978).Google Scholar

48 For more on art nègre and jazz in Paris, see a wealth of recent literature, including: Tyler Stovall, Paris noir: African Americans in the City of Light (Boston, MA, 1996), and Jodie Blake, Le tumulte noir: Modernist Art and Popular Entertainment in Jazz-Age Paris, 1900–1930 (University Park, PA, 2003). On Baker, see Phyllis Rose, Jazz Cleopatra: Josephine Baker in her Time (New York, 1989). See also Andy Fry, ‘Rethinking the Revue nègre. Black Musical Theatre in Inter-War Paris’, Western Music and Race, ed. Julie Brown (Cambridge, 2007), 258–75.Google Scholar

49 Mervyn Cooke, ‘Jazz Among the Classics, and the Case of Duke Ellington’, The Cambridge Companion to Jazz, ed. Cooke and Horn, 153–73 (Pp. 162–3).Google Scholar

50 Examples discussed in Cooke, ‘Jazz Among the Classics’, 163.Google Scholar

51 Instances include Hylton's use of Grieg's ‘Morning’ from Peer Gynt in his ‘Meadow lark’, to point up an ‘incongruity’ and assumption that his ‘is also our preferred style of music’, or Ambrose quoting Mendelssohn's ‘Spring song’ in his ‘Ho hum’: Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 95.Google Scholar

52 See Milhaud, Darius, ‘Les ressources nouvelles de la musique (jazz-band et instruments mécaniques)’, L'esprit nouveau, 25 (July 1924; unpaginated), Études (Paris, 1927) and Ma vie heureuse (Paris, 1974, repr. 1987); and Maurice Ravel, ‘Contemporary Music (1928) and ‘Take Jazz Seriously!’ (1928), A Ravel Reader, ed. Arbie Orenstein (New York, 1990), 40–9, 390–2. More generally, see Perloff, Nancy, Art and the Everyday: Popular Entertainment and the Circle of Erik Satie (Oxford, 1991).Google Scholar

53 See a detailed case study in Deborah Mawer, Darius Milhaud: Modality and Structure in Music of the 1920s (Aldershot, 1997).Google Scholar

54 Confusingly, ‘music-hall’ denoted both a location and its entertainment content, essentially the variety act. Like Klein, I refer primarily to the content of music-hall, but maintain the term for historical reasons: Jean-Claude Klein and J. Barrie Jones, ‘Borrowing, Syncretism, Hybridisation: The Parisian Revue of the 1920s’, Popular Music, 5 (1985), 175–87 (p. 175).Google Scholar

55 Vedey, Band Leaders, xi.Google Scholar

56 Arthur Mason, ‘The Music v. Jazz Debate’, West Bromwich Weekly News (13 August 1926; also printed in several other local papers); “‘Jazz Only in its Infancy”: Mr Jack Hylton Replies to Mr Gillespie’, Nottinghamshire Guardian (4 February 1927). Source: Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 1926–7.Google Scholar

57 Jack Hylton (in interview with Perceval Graves), ‘Taking or Inflicting Pains’, Melody Maker (May 1928), 513–14 (p. 513).Google Scholar

58 See Hylton, Jack, ‘Naissance et vie du jazz’, Le courrier musical et théâtral (15 March 1932); Jack Hylton, ‘Jazz! The Music of the People’, Woman's World supplement (7 October 1934),Google Scholar

59 Jackson, Making Jazz French, 94, 110, 112. See for instance André Cæuroy, ‘Le jazz’, L'art vivant (15 August 1926), 616. Fréjaville was also perplexed by unfamiliar and ‘maddening’ novelty timbres, both wind and percussive: ‘L'orchestre du Dr Moreau’, Débats (9 June 1924), in ‘Le jazz et les spectacles nègres’, Collection Rondel, Ro 585; for further detail, see Blake, Le tumulte noir, 69.Google Scholar

60 ‘Waltzes and Blues’, The Englishman ([Calcutta], 9 May 1928), in Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 1928–31.Google Scholar

61 Vedey, Band Leaders, 8.Google Scholar

62 McCarthy, Dance Band Era, 52, 96; quoted in Nott, Music for the People, 137.Google Scholar

63 Contemporary with this is a fascinating review of Milhaud's La creation du monde: ‘it was amusing to watch [Ernest] Ansermet, the conductor, getting worked up into rhythmic fervour until his back view became more animated than Jack Hylton's. In point of fact, Milhaud's jazz is rhythmically more ingenious than the authentic brand of that commodity.’ ‘Broadcast from Within’, Liverpool Post (10 January 1928). ‘Jack's back’ became a classic pun of the Hylton years; the comment about the relative rhythmic simplicity of Hylton's style is not unfair, and ‘commodity’ has a significant role, though there was more to the band than this alone.Google Scholar

64 ‘Czar of Jazz’, The People (22 January 1928); ‘Jack Hylton's Arranger’, The Era (25 January 1928). On the classic–jazz interaction, Lucas made his views felt in ‘What I Hate in “Jazz”'. He conceded (toeing Hylton's early line) that jazz can be vulgar, but he was much more damning about ‘pseudo-classics': tear-jerkers lacking musical value. Ironically, he placed Rachmaninov's C# minor Prelude, later to be arranged by Yorke, in this category.Google Scholar

65 Charles Gombault, ‘Le merveilleux Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Parissoir (8 March 1928).Google Scholar

66 Hylton, ‘Taking or Inflicting Pains’, 513.Google Scholar

67 [Writer unknown], ‘Our Band Room’, Rhythm (28 May 1928), 5. This was still the case for Parissoir (31 May 1930), when the impact of Grégor's band was only just being felt.Google Scholar

68 Notice in The Performer (18 April 1928); similar coverage in Encore (5 April 1928).Google Scholar

69 Programme: ‘Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Théâtre des Champs-Elysées (22, 23 March 1929): JHPR9701279.Google Scholar

70 Louis-Léon Martin, ‘Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Paris-midi (6 January 1928): ‘Jack Hylton est merveilleusement spectaculaire. A proprement parler, il extériorise et dessine l'harmonie, et il le feit dans les proportions, aveccet humour, ce mouvement, cette fantaisie, ce rien en excès qu'exige le music-hall. […] Son jazz évoque et parodie tour à tour.’ By contrast, a minority of critics still denigrated jazz and engaged in racial prejudice, Hylton himself bizarrely being dismissed as ‘le petit nègre': ‘La rentrée de Jack Hylton et ses boys à Paris’, Volonté (14 October 1929). On Hylton and changing perceptions of jazz, see Jackson, Making Jazz French, 94–5, 109–12.Google Scholar

71 ‘Paris Notes’, Dancing Times (May 1929). For ‘Bye bye blackbird’, see Appendix, no. 5.Google Scholar

72 Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La musique: Jack Hylton et ses “boys” au Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Les concerts’, Excelsior (7 April 1930).Google Scholar

73 Ibid.: ‘deux soirées d'apothéose’; ‘cette compagnie de virtuoses’; ‘Je ne prétends pas édifier l'esthétique du jazz sur les ruines de la musique dite sérieuse. Mais j'estime que nos mélomanes ont besoin de voir comment il faut aimer la musique.‘Google Scholar

74 Ibid.: ‘les clowneries supérieures de ces acrobates instrumentaux’.Google Scholar

75 Ibid. : ‘C'est une sonorité, c'est un rythme, c'est un accord qui les fait naître. […] le prolongement ironique et plaisant d'une inflexion de la mélodie, les cocasseries de timbres constituent souvent une critique très fine de la personnalité d'un instrument, les pitreries des saxophonistes […] Voilà de la parodie musicale de premier ordre.’ This critique strongly echoes a review of Fréjaville, ‘La semaine au music-hall’, Comædia (7 January 1928), Collection Rondel, Ro 16443.Google Scholar

76 See the array of reviews in International News Cuttings (Jack and Band), 1 March 1930–15 August 1930 (JHA). Close study of these sources, along with those for 1931, could justify a dedicated article.Google Scholar

77 Keith Negus, ‘Musicians on Television: Visible, Audible and Ignored’, Journal of the Royal Musical Association, 131 (2006), 310–30 (p. 317).Google Scholar

78 Henry Prunières, ‘Jack Hylton’, La revue musicale (May 1930), 462–3 (p. 463). ‘Jack Hylton a tiré de son jazz toutes les possibilités de spectacle fantaisiste qu'on puisse imaginer.‘ The importance of hearing Hylton live was also stressed in André Himonet's review in La liberté (28 May 1930).Google Scholar

79 Prunières, ‘Jack Hylton’, 463. A different view was given in J. B., ‘Théâtre des Variétés: L'orchestre de Jack Hylton’, La dépêche (4 April 1930). ‘They also involve a varied sonic palette, with great diversity of unexpected sonorities […] These procedures are incontestably original, and most definitely enrich the musical language’ (‘Ils comportent aussi une palette sonore variée, avec une grande diversité de sonorités inattendues […] Ces procédés sont incontestablement originaux, et enrichissent très certainement le langage musical‘).Google Scholar

80 Prunières, ‘Jack Hylton’, 463: ‘Des refrains de chansons anglaises ou américaines d'une platitude parfaite, clamés par tout orchestre pour commencer et pour finir, à grand renforts d'accords parfaits’. Concerns about predictability and the quality of some material also colour a later review by Louis-Léon Martin, ‘Théâtre des Champs-Elysées: Jack Hylton and his Boys’, Paris-midi (19 October 1930).Google Scholar

81 ‘Concerts et spectacles’, Le matin (2 July 1930).Google Scholar

82 ‘Le Palais de la Méditerranée: Programme’ (11 March 1929; cover price 4F): JHA unsorted.Google Scholar

83 ‘I Kiss your Hand, Madame’, The Era (13 March 1929), also reviewed in Sound Wave (March 1919): Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 13 October 1928–31 November 1929,Google Scholar

84 Lelong, R., ‘Le succès de Jack Hylton et de ses 20 boys à l'Opéra municipal’, Petit méridional (30 March 1930): ‘Les 20 boys se caractérisent surtout par leur stricte discipline et leur remarquable sens de la mesure. De la cadence, disons mieux, car c'est son respect qui est le fondement même du jazz.’ Others remarked on Hylton's brand of sweet ‘jazz’, favouring melody over rhythm, with violins and Viennese waltz: G. P., ‘Jack Hylton et son jazz’, Le bavard ([Marseille], 28 March 1930).Google Scholar

85 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 100.Google Scholar

86 Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 93.Google Scholar

87 Klein, ‘Borrowing, Syncretism, Hybridisation’, 179.Google Scholar

88 ‘Valencia’, to whose vulgarity Ravel related when writing Boléro (see Joaquín Nin, ‘Comment est né le Boléro de Ravel’, La revue musicale, 19 (December 1938), 211–13 (p. 213)), held much currency for Hylton. Several arrangements exist: Yorke's version (V1), Williams's reading and Lucas's witty ‘Valencia variations’ in the styles of Schubert, Mendelssohn, Offenbach and Sullivan (both V3), plus Ternent's reusage in Jubilee Cavalcade of 1935 (J2). (Whiteman also later arranged ‘Valencia’.) See Appendix, no. 40.Google Scholar

89 ‘Memories of Paris’, City News (7 March 1930).Google Scholar

90 Gaston Mouren, review, Cahiers du Sud (1 September 1930) and René Marcel, ‘Les disques’, Journée industrielle (26 August 1930), in International News Cuttings, 1 March 1930–15 August 1930.Google Scholar

91 Parts 1 and 2: HMV B-3686/K-6058 (Souvenirs de Chevalier); Parts 3 and 4: HMV K-3065.Google Scholar

92 ‘Chevalier's Smile’, Eastern Daily Press (29 November 1930) bills this as a ‘£4,000 a week engagement’. Chevalier's views are quoted in ‘Chevalier and Hylton: A “Record” Event’, Daily Mail Paris (24 November 1930). The schedule is described in ‘M. Chevalier Arrives in Manchester: Paris Meeting with Hylton’, Manchester Guardian (29 November 1930).Google Scholar

93 Judging by a piece headed ‘Audition par disques’, Le Figaro (9 June 1930), Chevalier singing in French (as in ‘Mon cocktail d'amour') had become quite a rarity because his career was increasingly film-based in America. Contemporaneously, the rise of film is reflected in Hylton's recording of Moretti, ‘Under the roofs of Paris’ (the title song from René Clair's innovative musical film Sous les toits de Paris) on 21 December 1930.Google Scholar

94 ‘M. Chevalier Arrives in Manchester; ‘Maurice Chevalier Medley’, Daily Mirror (14 December 1930); ‘Chevalier Records HMV's Latest Issue’, Kinematograph (11 December 1930).Google Scholar

95 L. R., ‘Deux artistes’.Google Scholar

96 See <www.archivesnationales.cuIture.gouv.fr/chan/chan/pdf/caran/47.pdf> (accessed 3 January 2007).+(accessed+3+January+2007).>Google Scholar

97 ‘From Opera to Jazz: Covent Garden as a Dancing Palace – 2,000 Revellers’, Daily Mirror (26 February 1925), in JHCU970002. Hylton had also played to an estimated 7,000 in the Albert Hall on 19 December 1926.Google Scholar

98 Programme: ‘Théâtre National de l'Opéra, mardi 17 février [1931], en soirée, à 21 heures’: JHPR9701267.Google Scholar

99 This study was delivered as a research seminar entitled ‘Hylton and Stravinsky's Mavra at the Paris Opéra: Jazzing a Classic?’, in the series ‘Directions in Musical Research’ hosted by the Institute of Musical Research (IMR), London (October 2007), and will be published in due course.Google Scholar

100 Quoted in ‘Jack Hylton's 9,000 Mile Tour’, Daily Sketch (29 May 1930). Stravinsky and Hylton's band appear to have met up in May 1930.Google Scholar

101 Igor Stravinsky and Robert Craft, Expositions and Developments (London, 1962), 82n.Google Scholar

102 ‘Jack Hylton's Jazz Guiding Stravinsky’, Variety ([New York], 4 June 1930); Lew Davis, ‘Warned against Music!‘, Melody Maker (July 1930). By late summer seemingly nothing had happened, which prompted Hylton to write to Stravinsky (10 September 1930) requesting an update: see Stravinsky: Selected Correspondence, ed. Robert Craft, 3 vols. (London, 1982–5), ii (1984), 123n.Google Scholar

103 JHA holdings; annotations inside are in Ternent's hand.Google Scholar

104 Our special correspondent, ‘A Gramophone Rehearsal, Stravinsky and Hylton’, Daily Telegraph (29 January 1931).Google Scholar

105 Stravinsky and Craft, Expositions and Developments, 82.Google Scholar

106 Richard Taruskin, Stravinsky and the Russian Traditions, 2 vols. (Oxford, 1996), ii, 1539ff.Google Scholar

107 Stephen Walsh, The Music of Stravinsky (Oxford, 1988), 115.Google Scholar

108 Ibid.Google Scholar

109 Band member Les Carew described his experience in rehearsing the piece as ‘nightmarish’: ‘How are the Mighty …?’, Nostalgia, 10/40 (October 1990), 19–21 (p. 19). For the saxophonist ‘Chappie’ d'Amato, it was also ‘a bit nerve-wracking’; see Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 122.Google Scholar

110 Faint, ‘Jack Hylton’, 67.Google Scholar

111 The Concert-Goer, ‘Jazz at Paris Opera’, Continental Daily Mail (18 February 1931); Emile Vuillermoz, ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Excelsior (21 February 1931): ‘Le Mavra de Strawinsky […] ne provoqua qu'un ennui assez visible.’ On the jazz crowd, see especially Emile [Vuillermoz], ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Excelsior (24 February 1931). ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Le monde musical (28 February 1931): ‘Cette exécution fut échec total. Un échec parfaitement mérité.’ (See too Emile Vuillermoz, ‘La musique: Les concerts’, Excelsior, 23 February 1931) Pierre Leroi, ‘Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, L'édition musicale vivante, 37 (February 1931), 12–13: ‘La confusion de genres aboutit toujours à un résultat mauvais.’ Sources: Jack Hylton Continental Tours, 1930–1935 and Collection Rondel, Ro 586. A thoughtful, balanced response is found in Ray Ventura, ‘Le triomphe du jazz: Jack Hylton à l'Opéra’, Jazz-Tango, 2/6 (1 March 1931), n.p., where it is suggested that Jacques Rouché, the Opéra's director, may have urged for the band's programme to depart from its norm.Google Scholar

112 ‘Sixteen Hyltonisms: Jack Hylton and his Orchestra’, Gramophone (March 1931).Google Scholar

113 Clément Vautel, ‘Le jazz à l'Opéra’, Cyrano, 350 (1 March 1931): ‘VERDI: Qu'entends-je? Quel est ce vacarme affreux? […] GOUNOD: C'est le sabbat… Méphisto est au pupitre. SAINT-SAËNS: Vous ne trouvez pas que cela ressemble à du Reyer? MASSENET: Mon cher Saint-Saëns, c'est de vous, cette délicieuse musique-là? BIZET: Messieurs, on profane le temple … C'est un sacrilège!’ The Frenchman Ernest Reyer (1823–1909) was an overrated Wagnerian opera composer. Interestingly Hylton had already arranged Massenet's ‘Méditation'.Google Scholar

114 An advertisement placed by the Parisian record company Le Chant du Monde promoted La belle époque: 14 Chansons 1900, in a programme for ‘Le Ballet du Moulin Rouge’ (18 April–1 May 1954): JHPRIN970013. The precise nature of Hylton's involvement here is unclear.Google Scholar

115 Photograph of Hylton captioned ‘Dans la Légion d'Honneur’, L'ouest (12 January 1932). See too, Le Loup de Den[tell?]e, ‘Cours et leçons’, Comædia (14 January 1932); ‘Jack Hilton a le ruban rouge’, Indépendant ([Pau], 14 January 1932). The honour was reported in papers such as the Républicain orléannais (20 January 1932), Dépêche de Rouen (12 January 1932) and Petit Dauphinois ([Grenoble], 20 January 1932).Google Scholar

116 ‘Le music-hall: Jack Hylton à l'Empire’, Candide (7 January 1932); ‘Spectacle de musique et théâtre chanté’, Comædia (5 January 1932): ‘Le répertoire est fort bien composé, sans aucune faute de goût et avec des recherches musicales variées à l'infini. […] c'est le jazz lui-même qui s'anime sous nos yeux, s'analyse ironiquement'.Google Scholar

117 L.-R. Dauven, ‘A l'Empire, la rentrée de Jack Hylton’, Ami du peuple (édition du soir, 3 January 1932): 'Les mêmes qualités techniques, un métier sûr, un sens du rythme étonnant et, surtout, cette invention humoristique. […] C'était toujours la perfection, mais c'était toujours la froide perfection.’ JHA and Collection Rondel, Ro 15718. At this time, Hylton reduced the visual component of his shows, which proved a mistake.Google Scholar

118 For detailed discussion of Panassié's campaign of detraction, see Fry, ‘Jack à l'Opéra'.Google Scholar

119 ‘Hylton's Tactful Rule Pacifies Musicians’, Variety (19 January 1932).Google Scholar

120 [G. P.], ‘Un jazz qui feit jaser’, Le bavard (16 January 1932): ‘La nouvelle que le chef du jazz Jack Hylton avait le ruban rouge a donné l'espoir à tous les musiciens et les artistes de music-halls, à condition qu'ils ne soient pas Français.‘Google Scholar

121 ‘Hylton Scores New Success in Paris: A Super Kinema Engagement’, Melody Maker (February 1933), in Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, May 1931–June 1933; ‘Au Rex’, Le petit journal (25 January 1933), in Foreign Press Cuttings, 1932–3.Google Scholar

122 Gilbert Chase, Ellington review, Continental Daily Mail (31 July 1933), in Jack Hylton Press Cuttings, 1933–4. On Hylton, Ellington and politics, see Parsonage, The Evolution of Jazz, 252–3.Google Scholar

123 ‘Le hot Feast for Frenchmen’, Melody Maker (15 December 1934); ‘Hylton Conquers Paris Again’, Melody Maker (January 1935), in Jack Hylton Press Book, 1934–5. Hawkins was not, however, allowed into Germany with the band: evidence of the increasingly intolerant Nazi régime. For Hylton's later views on jazz, see Hylton, ‘The High Finance of Jazz’.Google Scholar

124 Jack Hylton, ‘Christmas with the Band’, Loughborough Echo (14 December 1934).Google Scholar

125 Jack Hylton, ‘Jazz Music: Is the Expression Objectionable?‘, Midland Daily Telegraph (6 March 1931).Google Scholar

126 As kindly pointed out to me by crossword enthusiast Nigel Simeone, ‘Branga’ is an anagram of Ravel's friend Lucien Garban. That Garban might have been the arranger of this somewhat compromising version is most intriguing.Google Scholar

127 Scott, ‘Incongruity and Predictability’, 87.Google Scholar

128 See Woodley, Ronald, ‘Style and Practice in the Early Recordings’, The Cambridge Companion to Ravel, ed. Deborah Mawer (Cambridge, 1000), 213–39 (p. 236).Google Scholar

129 See A Ravel Reader, ed. Orenstein, 305–6.Google Scholar

130 See ‘Gracie to Sing at BEF Again’, Manchester Dispatch (5 March 1940), in Jack Hylton Cuttings, 1938–40.Google Scholar

131 ‘Concert in Paris’, Edinburgh Evening News (12 April 1940); ‘Duke of Windsor will Hear Gracie’, Nottingham News (13 April 1940).Google Scholar

132 Daily Mail reporter, ‘Gracie was “Entente” Hit’, Daily Mail (17 April 1940); Ernest Betts, ‘This was Grade's Night at the “Opéra”‘, Manchester Daily Mail (17 April 1940).Google Scholar

133 Grace Wyndham Goldie, ‘Critic on the Hearth. Broadcast Drama: The Troops – Gracie’, Listener (2 May 1940).Google Scholar

134 Nott, Music for the People, 209.Google Scholar

135 Hylton, ‘Taking or Inflicting Pains’, 513.Google Scholar

136 See Wood, Ean, The Josephine Baker Story (London, 2000), 103.Google Scholar

137 Jackson, Making Jazz French, 10.Google Scholar