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Europe at War June 19th 2008 Well here we are a continent torn apart by a devastating war, but the music must go on. In this playlist you will see that music plays the same despite authoritarian regimes. Here we have a fabulous cross section of popular music from all over Europe, United Kingdom, France, Nederlands, Russia, Sweden, Italy, Czech Republik and of course Germany. Listen to the different interpretation of “Swing”. Swing was allowed in Germany for export only (lol) and there where many fabulous orchestras, Heinz Wehner with his Telefunken Swing Orchestra was one the most popular, Joe Bund, Kurt Widmann and Corny Ostermann just to name a few. In The Czech Republik we had the famous R. A. Dvorský and Karel Vlach. Listen to the Czech recordings of the period, with no restrictions, recorded using the new Magnetic Tape method. During the intense air raids over Berlin the Germans moved there recording facilities to Prague to avoid the disruption and to take advantage of this pioneering recording method. Other artists throughout occupied Europe interpreted the music of the American Swing style without running into problems with the censors. A lot of the German Swing was recorded in Brussels to avoid the censorship of the Ministry of Propaganda. Technically these recordings were for export only, but they did find there way to the German consumer. British popular music of the period was unaffected by censorship so you had such great artists as Bert Ambrose, Harry Roy, Carroll Gibbons and Joe Loss but to name a few. Please enjoy this new playlist and do not hesitate to e-mail me for any information on artists. The tracks from Soviet Russia tend to be of a poor quality so please excuse this. Jay Richards

Weimar Rundfunk

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