SWING TIME

The Great American Songbook. Broadway stage or Hollywood screen. The intoxicating atmosphere of a Las Vegas casino or New York jazz club. Peggy Lee, Sammy Davis, Ella Fitzgerald, Mel Tormé and Doris Day. Frank Sinatra and Count Basie at The Sands. I got to love these songs early in life when, tucked up in bed, the soulful strains of Ben Webster's tenor sax would drift up the stairs, often accompanied by the aroma of my father's cigar. Love for such music (and cigars) was enhanced when I was allowed sit in on drums with my parents' dance band. The Ray Horner Combo, Harrogate's premier dance band, was a good teacher. So too my father who wrote the arrangements. Occasionally I open up his saxophone case where the aroma of a 1975 Yorkshire dance hall is still present.