Bob Richardson & His Orchestra

Information about Bob Richardson and His Orchestra is scarce - mainly becuase Bob Richardson was a pseudonym for DIck Robertson, an American singer who recorded prolifically during the 1920s and 1930s, with a variety of bands including, on one occasion, the Duke Ellington Orchestra. tbc...

Links to Peel - Moonlight Saving Time
The track by Bob Richardson and His Orchestra played by Peel in the Pig's Big 78 feature of his show was "(There Ought To Be A) Moonlight Saving Time", written by Irving Kahal and Harry Richman and described on the sheet music as a "fox trot song". After its publication in 1931 the song attracted recorded versions from many artists, including film star Maurice Chevalier, the bands of Gus Arnheim, Hal Kemp, and Guy Lombardo, female singers Ruth Etting and Annette Hanshaw, and male vocalists Harold "Scrappy" Lambert, Smith Ballew, Chick Bullock - and Dick Robertson. British versions included one by Jack Hylton and His Orchestra.

After its initial success the song was not revived until the post-World War Two era. Guy Lombardo, who later became an object of ridicule to the US rock generation because of his brand of "sweet music", re-recorded it in 1951. In 1953 Doris Day portrayed Ruth Etting in the film "Love Me Or Leave Me", which dramatised Etting's career and her marriage to her manager, the gangster Moe "The Gimp" Snyder (memorably played by James Cagney). Day recorded songs from Etting's repertoire, including "Moonlight Saving Time", and a version by jazz singer Blossom Dearie also appeared in the early 1950s. More recent recordings of the song, by younger American jazz and cabaret singers, owe something to the revival of interest in Annette Hanshaw, whose laid-back reading of the song (with a small group including the guitarist Eddie Lang) differs from the dance-band format of most 1931 versions.

Dick Robertson's recording of "Moonlight Saving Time" was issued in the USA on the Melotone label, but in Britain on the Mayfair label, whose releases often featured pseudonymous artists, as the tracks had previously been issued elsewhere (many thenks to John Wright of the Vintage Jazz and Dance Band Music website for this information) - hence the name-change to Bob Richardosn.. With lively accompaniment from a band including future bandleaders Tommy and Jimmy Dorsey, it is certainly one of the better versions of the song. It became a favourite of Peel and Sheila and was included in the Trikont Records compilation The Pig's Big 78 - An Introduction.

Sessions

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1. Recorded: YYYY-MM-DD. First broadcast: DD Month YYYY. Repeated: DD Month YYY 2. Recorded: YYYY-MM-DD. First broadcast: DD Month YYYY. Repeated: DD Month YYY etc
 * Song title / Song Title / Song Title / Song Title
 * Song title / Song Title / Song Title / Song Title

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Other Shows Played
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 * DD Month YYYY: Song (single/album) Label