Fog!

A recent combination of cold nights and mild, damp mornings in this corner of Britain led to one of my favourite weather conditions manifesting itself over the weekend and served as a welcome reminder of why autumn is the season I enjoy most - fog!  From Friday through to Sunday there were varying degrees of pea-soupiness as the days progressed, with a particularly fine and atmospheric curtain of thick fog occurring first thing in the morning and materialising again in the evening, with wisps of mist lasting well into the day (and sometimes still in evidence even now).

source - imgur

I do love me a bit of fog (in case you hadn't guessed) and got terribly excited when glancing out of the window on Saturday night to see - well, not much really beyond a wall of dim white haze but the realisation that this was the first proper ground cloud of autumn practically made my day.  It's all I can do to stop myself from going out into it for a walk and sometimes I do give in to the temptation to venture forth and embrace the murkiness.  There's just something about fog and mist that really gets in amongst me - the way in envelops everything and gives it an eerie, otherworldly appearance that no other weather can replicate; the manner in which it is inextricably linked to this time of year, when the ground is covered with fallen leaves and the trees become gaunt, shadowy figures thrusting their branches out from the brume.  People and cars appear and disappear almost out of nowhere (in the case of cars sometimes unnecessarily so if the driver hasn't deigned to put on any lights - one of my few frustrations related to foggy conditions) and places one knows and recognises in clear conditions become strange and unfamiliar, all thanks to the interaction of cold and warm, moist air/ ground.

Women wear "smog masks" in London on the 17th
November 1953
source - The Guardian

Of course fog has not always had a harmless, inoffensive air (ahem!) about it, especially when it mixes with air pollution brought about by car fumes and the like to create the dreaded smog, much of which plagued many parts of Britain right up to the 1960s (as the above footage shows) - the most famous being the Great Smog of London during 1952 and 1953 which resulted in over 4,000 deaths and 100,000 people suffering from respiratory illnesses as a direct result.  Thankfully things have moved on in the subsequent 68 years and we are now able to go out in the fog without having to worry about catching a respiratory disease - at least not from that source!  In other respects however we are seeing a repeat of events from nearly seventy years ago, with masks once again being very much a necessity in all weathers.

A smoggy Ludgate Hill, London, captured in November 1922
source - The Guardian

But we're not here to dwell on the past horrors of smog but rather the joyful ghostliness of natural fog and what better way to celebrate it and the coming of autumn than with a selection of songs from my favourite era, the 1920s and '30s, all of which reference that most vaporous form of weather.  

We start in 1927 with a recording composed by the famous American cornetist and piano player Bix Beiderbecke who is on fine form in this 9th September 1927 New York performance where we find ourselves In A Mist.

Skiping forward to 1929 and the great Duke Ellington & his Cotton Club Orchestra perform a tune that is particularly evocative of a hazy dawn breaking over the rural farm on a brisk autumnal day - Misty Mornin', recorded here on the 3rd May 1929.  Ellington first cut this haunting melody on the 22nd November 1928 and would go on to make several different versions over the years so I am sure this will not be the last time it appears on this blog in one form or another.

The most famous fog-based song from the Thirties is of course George and Ira Gerswhin's A Foggy Day, which will forever be linked with the incomparable Fred Astaire and his consummate performance of it in the 1937 film A Damsel In Distress.  Having featured that recording back when I last did a fog-derived post in 2010(!) I thought I would feature another version of it this time by the British dance band leader Geraldo (real name Gerald Bright) and his Orchestra, with vocalist Cyril Grantham doing a good job with the lyrics in this recording made some time in 1938.  

We finish with this 1934 recording of Lost In A Fog, another standard of the day that was recorded by various different artists including Cassino Simpson, Coleman Hawkins and The Dorsey Brothers.  On this occasion however we hear it sung by well-known American singer and band leader Rudy Vallée, in a version that reached Number 4 in the U.S. charts in that year.

A beautiful shot of a fog-covered Richmond Bridge, London
source - Pinterest

Well that's it for this mist-enshrouded post - I hope you've enjoyed reading my thoughts on this most mesmerising of meteorological conditions, or at the very least had your toes tapping along to the accompanying musical miasma.  Is it foggy where you are?  Let me know what the weather's doing where you are and what your favourite type is in the comments below!

Reaching for Someone and Not Finding Anyone There

First of all, a thousand apologies for the two months of radio silence as I rather let things go here at Eclectic Ephemera.  Rest assured I am alive and well, but unfortunately finding many distractions that conspire to keep me away from blogging as often as I would like.  I've always felt it to be an awful cop-out to blame a full-time job for stopping me from writing a blog, since I know so many of my favourite fellow vintage bloggers also have regular paid employment and that doesn't stop them from posting once a week!  But alas I do find myself with less time to spare at the weekends now my weekdays are once again taken up by honest toil - having had every day to myself for so long (albeit enforced through ill-health) it's come as a bit of shock to have to condense all that I would do in a week into the two days of the weekend!  Still, I must have done it before so I'm sure it'll become normal to me again soon.

In the meantime my new plan is to do one post as-and-when (note the deliberate vagueness!), covering two or three vintage-related news articles and/or anything of similar interest that may have happened in my life recently (highly unlikely, that!). Now, let's see if I can remember how to do this...



I picked this tune for a few reasons, not least because it's so toe-tappingly good!  The title somewhat reflects this place for the last couple of months too (!), but it's mainly because I've recently been on something of an early Bing Crosby kick.  For, yes, it is perhaps somewhat little known (and sadly so too) that on a lot of the classic 1920s jazz numbers featuring the noted (and tragic) cornetist Bix Beiderbecke recorded with Paul Whiteman (among others) the vocal accompaniment is performed by none other than a young Bing Crosby.  Often appearing as part of a trio known as "The Rhythm Boys" the twenty-something Bing was soon spotted as an emerging talent and by the beginning of the 1930s was singing solo more often than not, as he started down the path towards greatness.

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Bing Crosby with Al Rinker and Harry Barris
as "The Rhythm Boys"

I now have three CDs chronicling these early years of Bing's career - Bix 'n' Bing with The Paul Whiteman Orchestra and The Earliest Bing Crosby Volumes 1 & 2 - and all of them absolute crackers (but not always easy to get hold of - Amazon Marketplace is your friend!).  It's fascinating to hear the genesis of Bing's inimitable voice, particularly in its early stages, in the somewhat unusual setting of 1920s jazz.  It's hard to pick a favourite song, but this is one of the stand-outs in my opinion.  If you're a fan of the 1990s Jeeves & Wooster TV series with Stephen Fry and Hugh Laurie (and let's be honest, if you're reading this you probably are) you'll recognise more than a couple of tunes.  To complete the Bing-fest I also ended up getting a box set of his films as well!

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Oh, and in other news I'm off to Eastbourne in Sussex the week after next (17th) for one week as a birthday treat - my first real holiday in ten years (which is why I'm playing it safe with the south coast)!  I understand the area in and around Eastbourne is something of a vintage hotspot, so I'm hoping for some retro fun, frivolity and maybe a vintage find or two!  Any tips on places to visit, hidden gems etc., please let me know (the De La Warr Pavillion is on the list, I need hardly say)!

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Well, I was going to go on to summarise two or three interesting vintage news stories from the last couple of months but looking back at this post I think I've said enough about me (oh, the vanity!) to be going on with for now, so as with all good things (oh, the vanity again!) I'll leave you wanting more (I hope!).

Speaking of good things, let me just end by asking how many of my UK-based readers have been watching and enjoying the B.B.C.'s new adaptation of Agatha Christie's Partner's In Crime stories, starring David Walliams and Jessica Raine as Tommy and Tuppence Beresford?  I was highly sceptical when the series was first announced, since I can't stand Walliams in anything else he's had a hand in and I wasn't too sure about the updated suburban 1950s setting.  I must admit now to having not yet read any of the original books (set at first in the 1920s but unusually for Christie actually progressing in real time, ending in the 1970s with the protagonists in their seventies) so had based my whole outlook on the early 1980s ITV series.  However I will admit I was pleasantly surprised - this is a rip-roaring little series; David Walliams can actually act, Jessica Raine is as lovely as ever and the plot and setting work well (not to mention the outfits - I bet you girls are having a field day!).  I'm looking forward to tomorrow's episode as I type.

Musical Interlude: Frankie Trumbauer & His Orchestra (featuring Eddie Lang & Bix Beiderbecke) - I'm Coming Virginia (1927)

In lieu of any vintage news (which seems to have become rather thin on the ground again over the last few days) here's another song from my Desert Island Discs list "for your listening pleasure!".

And a pleasure this track certainly is, more so, in fact.  Many students of early jazz rightly wax lyrical on the subject of cornetist Bix Beiderbecke and his fantastic musicianship.  There was a very good article by Clive James in the London Times a few years ago that does just that in comparing and contrasting Bix's style to that of Louis Armstrong's, and examines the musical legacy of both men.

I don't intend to go into detail about Bix's tragically short life here, as I could never do it justice in a single blog post, but much of what is said about Bix's playing on I'm Coming Virginia mirrors my own feelings about the song and his performance.  Clive James' assertion that "there are moments when even a silent pause is a perfect note, and always there is a piercing sadness to it" sums up perfectly how striking and complex Bix's solo is.  Words like "transcendental", other-worldly" and "haunting" are well-earned, and I can appreciate where some jazz aficionados are coming from when they say it brings tears to their eyes - because it has done the same to me.  It's one of the only pieces of music where I can close my eyes and not only be taken back in time, but also into the music itself.  When you listen to it, particularly if you haven't heard it in a while, that cornet solo just hits you between the eyes in a way that few other performances can do in my experience.