About Me

G’Day! My name is Ian. I am delighted that so many of you have discovered my blog and appear to be enjoying it. A special thank you to those who choose to leave a comment. I want you to know that I read each and every one and am so pleased that I have introduced some of you to one of my favourite singers, LaVern Baker.

As you can tell by now, I have a broad love of what I consider to be good music and if can introduce one of you to the love of this music, then my blog has been well worth the effort. Although I have never had the inkling to learn to play a musical instrument, from as early as I can remember I have had a passionate love of listening to it being played. I really envy those who can write songs of quality, especially those that tell a story within a few minutes.

Of course, not everything I like can be classified as “good” music. This, I regard as music purely to entertain and that is the reason why this too can be found in my blog.

From the mid-Seventies I began to become somewhat disenchanted in the general direction I believed the music of that time was headed and so I started to search for something different to listen to that would, at the same time, refresh my love of music. I had heard it said that some of the greatest songs had been written in the first half of the Twentieth Century and, with this in mind, I began to twiddle the dial on my radio, in my search for such recordings.

I must admit that it took some perseverance on my part to get to like some of what I was hearing. However, I did not give up and by the early Eighties, by which time Tiki and I had adjusted to spending our Saturday nights at home, I would almost religiously tune in to a programme, on the ABC, called ‘Sentimental Journey’, presented by John West.

This programme would begin with its signature tune, Les Brown’s No.1 hit from 1945, “Sentimental Journey”, which features a young Doris Day on vocals. ‘Sentimental Journey’ was divided into segments, one of which had a gentleman playing earlier recordings from the 1920s and the 1930s, while another was presented by another gentleman, Lyle Richardson, from memory, who would transport the listener back to a particular night, usually in the 1940s, and count down the Top Ten tracks on the Hit Parade, which pertained to that particular evening. I was hooked!

This is the reason you will find songs dating back to the 1920s in my list of my favourite recordings. Of course, I did not totally abandon recordings from the mid-Seventies onwards and that is why you will find these, too, in my list of favourites, which can be found on my ‘Suggested Playlists’ page. I intend to keep adding to this list from time to time.

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