A Delight
07/07/2001
(5 out of 5 stars)
"My (now 80-year-old) uncle had his bar mitzvah celebration at the Savoy in 1935. When I bought the CD to pull off a few tracks for my mother's memorial service, I had no particular expectations -- though I was glad that I recognized a few of the song titles. Surprise! It's a wonderful CD, truly evoking the 30's in a way that modern renditions of these songs just don't. It took all my uncle's self control to listen to the beginning of most of the tracks, plus all the way through a few of them. He was in tears because it sounded just as it had back then. One (nice) surprise for me was that some of the songs ("By Permission of the Copyright Owner" is a good example) were very cute and clever. In fact, I'd recommend listening to this album while reading PG Wodehouse or pre-war Angela Thirkell or any of the light English inter-war writers -- it adds a new dimension to an extraordinary period in history and will make the books just that much more pleasurable."