Russell Davies - 05/09/2010

The arrival of September prompts a wish for an Indian Summer, courtesy of Singers Unlimited and Victor Herbert & Al Dubin's 1940 hit. Russell notes that also in 1940, on this day September 5th, Duke Ellington recorded Five O'Clock Whistle. September is also the pseudonym of a songwriter who wrote Andy Williams' only hit single - Butterfly. Andy also recorded the much more complex Pretty Butterfly and Russell notes the long history of butterfly songs, often linked to Puccini's opera, and explains the origin of the 1916 evergreen Poor Butterfly. We hear Rita Reys' version. After Michelle Pfeiffer's famous piano-top version of Makin' Whoopee, Russell introduces a sequence of tenuously-linked songs - It Might Be You, It Had To Be You, Ooh! Maybe It's you, It's You Or No-One, ending up with It's You. Finally, after a review of a new release of BBC recordings of Ella Fitzgerald, we conclude with the timeless version, by Walter Huston, of Kurt Weill's September Song.