A BRITISH CLASSIC FROM THE WRITER HIMSELF

ERIC COATES & HIS ORCHESTRA

"SLEEPY LAGOON"

(Desert Island Discs)

b/w

"CALLING ALL WORKERS"

(Music While You Work)  

By the Sleepy Lagoon is a "valse serenade" by  .

Coates had originally been inspired to write the piece in 1930 while overlooking a beach in West Sussex. His son, , remembers:

It was inspired in a very curious way and not by what you might expect. It was inspired by the view on a warm, still summer evening looking across the "lagoon" from the east beach at towards . It's a pebble beach leading steeply down, and the sea at that time is an incredibly deep blue of the Pacific. It was that impression, looking across at Bognor, which looked pink – almost like an enchanted city with the blue of the Downs behind it - that gave him the idea for the Sleepy Lagoon. He didn't write it there; he scribbled it down, as he used to, at extreme speed, and then simply took it back with him to London where he wrote and orchestrated it."

  Plaque commemorating , and the piece, at , West Sussex.

The resultant piece is a slow waltz for full orchestra lasting roughly four minutes in duration. Michael Jameson suggests that the piece is "elegantly orchestrated" with "a shapely theme for violins presented in the salon-esque genre entirely characteristic of British light music in the 1920s and '30s". In 1942, Coates' original orchestral version was chosen (with added ) to introduce the radio series , which it still does to this day on

Calling all Workers is one of the most recognizable of all of Eric Coates marches. This work, which was composed in 1940 was also used as the signature tune for the once ubiquitous radio programme Music While you Work, which ran from 1940 to 1967.
The tune for this programme had been carefully chosen from a wide variety of pieces and was designed to cheer people up in the war factories and no doubt to increase the output by suggesting that the speed of the music ought to match their production! Many people heard this March four times a day for five days a week!
    DISC DETAILS   UK COLUMBIA DB 1945 78rpm SHELLAC (1940)   CONDITION - EXCELLLENT  

TWO WAR-TIME CLASSICS - AND BEYOND!!

 

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