I dedicate my song today to my great-niece Emily, who celebrates her birthday ‘around this time’. My new birthday book indicates her 19th birthday as being today (February 17th), but her Facebook page suggests that she celebrated her birthday two days ago. Either way, Emily, I hope that your special day 'goes' or 'went' well. Love Great Uncle Billy and Sheila xxx
My song today is, ‘Powder Your Face with Sunshine’. This popular song was written by Carmen Lombardo and Stanley Rochinski. It was published in 1948. The two biggest hit versions of the song were recorded by Evelyn Knight (singer) and Sammy Kaye (Orchestra) in November 1948. It first reached the ‘Billboard Best Seller’ chart on December 17, 1948, and lasted 17 weeks on the chart, peaking at Number 1. The song was also covered by Dean Martin (1948): Doris Day (1948): Donald Peers (1949): Joe Loss and His Orchestra (1949).
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This song followed a prolonged period of hardship during the ‘Second World War’ years between 1939-45 when the people of England fought off the Nazi invaders who threatened the freedom of the western world under the rule of Adolf Hitler. This six-year period witnessed the courage of the British and Ally forces at their best and during their finest hour.
Whether it was our brave pilots fighting the superior might of the German Luftwaffe in the skies above London and winning the war of the skies: or our brave soldiers and their allies fighting in foreign fields: or our Navy ships being sunk by the German U-Boats: or the firefighters, ambulance men and women racing through the bombed streets of the capital carrying the wounded and digging out the dead from the bombed dwellings and homes: or British women working in ammunition factories.
Even the woman whose husband and older brother had died serving their country abroad and whose father had died in the bombing during the Blitz; even she who’d sent her three children as evacuees from London to live with strangers in the country until the nightly bombing raids stopped, do you know what she did when she returned home to find her home bombed to the ground in a pile of rubble? She didn’t whine. She searched the rubble of her bombed house, and after finding her front doorstep still in one piece, she washed it down, and whitened it, ready to place in front of the door of her next home! Then, she helped and comforted her next-door neighbour whose house had also been bombed to bits!
Then, when our soldiers got stranded on Beaches of Dunkirk in France, and Great Britain risked all its Army being wiped out by the Germans, what did the road sweeper, the greengrocer, the man in the street do who had any craft that sailed? They mounted their crafts, and in their thousands, they sailed to Dunkirk, where under heavy artillery fire from the Germans, they brought our soldiers back home to England, where they could be ready to fight another day. Records show that these little crafts and boats, sailed by men with the biggest of hearts, brought back home 338,226 soldiers safely.
I was once told by a female clerical worker, who was a young married woman when war broke out, “Do you know what we did, Bill when we’d had the worse of days and had experienced enough sadness to sink any heart? We pencilled the back of our legs, got out our best frock, and put on a bit of lippy and powdered our face before we went to the local for a drink and a good old sing-along!”
That is what I call the British spirit!
Love and peace Bill xxx
My song today is, ‘Powder Your Face with Sunshine’. This popular song was written by Carmen Lombardo and Stanley Rochinski. It was published in 1948. The two biggest hit versions of the song were recorded by Evelyn Knight (singer) and Sammy Kaye (Orchestra) in November 1948. It first reached the ‘Billboard Best Seller’ chart on December 17, 1948, and lasted 17 weeks on the chart, peaking at Number 1. The song was also covered by Dean Martin (1948): Doris Day (1948): Donald Peers (1949): Joe Loss and His Orchestra (1949).
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This song followed a prolonged period of hardship during the ‘Second World War’ years between 1939-45 when the people of England fought off the Nazi invaders who threatened the freedom of the western world under the rule of Adolf Hitler. This six-year period witnessed the courage of the British and Ally forces at their best and during their finest hour.
Whether it was our brave pilots fighting the superior might of the German Luftwaffe in the skies above London and winning the war of the skies: or our brave soldiers and their allies fighting in foreign fields: or our Navy ships being sunk by the German U-Boats: or the firefighters, ambulance men and women racing through the bombed streets of the capital carrying the wounded and digging out the dead from the bombed dwellings and homes: or British women working in ammunition factories.
Even the woman whose husband and older brother had died serving their country abroad and whose father had died in the bombing during the Blitz; even she who’d sent her three children as evacuees from London to live with strangers in the country until the nightly bombing raids stopped, do you know what she did when she returned home to find her home bombed to the ground in a pile of rubble? She didn’t whine. She searched the rubble of her bombed house, and after finding her front doorstep still in one piece, she washed it down, and whitened it, ready to place in front of the door of her next home! Then, she helped and comforted her next-door neighbour whose house had also been bombed to bits!
Then, when our soldiers got stranded on Beaches of Dunkirk in France, and Great Britain risked all its Army being wiped out by the Germans, what did the road sweeper, the greengrocer, the man in the street do who had any craft that sailed? They mounted their crafts, and in their thousands, they sailed to Dunkirk, where under heavy artillery fire from the Germans, they brought our soldiers back home to England, where they could be ready to fight another day. Records show that these little crafts and boats, sailed by men with the biggest of hearts, brought back home 338,226 soldiers safely.
I was once told by a female clerical worker, who was a young married woman when war broke out, “Do you know what we did, Bill when we’d had the worse of days and had experienced enough sadness to sink any heart? We pencilled the back of our legs, got out our best frock, and put on a bit of lippy and powdered our face before we went to the local for a drink and a good old sing-along!”
That is what I call the British spirit!
Love and peace Bill xxx
