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Jack Payne with real name John Wesley Vivian Payne (Aug.22,1899 - Dec.4,1969)

Payne was a British dancemusic bandleader.He was born in Leamington Spa, Warwickshire - the only son of a music warehouse manager. While serving in the Royal Flying Corps he played the piano in amateur dance-bands.Payne served in the Royal Air Force during World War I, and led dance bands for the troops. In the 1920s he played in a six-piece band which became the house band at the London Hotel Cecil in 1925. This ensemble regularly performed on the BBC in the latter half of the decade. In 1928, Payne became the BBC Director of Dance Music. His signature tune was Irving Berlin's 'Say it With Music', a song which he often sang to. After leaving the BBC in 1932, when he was succeeded by Henry Hall, he returned to playing hotel venues and took his band on nationwide tours and made a film Say it with Music (1932), followed four years later by Sunshine Ahead. In the 1930s he spent a little less time touring, so he could concentrate his efforts on running a theatrical agency.Payne had three successful waltzes - Blue Pacific Moonlight, Underneath the Spanish Stars and Pagan Serenade, which he composed. These were later published in the 1930s.Payne did some jazz recording, including working with Garland Wilson. He toured South Africa and France in the 1930s. In 1941 he returned to the post of Director of Dance Music at the BBC, remaining there until 1946; during this period, Art Christmas was one of the musicians who played with him. Following this he became a disc jockey. He followed this change of career by returning to the dance-music scene to present his own television show, Words and Music, which ran for three series. He also made the occasional television appearance as a panellist in Juke Box Jury, as well as other popular music programmes of the decade.During his final years, Payne ran a hotel The Middle House in Mayfield, East Sussex which was not a successful financial venture for him. He was married twice - his first wife having died after 16 years of marriage. He had an adopted daughter with his second wife, singer Peggy Cochrane.Jack Payne And His Band - Love Is The Sweetest Thing (1932)

Rudy Vallée (July 28, 1901 – July 3, 1986) was an American singer, actor, bandleader, and entertainer.

After playing drums in his high school band, Vallée played clarinet and saxophone in various bands around New England as a teenager. From 1924 through 1925, he played with the Savoy Havana Band at the Savoy Hotel in London, where his fellow band-members discouraged his attempts to become a vocalist. He then returned to the United States to obtain a degree in philosophy from Yale, where he played in the Yale Collegians with future New Yorker cartoonist Peter Arno. WIKIPEDIA After graduation, he formed his own band, "Rudy Vallée and the Connecticut Yankees", having named himself after influential saxophonist Rudy Wiedoeft. With this band, which featured two violins, two saxophones, a piano, a banjo and drums, he started singing (supposedly reluctantly at first). He had a rather thin, wavering tenor voice and seemed more at home singing sweet ballads than jazz numbers. However, his singing, together with his suave manner and boyish good looks, attracted great attention, especially from young women. Vallée was given a recording contract and in 1928, he started performing on the radio.

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