Various Ve Day - The Vocalists (CD)

(Empress) 25 tracks. original recordings

Just picture the scene. The British people are celebrating VE day with a will. Throughout the country people are gathering together for street parties, pubs and bars are packed with revellers while the length and breadth of London's Whitehall is thronged with an enormous crowd eager to slake its collective thirst, then to acclaim one of the great heroes of the hour - the Prime Minister, Winston Churchill... for he is due to speak to the mass of people who have joy in their hearts and a song in their throats.

It makes for a most stirring occasion. The conflict in Europe is over, although everyone is aware that the years ahead will not be easy. Just for this one particular day they can forget their worries and enjoy one of the great days in their country's history. Music is playing everywhere. Songs of hope, songs of sentiment; some with words looking forward to a bright future, others with a reflective backwards glance to the bitter-sweet emotions of the six long years of strife. It was a marvellous period for music. Great songs were still being written for vocalists fully capable of doing them complete justice. On both sides of the Atlantic the pre-war boom in swing and dance bands had evaporated to some extent; it was the singers who ruled in the brave new world.

Vera Lynn had begun her professional career as a band vocalist, but by the early 'forties had established herself as one of the most popular solo artists in Britain. The deep sincerity of her finely tuned singing together with the memorable numbers she performed struck a chord at home and with the troops overseas. Her connection with the forces during the war has passed into the nation's folklore. Of all the singers active between 1939 and 1945 it is Dame Vera who will forever be associated with those dark days; her records form a soundtrack to the war years. It is a tribute to Vera Lynn that her popularity has never waned, enduring to the present day more than fifty years after she recorded her big wartime hits.

There's A New World, It Could Happen To You and Jerome