Alan Dell

Alan Dell (March 8, 1924 – August 18, 1995) was a BBC radio broadcaster, who probably did more than anyone else in the last quarter of the 20th century in Britain to ensure that the dance band music of the 1920s, 30s and early 40s remained in the public consciousness.

Formative years

Dell grew up in South Africa where he graduated from Keamsey College in Natal. He joined the South African Broadcasting Corporation in 1943, introducing for several years a programme called "Rhythm Club". Moving to England in the 1950s, Dell worked on Radio Luxembourg (which then had recording studios in London), the BBC Light Programme and its successor Radio 2 until shortly before his death.

"The Dance Band Days"

Dell's most celebrated programme, "The Dance Band Days", ran from 1969 (initially - and perhaps ironically - on Radio 1, the BBC's "pop" channel, launched in 1967 as a replacement for the offshore pirate stations) until 1995 and, in later years, did so in a sequence on Monday evenings with Dell's "other side", "The Big Band Sound." The former included recordings by the likes of Jack Hylton, Ambrose, Henry Hall, Geraldo and other dance bandleaders. The main elements of these programmes were retained after Dell's death, in a Sunday night programme introduced on Radio 2 by Malcolm Laycock that is still running in 2008. (Dance band recordings were sometimes played also on the digital channel PrimeTime Radio 2000-6.)

Other work for the BBC

Though Dell mostly presented programmes of music from the dance band and swing eras, he was also an early presenter of "Pick of the Pops" in 1956 and, in his later years, of "Sounds Easy", a Sunday afternoon programme on Radio 2 which was notable for its attention to the recordings of Frank Sinatra and Peggy Lee (both of whom he pre-deceased). He has won a 1983 Grammy Award in the Best Historical Album category for "The Tommy Dorsey/Frank Sinatra Sessions - Vols. 1, 2 & 3.

Digital technology

In the 1980s, with the onset of digital technology, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation used the Packman Audio Noise Suppressor, a machine developed by a sound engineer, Robert Parker (1936–2004), to produce stereophonic sound of high quality from 78rpm mono recordings (see "The Stage", 1 March 2005). Dell provided the sleeve notes for "Dance Bands UK" (1988), a BBC compact disc of ABC "transfer" recordings, thereby illustrating his authority as a historian of such music.

External links

* [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_19950829/ai_n14003127 Obituary] from The Independent, 29 August 1995 (Retrieved on 2008-08-09)
* [http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio2/inside/history/gallery_dell.html The History of Radio 2 - Alan Dell profile] at bbc.co.uk
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