大象传媒

In answer to recent press suggestions that it was either James Bond or The Beatles that marked The Modern Age, Russell posits a different date-line: The Cuban Missile Crisis. In memory of this, he opens with Tom Lehrer's So Long Mom, (I'm Off To Drop The Bomb).

A brief line from this - "Little Johnny Jones" - sends him to the musical origin of that. And it turns up first in George M Cohan's Give My Regards To Broadway. Mention of the economy and we're into Bing Crosby and Brother Can You Spare A Dime? swiftly followed by another message-carrying song Remember My Forgotten Man (Maude Maggart sings).

For Black History Month, Russell plays singer-turned-campaigner Etta Moten, whom we glimpse in The Carioca, from Flying Down To Rio. A new release - 50 Songs That Shaped The Beatles - gives us the next four songs. Then a Beatles composition, A World Without Love, starts a little stream of "world" songs: The Chordettes' Let The Rest Of The World Go By and Louis Armstrong's What A Wonderful World.

Finally, two new releases, Gary Williams' Carry On Screaming for Hallowe'en; and Teddi King singing The Touch Of Your Lips, just because it's excellent.