Victor Silvester

"The basic essentials of true dance music are melody, simplicity, and consistent rhythm. Join these three entities together and you have music that is nice to dance to and pleasing to listen to," observed Victor Silvester -- he did precisely that and sold 75 million records over a recording career lasting 50 years. Today he is but a fading memory on a musical landscape that he scarcely would have recognized, but for 50 years, from the '30s through the early '80s, Victor Silvester was England's top dance-band leader -- and from the '30s through the '60s, that designation meant musical stardom. The second son of a vicar in North London, Silvester played the piano as a boy and studied music at Trinity College of music and the London College of Music. For reasons best known to himself, he interrupted his musical studies to enlist in the army in 1915, when he was just 15 years old, and was sent to the front, where he saw action -- including service on a firing squad executing deserters. Discharged when his true age was discovered, he waited until he was 17 and re-enlisted legally to return to combat. After World War I, he considered a permanent career in the army, but his interests turned instead to dancing. He won the World Dancing Championship in 1922, in partnership with Phyllis Clarke, and later opened his dancing academy in London, which eventually became a chain of dance studios. By the early '30s, he was the most renowned dance teacher in England, with a clientele that included the top celebrities of the day, and a reputation that quickly spread throughout the British Empire and the rest of Europe, and as far away as Japan. It was the lack of what he felt were proper dance records that drove Silvester into a recording career. Forming his own orchestra, he recorded...