In Search of Metro-Land

In November, my girlfriend introduced me to Metro-Land, a 1973 BBC documentary she'd watched two years prior in class while studying abroad in London. The film was written and narrated by John Betjeman, a onetime Poet Laureate of the UK and leading enthusiast of British railroads. It's a wonderful film populated by fascinating characters, and blessed with a unique and diverse soundtrack ostensibly curated by the author. The film has never been released in America, and is available only via Region 2 DVD or torrent; the soundtrack has never been released anywhere, and the quest to identify and acquire the music heard during the film served as a rare diversion while studying for Boards [1].

Music begins Metro-Land at center stage: the film begins with a sped-up montage documenting the length of a line on a Metropolitan Railway train starring the frantic music used to score it.

The tune is a rendition of Scott Joplin's standard "Tiger Rag," as performed by The Temperance Seven, who gained short-lived fame during the traditional jazz craze that swept England in the years immediately preceding the rise of The Beatles. To up the frantic factor, a 33⅓ rpm record was played at 45 rpm; it starts the show with a bang, and listening to the unaltered recording (below) shows it to have been an astute decision.

"Tiger Rag," along with other music used throughout Metro-Land, is identified in the screenplay included in the 1976 compendium The Best of Betjeman. (The entire book is a worthwhile selection of his poetry and prose; the third section comprises the script and is available for download as a PDF here.) In all, 14 recordings were selected for use in Metro-Land, outlined below. There are also four featured diegetic tracks: one choir performance of the Harrow School Song ("Forty Years On") and an organ medley played by Len Rawle in one of the film's most memorable sequences.

Of the 14 selections not performed onscreen, 10 or 11 [2] are directly identified in The Best of Betjeman. Five of these were released together in 2015 by Cherry Red Records as part of a fascinating collection. The compilation opens with the entirety of the Temperance Seven's first album, which itself began with "Tiger Rag"; the other tracks from Metro-Land included in the compilation are "Build a Little Home" by Roy Fox and His Band (recorded in 1934); "Masculine Women and Feminine Men" by The Savoy Havana Band (1926); "The Sunny Side of the Street" by Jack Hylton and His Orchestra (1930); and "Golfing Love" by Melville Gideon (1923).

Three others mentioned by name in the book are easily found for purchase today. The Osmonds' "Down by the Lazy River" and Bread's "Everything I Own" were both legitimate hits in 1972. The third song, also released in 1972, was "Neasden!" by William Rushton, a comedy record celebrating the dubious attractions of the titular, run-down-looking London suburb. It was originally released on Spark Records by the satire magazine Private Eye and has since found its way onto compilation albums. For its inclusion in Metro-Land, "Neasden!" was specially remixed from the original master tapes to highlight the lyrics, which producers felt had been "slightly overwhelmed" by the "rambunctious backing by 'The Ron Watford Sound'."

Four of the remaining six tracks are classical compositions. Two are directly named in The Best of Betjeman: "Civic Fanfare" by Edward Elgar and "Solemn Melody" by Walford Davies. An orchestral crescendo appears in the film and is identified in the script as "‘The Witch of Endor,’ ‘Le Roi David’ ‒ Honegger." The sequence is found in the twelfth movement of Arthur Honegger's Le roi David suite, entitled "Beschwörung der Hexe von Endor." The final classical piece was described in the script as "‘Double Concerti’ ‒ Handel." With the help of a stranger on Reddit, it's been identified as the first movement in Handel's Concerto a due cori No. 2. In all four cases, it's proved predictably difficult to identify the precise recording used in the film.

A similar challenge was presented by one of the remaining two pieces, identified in the script only as "‘Tit Willow’ ‒ Gilbert and Sullivan." Wikipedia revealed the song to be the 3rd-to-last number in The Mikado, which has been recorded innumerable times in a near-equal number of places. Luckily, an unusual arrangement was chosen for use in the film - entirely instrumental, including the usually-sung vocal line. A quick(ish) survey of the available recordings of "Tit Willow" on Spotify allowed me to positively identify the recording selected for use by Betjeman as the version performed by the Cyril Ornadel Orchestra. Few-to-no details on the recording seem to be available on the internet beyond the title and artist.

The final recording used in the film is identified in the script as "‘When the Daisy Opens her Eyes’ ‒ Albert Sandler." Not much else of the song exists - anywhere. "When the Daisy Opens her Eyes" was apparently composed by Haydn Wood, and trace references to the song appear on Google in prewar archive documents including copyright catalogs and social newsletters. Effectively all online references to the Sandler recording, however, are from copies of Metro-Land's Wikipedia article, citing the song's inclusion in the aforementioned script.

Not much exists on Sandler himself, either. A bare-bones life story was distributed in the 40s on the reverse of a trading card packaged with Wills's Cigarettes (right), and as time has elapsed, little has been added. By far his most extensive online biography is a 3 paragraph write-up by AllMusic's Bruce Eder, which aptly begins, "One would never know it from the neglect heaped on him since World War II, but violinist Albert Sandler was one of the more popular orchestra leaders in England during the period between the two world wars, and a leading name in the field of light classical music." Per Eder, Sandler was born in 1906 and died in 1948, and at his 1940s peak was a popular bandleader whose orchestra often appeared on BBC radio. For Sandler, "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" may have been an occasional setpiece, or perhaps even a staple as he led his bands through performance after performance in hotel ballrooms first in Eastbourne, and later in London. For me, it has become a White Whale.

Given that Metro-Land was released 25 years after Sandler's death, I can think of three possibilities for "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes." First, The Best of Betjeman may have simply mistaken the title or artist of the song [3] (though I hope not). Second, the recording may have been made exclusively for radio broadcast. This would explain how hard it's been to find, and it's conceivable given that both Metro-Land and any radio performance of the song would have been made under the aegis of BBC. However, one of the few other references to both Albert Sandler and "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" to be found on the internet is from a 1950 radio guide to a now-repurposed Melbourne radio station [4], which was never affiliated with BBC and is therefore unlikely to have enjoyed access to BBC radio archives.

All of which leads me to guess that the song must have been recorded for release on record. So where is it? To date, I've come across four Albert Sandler compilations in person or on the internet, precisely zero of which include "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes." By my best count, I've also come to recognize 80 records released during Sandler's lifetime on 78rpm shellac. This amounts to 160 tracks; 156 of these were released by Columbia Records [5], and again, zero of them are titled "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes." I expect that the song was recorded for and released by Columbia. It would have been destined to one of the same two fates as other releases of its day. Some records sold well, and were produced in sufficient quantity and distributed sufficiently widely to ensure that some number survived to the modern day [6]. Others never took off, and became rarities out of proportion to more recent unpopular records, having been both (a) less able to coast on the strength of popular songs with which they were packaged and (b) released in a physical medium that shatters when handled even with indifference, much less neglect.

In that respect, assuming it ever existed, Sandler's "Daisy" resembles countless other pre-LP recordings released to an unreceptive audience; only its brief appearance in the background of a TV documentary saved it from complete obscurity. Somewhere out there, a viable copy of "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" may be sitting on a shelf, or precariously positioned in a box of dusty old crap in someone's Neasden attic. With any luck, it may survive and end up for sale on the internet; I'll keep my eyes on eBay just in case. Here's hoping for a happy ending.

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[EDIT 4/28/2016: There was indeed a happy ending – details are here, and the song can be heard below.]

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Music from Metro-Land

You can listen to the soundtrack below. Songs marked with an asterisk* are not included for reasons detailed above. "Tiger Rag" is included twice: first in a version digitally sped up to approximate the version included in Metro-Land, and again towards the end in its unaltered form. The complete medley of Haydn Wood compositions from which "When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes" was excerpted is included at the end. The complete list of songs heard in the film is as follows:

1)   Tiger Rag (The Temperance Seven)

2)   Build a Little Home (Roy Fox and His Band)

3)   When the Daisy Opens Her Eyes (Albert Sandler)

4)   Le roi David - 12. Beschwörung der Hexe von Endor (Arthur Honegger)*

5)   Neasden! (William Rushton)

6)   Civic Fanfare (Edward Elgar)*

7)   Solemn Melody (Walford Davies)*

8)   Masculine Women and Feminine Men (The Savoy Havana Band)

9)   The Sunny Side of the Street (Jack Hylton and His Orchestra)

10) Down by the Lazy River (The Osmonds)

11) Tit Willow (Cyril Ornadel Orchestra)

12) Golfing Love (Melville Gideon)

13) Concerto a due cori No. 2 - 1. Pomposo (Handel)*

14) Everything I Own (Bread)
15) Selection of Haydn Wood's Songs (Albert Sandler)