3 days ago
Revealed: Vera Lynn's lost recordings
As Virginia Lewis-Jones prepared to move out of her family home recently, she decided to donate her mother's extensive record collection to the British Library's sound archive.
This was not just any record collection. Seventy-nine-year-old Lewis-Jones's mother was Vera Lynn, the beloved 'Forces' Sweetheart' whose wholesome ballads had so inspired soldiers and civilians alike as Britain fought the Second World War.
Some hidden gems were tucked away among the vast haul of records, including a set of three aluminium master discs that include Lynn's first audition tapes that she recorded in the early 1930s. After lying untouched and unheard for more than 90 years, tucked inside another record's paper sleeve, these first recordings of one of the most recognisable voices in music history are set finally to be released for public consumption.
'I'm thrilled to bits,' says Lewis-Jones. 'It was amazing that they didn't get completely ruined.'
One of the songs Lynn recorded is What a Difference a Day Makes, based on a Spanish-language original from 1934 – and later popularised by the American singer Dinah Washington. The power of her utterly distinctive voice was already apparent, even though she sang the song as a teenager, with just a piano for accompaniment.
'You could tell then her voice level was much higher, the tone was much higher, because when you're younger your tone is always much higher,' says Lewis-Jones. 'Then it deepens as you get older, which is exactly what happened to my mother. So to hear these when she was 16, 17, is amazing.'
The other recordings include Spring Don't Mean a Thing to Me, the best-known version of which was recorded by Elsie Carlisle, and a medley that features a section of I Hate Myself (For Being Mean to You) and It's Home, which was Lynn's debut single. Another, unlabelled, recording features Lynn scatting, jazz-style, with a mystery singer.
It is remarkable listening to Lynn singing in jazzy, bluesy and country styles, rather than the popular ballads with which she later became synonymous. 'She could have gone down any of those roads,' says Lewis-Jones. 'She could have turned into a blues singer, or she could have gone down country – she had a very country voice. And when she went to America, to Nashville, to record an album [in the 1970s], she had Elvis Presley 's backing group, the Jordanaires. They all thought she was absolutely amazing.'
There is no record of these newly rediscovered discs ever being issued commercially. What a Difference a Day Makes comes out as a single on Friday, the 80th anniversary of VJ Day, while the rest will be released as part of a new album called Hidden Treasures in November.
The choice of VJ Day to launch the single was a deliberate one, as it is often overshadowed by the anniversaries and celebrations of the Allied defeat of Nazi Germany in May 1945. The bloody fighting in the Pacific theatre went on for another 99 days, however.
Lynn, who died aged 103 in June 2020, was fully aware of the significance of that date, however, as she had embarked on a death-defying tour of Burma to boost the morale of troops fighting the Japanese in 1944. 'People do forget that there were three more months of fighting going on, and it's very important, I think, for everybody to realise that the end of the war per se did not really finish until VJ Day,' says Lewis-Jones.
'For her, I think that was doubly important. I mean, VE Day was very important, obviously, but VJ Day was also extremely important, especially as she'd been out there, in the midst of it, and knew what the situation was out there. She did consider that just as important, if not more important.'
Performing in a far-flung battlefield would have daunted many young women, but Lewis-Jones tells me that her mother never wilted in the tropical heat. 'She said she never felt frightened, because she was being protected by 6,000 men,' she says. 'I think she actually enjoyed it. She had to go out there to do a job, she had to make sure they were all OK. And one of them said: 'With you here, we don't seem so far away from home.''
Lynn is best known today for We'll Meet Again and (There'll be Bluebirds Over) The White Cliffs of Dover, two soft-hearted songs about love that help unite Allied soldiers facing battle and civilians on the Home Front alike. 'It was almost as if she was brought into the world to do this, to look after people and to make sure that 'the boys', as she always called them – and the girls – were looked after, their morale was kept up, and the people at home,' says Lewis-Jones. 'She was brought into the world at the right time to do her job, to do her duty, which is what she always looked on it as. But it was also fun, she enjoyed it.'
It is hard to imagine another singer having an impact like Lynn; the Welsh mezzo-soprano Katherine Jenkins has sung some of Lynn's songs at anniversaries and commemorations, but has understandably not created the same impression. 'Katherine is lovely, she's a friend,' says Lewis-Jones. 'She used to say there'd never be anybody like Mummy. Every era has its – star isn't the right word – has its icon, to use that terrible hackneyed expression. But I can't see anybody doing anything like Mummy used to do. She was a one-off.'
Lynn was also determined to try to bring people together with her singing, rather than divide them. I say to Lewis-Jones that the world of music feels much more political now, especially with the unsavoury events at Glastonbury provided by the punk rap groups Bob Vylan and Kneecap this summer.
'Naughty, naughty. You should never be political if you're an artist; you're there for the world, you're not there for any particular faction. And she was very, very careful always to be completely apolitical and not to align herself with anybody… politics, states, religions, creeds, anything, she was always right across the board, which is as it should have been.'
There is a grim irony that on the anniversary of the final Allied victory over the forces of evil, we will see Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin together for the first time in six years and, potentially, carve up Ukraine. The old maxim that 'might is right', which has long been in abeyance, may be about to reassert itself. What would Lynn have made of it?
'She would have been appalled, I think,' her daughter says. 'What's the matter with these [people]? It's all power, isn't it? It's jealousy, power, greed. That's what it is as far as I'm concerned, and I think she would feel the same. She'd be absolutely horrified. I know she would.'
By the spectacle of Trump and Putin together? 'Not just that, but the whole thing. How dare somebody invade, in this day and age, another country? It doesn't matter who it is or where it is. Life is difficult enough as it is without having people trampling all over you who shouldn't be there in the first place,' Lewis-Jones says. 'That applies to anybody and everybody, it doesn't matter. It doesn't have to be a war, doesn't have to be anybody. It can be a personal thing, somebody's bullying somebody in school. In this day and age, these things should just not happen.'
Lynn's newly rediscovered discs could have fetched a fortune had they been auctioned, I tell Lewis-Jones, so the fact that they have been donated to the nation and will be safeguarded by the British Library is a remarkable act of generosity. 'That's what I'm sure she would have wanted. I think everybody that knows her and the family feels that it should be given to posterity, they should be kept for everybody, not just sold,' she says. 'Maybe, who knows, in 100 years' time – please God we're all still here and not been blown up by certain people who shall remain nameless – researchers can look into it.'
