Tinkle Tinkle Dash Dash Dash

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One of my all-time favourite records is the fey, fun Let’s All Be Fairies, issued in early 1933 by Durium records and recorded by the little-known Durium Dance Band. the song was composed by Algy More, writer of comic songs including We All Go Oo, Ha, Ha! Together (recorded by Jack Hylton) and Ever So Quiet.

Durium records differed from the norm, which in those days was the brittle shellac disc. These were made of a sturdy brown paper base coated with Durium, a lightweight synthetic resin discovered by a Dr. Beans of Columbia University. Flexible and with a high melting point, Durium was particularly useful as a protective varnish on aeroplanes.

The company claimed that their records were unbreakable, and that 'accidental scratching or dropping, even hitting with a hammer does not damage the playing qualities of a Durium record'. 

These one-sided, 10" square records (usually containing two songs) were sold in newsagents, inside a sealed envelope, for a shilling: the reverse of the disc was either left blank or occasionally contained an advertisement: by mid-1933 this was replaced with a photograph of the featured artist. New Durium records were issued every Friday. The company, which operated in the UK for just 10 years, was a subsidiary of the US company Durium Products Inc., which specialised in quick knock-offs of current pop tunes on this unusual flexi-disc hybrid under the label Hit Of the Week.

Most of the artists who recorded for Durium did so anonymously, mostly because they were under contract elsewhere. We shall probably never know who the vocalist on Let’s All Be Fairies is, but my best guess is that the Duriam Dance Band in this instance are in fact members of the Roy Fox Band, with trumpeter Nat Gonella on vocals. It seems that, in 1932, while Fox was being treated for pleurisy in Switzerland, the band recorded several sides for Durium without his knowledge. When he found out he was furious, and after a major row the band split up, with Lew Stone taking control of the majority of the original line-up, and Fox forming a new act. In June 1932 Lew Stone was made MD of Durium Records in the UK: surely more than a coincidence?  

However, this is only my opinion. Comic artist and composer Leslie Sarony also recorded a version of Let’s All Be Fairies for the Imperial label; the singer’s inflections are very similar to Sarony’s, and it is perfectly possible that he is handling the vocal, playing an exaggerated version of himself. Sarony was well-known for comic songs such as Jollity Farm, later covered by the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band, and it’s interesting that the second song on the Fairies release was a Sarony composition, Toasts. 

There is a film clip in the Pathé archives from 1932 of Leslie Sarony performing Toasts, complete with a little tap dance solo. See what you think.

One of the things I find fascinating about Let’s All Be Fairies is that there are two almost identical but distinctly different versions in circulation. The first, as detailed above, appeared in 1933. A second must have been pressed at some point, possibly for export (Durium also operated throughout Europe) because it was compiled by archivist Robert Parker on the 1987 BBC Records compilation Silly Songs – which is where I first heard it.

So, here are both known versions of the magnificent Let’s All Be Fairies. I hope you enjoy the song as much as I do.

Download the original version HERE

Download the alternate version HERE