Give Me The Moon Over London

"Just give me the moon over London. Let me have a dream or two. Perambulating with Daisy down Shaftesbury Avenue ..." Performed by Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Orpheans, Give Me The Moon Over London is a number I believe that was written for the 1946 revue The Night And The Laughter by Jason Matthews and Terry Shand. Carroll Gibbons was an American who moved to England and from the early 1930s he was bandleader of the Savoy Orpheans, one of the most famous of the British dance orchestras and the one closely associated with the Savoy Hotel. It was Dennis Potter's Pennies From Heaven that revived interest in the '30s dance sounds, and a couple of Carroll Gibbons' performances are featured on the soundtrack. The story goes that at the start of WW2 Gibbons was on holiday back home in the States but he hotfooted it back to London where he did his bit to keep up morale and rally the troops in some of the more exclusive places. One of the homegrown dance band leaders, Stamford Hill's Harry Roy and his boys were captured for posterity doin' their bit ...