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He would take me around to different places, or else he would swipe orchestration. He would say, “I need orchestrations for my friend.” Okay. We'd go as far as we could that way. Then he'd say, “What you got to do, I can't get to it all. You need a letter.”

So we got stationery from The Daily Mirror. I don't know how we got it, and we drafted a letter. We signed it “Nick Kenny.” He was a radio columnist. “This is to introduce a very unusual group of musicians whom I'm very much interested in.” We'd send another updated letter. Very often it worked, sometimes it didn't. If it didn't work, it didn't work, that's all. So we would collect orchestration and have music for the band.

Then occasionally Norman Franklin would write arrangements for things. We would try to have, for example, after the Soviet war effort, we got Soviet swing. We arranged all the well-known Soviet songs into an arrangement for dance purposes.

Well-known Soviet songs?

Well, at that time. Remember, the Soviet Union was invaded, and on the radio and everything, Russian War Relief, you're hearing songs from the Soviet Union. This was a very unusual period. Joseph Davies, the American ambassador to the Soviet Union, comes here. Government people are making speeches about the Soviet Union and about our wartime alliance must continue in the future, and the great heroes, etc., etc., it's a big deal.

You're talking now after Pearl Harbor.

Obviously. I'm talking about after the invasion of the Soviet Union.

Of course, that six-month hiatus, we're already past.

We're playing in the band, but that's not sufficient.

One last question. Any other notable people in the band?

In the band? Well, trumpet player, Herbert Birch later became a very important psychology professor. With us during that period, even in that period, not playing with us, but friends, was Sam Levenson. We start him on his career.

How did that happen?

We knew Sam in the late Thirties, and we were very friendly with Sam. We were great admirers of him as a storyteller. He was very