Background information about the recordings can be found below the audio selections.
| “Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)” Flanagan And Allen, vocal 1937 (Columbia FB 1781 mx CA 16606) |
| “Home Town” Flanagan And Allen, vocal 1937 (Columbia FB 1781 mx CA 16605) |
Here are two recordings by the British comedy duo Bud Flanigan and Chesney Allen, who were immensely popular in Britain during the 1930s and 1940s for their stand-alone comedy act and for being members of the Crazy Gang comedy troupe.
Flanigan and Allen performed both of these songs in musicals featuring the Crazy Gang produced by George Black at the London Palladium.
“Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)” was performed by Flanigan and Allen in the Crazy Gang’s 1936 London Palladium production O-Kay For Sound, which was subsequently made into a 1937 film of the same name in which they also performed the song.
The song’s reference to LSD, by the way, has nothing to do with the drug, which was not invented until a year later, but rather to £sd, a popular name for Britain’s old pounds, shillings, and pence currency which existed until 1971 when it switched to its current decimal currency.
I think this recording is incredibly catchy and charming. When I first came across it in my collection, I immediately played it back several times.
The film version of O-Kay For Sound can be watched in its entirety on YouTube at this link. You can see Flanigan and Allen perform “Free (Isn’t It The Way It Ought To Be?)” by scrolling to 10 minutes and 10 seconds into the film.
“Home Town” comes from the Crazy Gang’s 1937 London Palladium production, London Rhapsody.
Both recordings are accompanied by a studio band directed by George Scott Wood.