CD BROADCAST 009

On this CD you will find an unusual selection of popular music from Sweden. All of the arists with one exception, Zarah Leander, lived and performed in Sweden. Zarah leander, although starting her career in Sweden, was to become one of Germany’s most successful stars. Her international debut, was in the world premier (1936) of Axel an der Himmelstür at Theater an der Wien in Vienna, directed by Max Hansen. At the same time, she lands a contract with UFA-film in Berlin, and gets known as an extraordinarily tough negotiator, demanding influence, high salaries and half of it paid in Swedish currency. Zarah Leander's last film in Germany went up at the theaters on March 3, 1943. Her villa in the fashionable Berlin suburb Grunewald was hit in an airstrike, and she decided to break the contract with Ufa, leave Germany, and retreat to Sweden were she'd bought the mansion at Lönö, not far from Stockholm. After the war Zarah Leander had been far too much associated with the Nazi propaganda; and was shunned. Step by step she would get engagements on Swedish stages and in Swedish films, but she would never regain the popularity she'd enjoyed before and in the first years of World War II.

Other featured artists are Alice Babs who made some remarkable “Swing” Recordinds, Ulla Billquist, Sven-Olof Sandberg and Karl Gerhard

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