Thanks.

Col,

That WW2 background was why I guessed John’s parents had gravitated to that song. The crooners and the memories they stirred for pre-war America were strong medicine for the souls of the folks in that fight.

Ref Al Bowlly:
from the Find A Grave narrative…..

“The outbreak of the Second World War curtailed most band work and in 1940 he formed “The Radio Stars with Two Guitars” with ex-Nat Gonella singer/guitarist Jimmy Mesene. Their last date was at the Rex Theatre in High Wycombe. After the show, Al returned to London to see his doctor as his throat had been troubling him (he’d previously had surgery in the States). He returned to his flat in Dukes Court, Piccadilly as London was suffering one of its heaviest air raids. Instead of taking cover in the air raid shelter, Al was sitting up in bed reading a cowboy book. Outside, a German bomb came silently down and exploded in the street outside Al’s window. After the “all-clear” had been signalled, the caretaker made his rounds to see that everyone was all right. When he entered Al’s apartment, he found him dead in bed, killed outright by the blast from the bomb.”

“Q&A with Novelist & Radio Talk Show Host, John Batchelor”
https://www.c-span.org/video/?200850-1/qa-john-batchelor
58:30
(embedded player)

a few great tidbits:

“I also used a song that became my theme song, accidentally. It never occurred to me that you could have a theme song being the last moments of the show.”
And I played it for a long time before I learned that Al Bowlly, the vocalist, had been reading a Western thriller in a hotel room in London. And it’s sad, because he died, but he died in the Blitz. A bomb fell on the building and killed him.”

“My father and mother – my father was born in Indiana. He’s a Hoosier. My mother was born in New York, in Yonkers. And they met and married after the Second War, in the war. They met because of the war. They both served in the United States Army.”
“Father saw a deal of combat and survived accidentally, luckily, thankfully. And mother was in the Women’s Auxiliary Corps, the WACs, at Fort Benning in the Army school. And they married right after the war, and I came along several years later.”

“Mother – my mother is another flavor that I didn’t appreciate growing up and I came to later on. My mother was born of the Assyrian community, which we now know as Iranians, Persians. She thought of herself as Persian. And I learned from her and her sisters about this strange, faraway place that they had all left as children, or their parents had left as children, and come through Ellis Island.”
“And I never paid attention to it. And I didn’t – I knew it was odd, and I knew it had this other language, but I didn’t listen. And mother was in the ’50s keen to Americanize us. She didn’t want us being half anything. She wanted us being American.”

“I suspect it was a song which was special to his Mom and Dad.”

His mom was Iranian. Not exactly your usual housewife in a Mainline town outside Philadelphia in the Forties.

Here’s the Al Bowlly version that John uses. I suspect it was a song which was special to his Mom and Dad.

In doing some background, Bowlly is credited with the innovation of the “crooning” singing style.

https://youtu.be/3AkiIGBal50

[Bowlly’s last recording session, April 1941.]

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+shining+gold+room+music