Some Big Band Boogie Woogie Bounce for everyone depressed by the Chancellor's ghastly Butskellite Bollocks Budget

The human dynamo on the drums - and the matchbox - was, of course,  Gene Krupa with his "Drum Boogie" from the great 1941 comedy Ball of Fire. Right, let's get the politics out of the way. Allister Heath expressed my exact feelings in the Telegraph this morning:

There are two kinds of politicians, in every country and at every time in history. There are individualists in the mould of Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher, who believe that our salaries and wages are rightfully ours, and that the state should take as little of them as possible.

Then there are collectivists, such as Jeremy Corbyn, Gordon Brown and the vast bulk of post-war politicians of all parties, for whom the economy is a socially produced pie, to be divvied up by the government as it sees fit.

In this worldview, the state is the ultimate freeholder over all of our assets and income; tax cuts are thus a “cost” to the Exchequer, morally identical to other forms of “spending”. 

The great tragedy of Wednesday’s Budget, and its bizarre, omnishambolic raid on the self-employed, is that it places Philip Hammond in the latter, collectivist category.

I've nothing to add, except that, when a Tory chancellor allows a Trotskyist loon like Labour's Shadow Chancellor John McDonnell to pose as friend of the self-employed (!), you know he has either (a) come up with the wrong policy, or (b) he has explained the policy very badly, or, as in this case, (c) both. Over to Bob Zurke and His Delta Rhythm Band with the splendid "Cuban Boogie Woogie":

As I grow older, I increasingly find that the music most likely to add a bit of zest, zing, pep and vim to a "day without salt" is no longer necessarily the pop of my youth, but rather the Big Band Swing of my parents' heyday - in particular, Boogie Woogie. The more ridiculous the lyrics, the better - those sung by Ray McKinley on Will Bradley and His Orchestra's "Scrub Me, Mama, With a Boogie Beat" fit the bill:

Rubblyubdub, indeed. There are no words on Benny Goodman's classic 1937 outing, "Roll 'Em" - just pure, musical exuberance:

Here's another slice of sassy, rhythmic, musical joy from 1938 - Woody Herman's "Indian Boogie Woogie":

Unless Theresa May comes to her senses and replaces her wet, centrist chancellor with someone whose instinct is to leave the most economically productive people in our society with as much of their own hard-earned money as possible, I'm going to be listening to an awful lot of this sort of music in the immediate future. I'll leave you with Count Basie boogeying fit to bust on "Basie Boogie" in (I think) Killer Diller, 1948:

If you're not totally boogeyed out by now, there some more great stuff in this post from 2015 (my brother accuses me of being obsessed with dates - you know, he may be right). Here's hoping that Philip Hammond boogies off before too long - preferably to be replaced by Michael Gove.