THESE boys look as if they are enjoying themselves as they give their audience a swinging time.
This is Bill Fanning and his orchestra, who were popular in Glasgow clubs in the 1950s and 1960s, including the Queen Mary Jazz Club, in West Nile Street.
Fanning worked for a while in the Glasgow shipyards as an apprentice joiner, but joined the big band led by Jimmy Colquhoun in Paisley as a 19-year-old alto saxophonist and clarinetist in 1948. He was still serving his apprenticeship, but then quit joinery for music.
The dance hall patrons of the 1950s loved the big band musicians and ballrooms such as the Locarno, Dennistoun Palais, Majestic, Astoria and the Barrowland all had their own resident orchestras.
Fanning worked with a number of other leading bands in the city and on the Clyde coast, where he played with Henri Morrison's band in Gourock.
He set up his own 10-piece band in the 1950s and continued playing through until the 1990s, belting out the classic big band repertoire.
He and his band performed regulary in Glasgow.
Billy died in 1999, but memories of that era still linger on.
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