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The man in the middle of this picture is my grandfather. Like most young British men in the year 1941, he was serving in the armed forces. In his case that meant the merchant navy, and the Atlantic convoys during the Battle of The Atlantic. The golden rule of the navy, he would later say, was never to volunteer, but breaking this rule to volunteer for "special work" turned out to be one of the best decisions he ever made. Sent on a goodwill trip to New York and New Jersey shortly after the Pearl Harbor attacks had drawn America into the war, the sailors were surprised to find themselves treated as heroes. Then one memorable night at Radio City Music Hall, they were invited on to the stage by the new singer with Tommy Dorsey's band, a man so popular that teenage girls ("Bobby soxers" as they would then be called) in the audience screamed as he sang, one Francis Albert Sinatra.

Frank was at this point already, suddenly, the biggest singing star in the USA, topping polls in Billboard and DownBeat magazines, and selling huge amounts of records. Listening to his recordings from this time can instantly tell you why. As much as any singer embarking on an imperial phase, his performances seem not just to be technically and artistically brilliant, but to be utterly effortless, as if he just woke up one morning singing like that. Naturally there was more to his popularity than his voice though. Sinatra would later say that he represented "…the boy in every corner drugstore, the boy who'd gone off drafted to the war" to young women. To many young men, however, this jarred with the fact that he never served himself, despite being the right age. Rumours circulated that Sinatra or unnamed underworld connections had paid a bribe to keep him out of the army, but when files were eventually released it transpired that he was deemed unfit for service for being "not acceptable material from a psychiatric viewpoint" and "emotionally unstable" — quite a contrast to the self-assured artist we think we know.

Sinatra was not, of course, the most exciting musician working in 1941. Not by a long shot. The ridiculous running length of this mix isn't (I hope) down to sloppiness on my part, it's because there's simply too much to fit in here, even after the hour-long Pearl Harbour montage was cut out. 1941 isn't often held up as one of the best years for music, there aren't that many hits here for example, but coming at it chronologically it's obvious that a great bursting and unchaining of creativity is underway. Much of this is from the same people we've heard a great deal from in the last few years. Musicians from Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman and Jay McShann's bands would jam together through the night at Minton's Playhouse in New York, playing around with complex harmonies, syncopation, chord substitutions. It was music by and for musicians, not intended for the public, and it's only by the most amazing luck that a single recording, heavily excerpted here, survives. Charlie Christian, electric guitarist in the Benny Goodman Orchestra, here shows himself a good few decades ahead of the curve with solos that seem to invent new genres every minute. Sadly he would be dead before 1942 was out, at the age of 25, but the music he birthed would live on, as "bebop." Also prefiguring rock and roll we have astonishing jump blues from Lucky Millinder, Sister Rosetta Tharpe, Louis Jordan and Nat King Cole, and from the West coast we have that strange mix of cowboy country and swing jazz then called "Western Swing." And let's not even get started on the explosion of Samba music in Brasil. Even strike action helped out here (as it would very much not do in the following years) - ASCAP (The American Society of Composers, Authors and Publishers) spent most of 1941 in a dispute with radio broadcasters over royalties. As their clients were almost exclusively the white songwriting establishment, the beneficiaries were those of a different race or class, who could now get their songs played on the radio, which then led to more demand for these records to be made.

Musicians in 1941 - no, people in 1941 - were not waiting around for the war to start. They were not putting their lives on hold for the duration. They were playing some of the most original and exciting music we've heard so far. In a half-decade of unimaginable horrors, the dampening down of this spark doesn't rank very high on the list of crimes, but still, it will be a long few years before we can pick up where we left off.

Track list

0:00:00 Kunaisho Shikiburyô Gagakuka - Taishikichô Chôshi

0:30:12 Billie Holiday - Solitude

1:02:04 Arthur Askey - Thanks For Dropping In Mr Hess

1:30:31 Duke Ellington - Take The 'A' Train

2:01:01 Margaret Eaves With Joe Loss & His Orchestra - ''V'' Stands For Victory

2:32:13 Carl Stalling - Stalling Self-Parody

3:04:43 Xavier Cugat - Eco

3:31:43 Pete Johnson - Death Ray Boogie

4:01:50 Artie Shaw And His Orchestra - Frenesi