Sheila Tracy obituary

http://www.theguardian.com/music/2014/oct/03/sheila-tracy

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The ageless, smile-in-the-voice tones of its presenter, Sheila Tracy, helped to make Big Band Special on BBC Radio 2 a priority destination for lovers of swing music. Tracy had been a professional musician herself, on the road with the Ivy Benson band for several years in the 1950s. Indeed, she was known to whip out her trombone and join her fellow instrumentalists in the BBC Big Band for non-broadcast concerts. Musicians knew that she understood their world, and respected her enthusiasm for their craft. This became readily apparent when Tracy, who has died aged 80, turned interviewer and assembled the reminiscences of big-band players in two highly regarded books.

When the BBC decided in 2000 that she should be replaced as presenter of Big Band Special, there was an outcry among fans, but to no avail. However, commercial radio soon came calling and Swingtime with Sheila ran on Primetime Radio until the station folded in 2006.

She was born Sheila Lugg, in Mullion, Cornwall. Early musical promise led her to the Royal Academy of Music in London where she studied the piano, violin and trombone. It was as a trombonist that she joined the popular Ivy Benson All Girls Band in 1956, travelling and playing seaside residencies for the next two years. While in the band, she teamed up with the trombonist and vocalist Phyl Brown, the duo adopting the stage name the Tracy Sisters and performing successfully in variety and on radio and television. Their cabaret jobs around the world included three months at the Great Eastern hotel in Calcutta, but the prospect of a six-month engagement in Las Vegas was too much for Brown, and the act broke up.

Tracy's mother then suggested she approach BBC Television with the idea of becoming an announcer. She became one of the last of the on-screen continuity announcers, also once doubling on trombone with the jazz musician George Chisholm on the Black and White Minstrel Show. Tracy then moved to regional TV news presentation, working on Spotlight South West in Plymouth, Points West in Bristol and South Today in Southampton, while also co-presenting A Spoonful of Sugar on BBC1 with Michael Aspel for several years.

She moved to BBC Radio in 1974, initially as one of four specialist newsreaders broadcasting from parliament, before transferring to Radio 2 in 1977 and cementing her allegiance to Big Band Special from 1979. The programme was centred on the BBC Big Band, which was then a contracted BBC orchestra, and often involved 50 or more outside broadcasts a year. One of her personal highlights was its three-week American tour with George Shearing as star guest in 1992. Tracy was known to join the trombones as and when needed, and sometimes conducted the band when Barry Forgie, its musical director, opted to play the fifth trombone part himself.

In the end, she spent 21 years with Big Band Special, also presenting a three-hour overnight programme and introducing the Truckers Hour, when she invited contact from lorry drivers, this sometimes resulting in coarser language than the BBC could stomach. This programme was pulled after a year.

Once her BBC time was done, in addition to her Primetime Radio show, Tracy hosted a show for Pure Jazz Radio in the US, and another for Age UK's station The Wireless. She had developed an interest in brass band music, and regularly compered the national championship gala concerts at the Royal Albert Hall.

Her first book of interviews with big-band musicians, Bands, Booze and Broads, appeared in 1995 and concentrated on top American players; Talking Swing, which followed two years later, put the spotlight on British instrumentalists. The openness of their comments were a tribute to Tracy's empathy as an interviewer, and the books provided an illuminating picture of life on the road.

Tracy was made a freeman of the City of London in 1997 and an associate of the Royal Academy of Music. She was a former president of the British Trombone Society.

Tracy's husband, John Arnatt, died in 1999. She is survived by their son.

• Sheila Tracy, musician and broadcaster, born 10 January 1934; died 30 September 2014