#27: I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha by Enoch Light and the Light Brigade

City: London, ON
Radio Station: CKSL
Peak Month: November 1958
Peak Position in London ~ #8
Peak position in Vancouver ~ #30
Peak Position on Billboard Hot 100 ~ #48
YouTube: “I Want To Be Happy Cha Cha”

Enoch Light was born in Canton, Ohio, in 1907. He was a leader of various dance bands, forming his first at Johns Hopkins University while he was a student. Light’s first dance band recorded as early as March 1927 and continuing through at least 1940. Light and his band primarily worked in various hotels in New York. For a time in 1928, Enoch Light also led a band in Paris, France. He also studied classical conducting at the Opéra-Comique (founded in 1714). In the 1930s, Light also studied conducting with the French conductor Maurice Frigara in Paris. Throughout the 1930s, Light and his outfits were steadily employed in the generally more upscale hotel restaurants and ballrooms in New York that catered to providing polite ambiance for dining and functional dance music of current popular songs rather than out-and-out jazz.Continue reading →