Felix Mendelssohn & His Hawaiian Serenaders has been played on NTS in shows including Open Hand Real Flames , featured first on 25 February 2018. Songs played include Now Is The Hour and Aloha Oe.

Felix Mendelssohn (not to be confused with the German composer) had one of Britain’s most popular bands in the 1930s and 1940s.

In the late 1930s he became enamored with Hawaiian music and transformed the band into a Hawaiian-style group, complete with Hawaiian costumes and dancers, often using genuine Hawaiian performers alongside British musicians. They were heard regularly on the radio, seen on early TV work, and made a long and fascinating series of records between 1939 and 1951.

Felix Mendelssohn died, aged only forty, of Hodgkin's disease in Charing Cross Hospital on 4th February 1952.