Al Bowlly

Bowlly showcased a range of material unsurpassed by any contemporary other than perhaps Bing Crosby.

He was also a true international recording artist. After a series of odd jobs across Europe in his youth, he gained his musical experience singing for a dance band led by Jimmy Liquime on a tour of India and Singapore during the mid-1920s.

However, he fell out with Liquime and was fired whilst the band was still in India. Bowlly had to work his passage back home, through busking.

Just one year after his 1927 debut recording date in Berlin, Bowlly arrived in London for the first time as part of Fred Elizalde's orchestra. That year, "If I Had You" became one of the first popular songs by an English jazz band to become well known in America as well, and Bowlly had gone out on his own by the beginning of the 1930s. First, however, the onset of the Great Depression in 1929 resulted in Bowlly being made redundant and returning to several months of busking to survive.

In the 1930s, he was to sign two contracts which were to change his fortunes - one in May 1931 with Roy Fox, singing in his live band for the Monseigneur Restaurant in London, the other a record contract with Ray Noble's orchestra in November 1930. During the next four years, he recorded over 500 songs. He also found time to occasionally record with other orchestras such as Lew Stone's ; however, he was inundated with demands in this period, and made the bulk of his recordings with Noble.

There was considerable competition between Noble and Fox for Bowlly's time, as for much of the year, Bowlly would spend all day in the recording studio with Noble's band, rehearsing and recording, only to then spend the evening playing live at the Monseigneur with Fox's band.

A visit to New York in 1934 with Noble resulted in more success and their recordings first achieved popularity in the USA; he appeared at the head of an orchestra hand-picked for him and Noble by Glenn Miller (the band included Claude Thornhill, Charlie Spivak, and Bud Freeman, among others).

During the early-mid 1930s, such songs as "Blue Moon", "Easy to Love", "I've Got You Under My Skin", and "My Melancholy Baby" were sizable American successes - so much so that Bowlly gained his own radio series on NBC and travelled to Hollywood to co-star in The Big Broadcast in 1936, which also starred one of his biggest competitors, Bing Crosby. Al Bowlly often worked with Ray Noble and His Orchestra.

In December 1931, Bowlly had married Freda Roberts, but the marriage proved a disaster, with Bowlly discovering his new wife in bed with another man on their wedding night. The couple separated after two weeks, and sought a rapid divorce. He remarried in December 1934, this time to Marjie Fairless, the marriage lasting until his death.

Despite Bowlly's stellar success in Britain through the early 1930s, he never achieved the same measure of fame in the USA, and his absence from the UK when he moved to the States in 1934 damaged his popularity with UK audiences. His career also began to suffer as a result of problems with his voice from around 1936, which affected the frequency of his recordings. He and Marjie moved back to London in January 1937, with Bowlly appearing with his own band, the Radio City Rhythm Makers, but they had dissolved by late 1937 when his vocal problems were traced to a wart on the inside of his throat, which briefly caused him to lose his voice entirely.

He flew back to the USA to successfully undergo major throat surgery for its removal, but had further difficulties with his voice late in his career.

With his success in Britain a shadow of its former self, he toured regional theatres and recorded furiously to make a living, moving from orchestra to orchestra, including those of Sydney Lipton, Geraldo, and Ken Johnson. He underwent a brief revival from 1940, as part of a double act with Jimmy Messene (whose career had also suffered a recent downturn), with an act called Radio Stars with Two Guitars, performing on the London stage. It was his last venture before his death in April 1941. The partnership was an uneasy one, as Messene suffered from a serious drinking problem by this stage, and was known to turn up incapable on stage, or not to turn up at all, much to Bowlly's consternation. Bowlly's last recorded song, made two weeks before his death, was a duet with Messene of Irving Berlin's satirical song on Hitler, "When That Man is Dead and Gone".

The evening of April 16, 1941, Bowlly and Messene gave what was to be Al's last performance in High Wycombe. In the early hours of the following morning, April 17, 1941, Bowlly was in his flat on Jermyn Street when he was killed by a German Luftwaffe parachute mine which exploded outside his apartment.

Bowlly's body appeared unmarked - the blast had not harmed him, but it had sent his bedroom door off its hinges and the impact against his head proved fatal.

Some speculation surrounds his age at the time of his death. Bowlly claimed at the time of his death that he was born in 1899, making him forty-two, but his death certificate gives his age as forty-three, and several contemporaries claimed that the perpetually boyish-faced singer was born as early as 1890. As no birth certificate exists, and much of his early years in South Africa remain shrouded in mystery, his actual age may remain unknown. Al was buried with other bombing victims in a mass grave at the Westminster Cemetery, Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, London, where his name is spelt Albert Alex (sic) Bowlly. In 1986, British singer/songwriter/guitarist Richard Thompson paid tribute on his album Daring Adventures with the song "Al Bowlly's in Heaven".

MODERN STYLE SINGING ("CROONING") ~by Al Bowlly What is "Crooning"?

Most things that are new come in for a lot of abuse. Especially if they are new art forms. Even to call them "art forms" is enough to rouse the ire of the thoroughly hardbitten diehards.

And of all the many innovations of the past few years "crooning" has had directed at it the most derision and content.

Before we go any further with this book I would like to deal with this attitude, because until the reader really understands the reasons for it, and the answer to it, he is likely to suffer from some kind of inferiority complex - to feel that the ambition to become a singer in the mdern microphone style is something shameful and unmanly.

The very word 'microphone' supplies the whole answer. It is this simple electrical device which gave rise to the whole art of "crooning," brought into being hosts of new artists, and immeasurably widened the scope of the entertainment profession.

Let us pause for a moment to examine this word "crooning." It is a horrible expression, and I use it only because there seems to be nothing else. It is associated with all the unpleasant, smeary, wobbling vocalisms that one ever heard. It is perhaps unnecessary to say that modern microphone singing, even of popular dance tunes, need not be like that.

Different dictionaries give varying definitions, although none of them is up-to-date enough to define it as "quiet singing into a microphone, in the modern dance-band style." Their efforts vary between "a low moaning sound, as of animals in pain" to "the soft singing of a mother to her child."

Neither of these is very complementary, but at least the former supplied a new joke for hard-up humorists!

It is generally accepted as being a sign of weakness, I am well aware, to offer a defense when no specific attack has been made, but never the less there have been so many general attacks on this type of singing, and so few defenses of it, that I feel justified in entering the lists.

The microphone brought into being, and sometimes into very prominent being, a whole host of singers who otherwise would never have been heard. There were many performers whose untrained voices, although naturally sweet and pleasing, were not strong enough for the public platform. To these the microphone was more than kind and gave them the power, with the turn of a switch, to drown the most brazen-lunged quasi-operatic singer who ever shook the rafters.

This angered the diehards. "A poor kind of singer is this," they said scornfully, "who has to call in artificial aids before he can be heard!"

But that seems to me to be a poor argument. It is as logical to say "a poor kind of star is that which cannot be seen without a telescope!"

Confronted with that simile, the anti-crooner usually changes his point of attack. "How can you call these people singers," he insists, "if they have never been taught to sing, know nothing about voice production, and less about diction?"

To which the answer is that if a crooner produces a sound which is unpleasing, and distorts his words beyond recognition, he will not be a success, even as a crooner.

Most crooners are untrained in the first principles of singing and enunciation; more's the pity. But it must be admitted.

But whose is the fault? Who is it who has the knowledge to teach these "natural singers" (for that is what they are) where and how to breath, how to pronounce their consonants and vowels, how to phrase, how to sing in their best register, how to control their vibrato, reduce their portamento, and free them of all the annoying tricks which ignorance and inexperience bring?

The legitimate singers and teachers, of course. But they will not. "No," they say, "you learn to sing our way or not at all!"

And so the crooner continues in his errors, sneered at by just the very people who could help him most. There is no possible way for a singer to learn to sing in the modern microphone style. There is no school which caters for it, no recognised teachers, the musical colleges are just contemptuous, and this, so far as I know, is the first book which has ever been written on the subject.

Is it any wonder, then, that most crooners are dreadful? Yes, I readily admit it. But then, are not most "straight" singers, judged by the highest standards in their own sphere, also dreadful? Is all music bad because a bad café band plays it badly? Indeed no.

There are crooners who produce beautiful sounds with their voices. Surely this undeniable? Their singing may not be academic, but it is often intensely pleasing, and unquestionably gives pleasure to millions.

What more can be asked of singing than that?

Popular Songs, vol. 1, no. 11, October 1935
~by Joan Francis

IF IT IS a romantic song Al Bowlly will sing it!

"They're the only songs I like to sing," said the popular Al when we cornered him in Radio City's luxurious Rainbow Room. "Of course, I often have to sing other types but I can't put my heart into anything without a touch of romance."

Albert Bowlly, who is currently appearing with Ray Noble at New York's swanky Rainbow Room, 65 stories above the clatter and clamor of Manhattan, and can be heard over a coast-to-coast hook-up several times a week, was born on a farm near Johannesburg, South Africa, about thirty years ago.

Several years after his birth the family moved to Johannesburg where Al soon started to attend a public school.

"I guess I was a pretty regular kid," said Ray Noble's top notch singer. "I would kiss my mother goodbye every morning but I didn't always end up in school. I would just as lief (sic) meet my friends and spend the day playing, not only hookey, but baseball and football as struggle with three Rs."

"When did you first start to sing?" we asked him.

"Oh, I could hum a tune before I could talk. Everybody in my family loves music - and we all sing. I remember the evenings we used to spend gathered in the big living room of our house in Johannesburg. While my mother played her accordion and my father strummed a guitar, the children would sit around on the floor and harmonize. I have six brothers and four sisters and we all love to sing the same songs."

When Al Bowlly was 17 years old his father bought a six-chair barber shop for him as a birthday present and Al went into the business very seriously. Everybody in Johannesburg liked the good-looking young barber. They called him the "singing barber."

One day during a lull in business Al went to the back of the store, dug out his trusty guitar and sang softly to himself while his able assistant shaved their one customer. Unknowingly Al was singing for one of the biggest band leaders of South Africa.

"His name was Edgar Adeler," Al continued, "and he offered me 10 pounds a week if I would join his organization. Business wasn't very good at that time so I agreed.

"The next night I went to the theatre where he was appearing. Nervous? Boy, I was petrified! I stood in the center of the stage and I couldn't utter a sound! After what seemed to me an eternity, but what was really only two or three minutes, the curtain was mercifully lowered."

Al stood up and walked around as he spoke. "When I met my boss backstage," he continued, "he said to me, 'Al, I'm ashamed of you!' and I knew that I had to go on again to show him that I really had the goods. A few minutes later I walked back on the stage and sang."

"Have you ever suffered from stage or mike fright since then?"

"No, never," he responded promptly, "and I'm sure that I never will. That experience was a good lesson - I remain taught!

"A week after I joined the band I sold my barber shop and we left Johannesburg," Al went on. "We worked through every dorp in South and East Africa. We used to go hunting between rehearsals. Say, that was the life!

"After that we toured the whole of the East - Japan, China, India, the Dutch East Indies, Java and Sumatra, eventually arriving in Singapore where I left the crowd.

"About two years later, I got a letter from my old boss offering me a job in Berlin. I had never been in Germany so, of course, I accepted. We travelled through Germany and from there went on to London.

"At the time Fred Elizalde was organizing an orchestra for London's Savoy Hotel and he asked me to join him. I was with him for a short time and then the band, which was composed mainly of Americans, broke up.

"I would have been completely stranded in London if it had not been for Peter Maurice, one of England's biggest music publishers. He though a lot of my singing and introduced me to Ray Noble, suggesting that I do the vocals on Noble's records. Noble tried me out and I guess I don't have to say anything more about that. I've been with him ever since.

"While I was recording for Noble I joined Lew Stone's orchestra at the Monseigneur, which is one of London's best known night clubs. It was hard work but when you live just to sing, the harder the job, the better you like it!"

Al Bowlly was born under a lucky star. Ever since he can remember, if he wished hard and long for something, he always got it.

When he was in Africa he wished he could go to India. And he did! Then, he wanted to visit China, Australia, Japan, Europe, America - and he has been in every one of those countries.

"Do you play any musical instruments," we asked getting back to the all-important subject of music.

"Ah, yes," with a caress in his voice, "I love the mandolin, guitar, banjo - in fact all stringed instruments. I never had a music lesson in my life - never had a singing lesson. I play and sing by ear."

At this point in our interview one of the men in the orchestra came over to remind Al that all talk and no work makes Al a poor boy.

"Just one more question," we begged. "What do you want to do more than anything else?"

"There's only one thing that I really want to do," answered Al, "and that is make enough money so that I can buy a 100-foot motor boat, go back to South Africa and go FISHING."