When I was seventeen, a girl with whom I was friendly took me to see her sister who was setting up her first matrimonial home. "You collect records", the sister said, "here?s a box of old 78s I found in the attic". They were old indeed! A quick glance showed they were Decca records from the early 1930s, and were all by Roy Fox and his Band ?At the Monseigneur Restaurant?. Unfortunately I didn?t like old Decca records. They had loud surface noise and the recording quality was often dreadful. However, politely, I took them. Once I got home I tried them out, and the surface noise was just as bad as I?d feared, and the band was thin-sounding and distant; but the anonymous vocalist on most of the records had an appealing voice. He sounded quite a ?character? on the up-tempo numbers, and the romantic titles were sung with genuine feeling. It took a year for someone to identify the singer for me. It was Al Bowlly, and by then I was an addict.
Al Bowlly was born in Mozambique, though quite when no-one seems sure. As he got older he was inclined to knock a few years off his age, creating much confusion for his subsequent biographers. On his death certificate, his age is given as forty-three, which would give his year of birth as 1898, although it is very likely he was born several years before this. A few years after his birth, the family moved to Johannesburg. As a child, he would work in his uncle?s barber shop after school. Once he?d left school, at the age of fourteen, he worked there full time, and became known as ?the singing barber?, for his entertainment of the customers!
Al?s first records were made in Berlin in 1927, the beginning of a varied and prolific output of wonderful recordings. In 1928 he arrived in London, after accepting an invitation from Fred Elizalde to join his band at the Savoy Hotel. Soon he was appearing with the bands of Roy Fox and Lew Stone, and became the favourite vocalist with Ray Noble, whom he followed to America in 1934, by which time he?d recorded 790 sides. In 1937 he returned to England to continue his career.
On the evening of 16th April 1941, during World War II, Al arrived back in London, and entertained a friend at his apartment in Jermyn Street, in the city centre. After his friend had left, Al retired to bed to read, and fell asleep. Hours later, during one of the heaviest German air raids of the war, a landmine fell and exploded, blowing in all the windows of the apartments in the area. Al was found dead, lying next to his bed.
I am lucky enough to have one of Bowlly?s original hard-backed music folders with his name embossed in gold, rescued from the rubble of the bombed Café de Paris. I paid for the only memorial to his memory, a 4ft by 2ft satin aluminium plaque which was placed in the North Tyneside Memorial Church. The rest of this story is about this compact disc.
Al recorded Sweet And Lovely twice: first with Roy fox and his Band, on Decca and the quality of recording, balance and arrangements is far from great. The superior Columbia version, with the Savoy Hotel Orpheans is included here. Love Is The Sweetest Thing, Lying In The Hay, Stay On The Right Side Of The Road, and You Ought To See Sally On Sunday are all with Ray Noble, and were recorded between 1932-33. As was often the case with dance band vocalists, Al was not credited on the record labels. The tracks were all recorded in London, and of particular note is Stay on the right Side of the Road. It show the musicians at their happiest and most productive, because they are playing in their favourite mode ? hot! You Ought To See Sally On Sunday is just as hot, and features Freddy Gardner on saxophone. Al encourages him by shouting "Come on there Freddy boy!"
It?s Psychological as recorded here by Lew Stone and The Monseigneur Band with vocals