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Al Bowlly ft Ray Noble & The New Mayfair Orchestra - With All My Love & Kisses (Victor Records 1932)

2,878 views · Published 2 January 2011 · 3:12 · Indexed 9 October 2026

Channel: RoundMidnightTV · 2011 · People & Blogs

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Albert Allick Bowlly (7 January 1899 – 17 April 1941) was a South African-British vocalist, crooner, and dance band guitarist who was Britain's most popular singer for most of the 1930s.He recorded upwards of 1,000 songs that were listened to by millions and even crossed over to the United States.

His most popular songs include "Midnight, the Stars and You", "Goodnight, Sweetheart", "Close Your Eyes", "The Very Thought of You", "Guilty", "Heartaches" and "Love Is the Sweetest Thing". He also recorded the only English version of "Dark Eyes" by Adalgiso Ferraris, as "Black Eyes", with lyrics by Albert Mellor.

He was born in 1899 in Lourenço Marques (today Maputo) in the Portuguese colony of Mozambique. Al's father, Alick, was an Orthodox Christian who was Greek by nationality. His mother, born Miriam Ayoub, was a Lebanese Catholic, though Al himself was raised Greek Orthodox. They met en route to Australia and moved to British South Africa. Bowlly was brought up in Johannesburg. The family's original surname was Pauli, which was misspelt as Bowlly; Alick was only able to speak and read Greek, so the mistake went unnoticed and the name became permanent.

After a series of odd jobs in Colesburg South Africa, including barber and jockey, he sang in a dance band led by Edgar Adeler on a tour of South Africa, Rhodesia, India and the Dutch East Indies during the early to mid-1920s.[7] His main role was as guitarist. He was fired from the band in Soerabaja, Dutch East Indies.

Jimmy Lequime hired Bowlly to sing with his band in India and Singapore at Raffles Hotel. When he left Lequime, it was with the pianist Monia Liter, the two of them travelling to Germany, where they played with Arthur Briggs and his Savoy Syncopators, Fred Bird's Salon Symphonic Jazz Band, and George Carhart's New Yorkers Jazz Orchestra. In 1927 Bowlly made his first record, a cover version of "Blue Skies" by Irving Berlin that was recorded with Adeler in Berlin, Germany. During the next year, he worked in London, with the orchestra of Fred Elizalde.

During the next four years, he recorded over 500 songs. By 1933, Lew Stone had ousted Fox as the Monseigneur's bandleader and Bowlly was singing Stone's arrangements with Stone's band.[4] After much radio exposure and a successful British tour with Stone, Bowlly was now Britain's top singer, and was inundated with demands for appearances and gigs – including undertaking a solo British tour – but continued to make most of his recordings with Noble. There was considerable competition between Noble and Stone for Bowlly's time. For much of the year, Bowlly spent the day in the recording studio with Noble's band, rehearsing and recording, then the evening with Stone's band at the Monseigneur. Many of these recordings with Noble were issued in the United States by Victor, which meant that by the time Noble and Bowlly came to America, their reputation had preceded them.

Once Bowlly and Noble arrived in the States in Autumn of 1934, Ray Noble assembled a new orchestra, which included notable artists such as Charlie Spivak, Glenn Miller, Bud Freeman, and Pee Wee Erwin. Noble's Orchestra was resident in the Rainbow Room atop the Rockefeller Center in New York. Noble and Bowlly would broadcast over NBC and CBS, causing Ray Noble's Orchestra to be one of the most popular Dance Orchestras in the United States. Bowlly was also riding high in the States; he had his own NBC radio series, a magazine that featured the latest news and press interviews about Bowlly, his picture was on sheet music, and he even beat Bing Crosby in a nationwide popularity poll in 1936.

In December 1931, Bowlly married Constance Freda Roberts (officially divorced in 1934) in St Martin's Register Office, London; the couple separated after a fortnight and sought a divorce. He remarried in December 1934 to Marjie Fairless; this marriage lasted until his death, although they split up in 1937, they never officially divorced.

On April 16, 1941, Bowlly and Mesene had given a performance at the Rex Cinema in Oxford Street, High Wycombe. Both were offered an overnight stay in town, but Bowlly took the last train home to his flat at 32 Duke Street, Duke's Court, St James, London. He was killed by a Luftwaffe parachute mine that detonated outside his flat at ten past three in the morning. His body appeared unmarked. Although the explosion had not disfigured him, it had blown his bedroom door off its hinges, and the impact against his head was fatal. He was buried with other bombing victims in a mass grave at Hanwell Cemetery, Uxbridge Road, Hanwell, where his name is given as Albert Alex Bowlly.

A blue plaque commemorating Bowlly was installed in November 2013 by English Heritage at Charing Cross Mansion, 26 Charing Cross Road, described as "his home at the pinnacle of his career".

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