Al Bowlly had led a colourful life, tragically ended in his early forties, by which time his highly distinctive voice had given him pride of place in singing in what he himself described as “the modern microphone manner.”

Born Albert Alick Bowlly (Al Bowlly) in Mozambique in 1899 to a Greek father and Lebanese mother, he was brought up in Johannesburg and first became a singing barber, also talented as an instrumentalist on ukulele, banjo and guitar. He toured Africa, India and Java before becoming resident vocalist at Singapore’s famous Raffles hotel, made his first records in Berlin in 1927 and subsequently came to England to join Fred Elizalde. From 1930-32 he worked with the bands of Roy Fox and particularly Ray Noble, who wrote some of Al Bowlly’s most popular hits and also took him to America in 1934 for a very successful stay. Glen Miller was Noble’s arranger at this time and Al Bowlly sang an early lyric to a Miller composition which later became Moonlight Serenade. In New York, he played the Rainbow Room and had his own NBC radio show.

Returning to England in 1936/37, he joined up with Lew Stone’s band, also recorded with Geraldo in 1937 and worked with Maltese singer/guitarist Jimmy Mesene and the West Indian bandleader Ken “Snakehips” Johnson at the Café de Paris. Health problems necessitated serious operations on Bowlly’s throat, which naturally restricted his recorded output after 1940; nonetheless, his recorded work adds up to over a thousand pieces, many uncredited and others in contexts as different as Hawaiian outfits and concert orchestras.

Al Bowlly was killed by a bomb in 1941 but his legacy has never been forgotten: much more than one of the many stylists influenced strongly by the crooning of Bing Crosby, Al Bowlly was, simply, the most accomplished of the British danceband singers of the period.

Neil Kellas