Evelyn Dove

Evelyn Mary Dove (11 January 1902 – 7 March 1987) was a British singer and actress, who early in her career drew comparisons with Josephine Baker. Of Sierra Leone Creole and English parentage, Dove is recognized as a "trailblazing performer": in 1939, she made history as the first black singer to feature on BBC Radio, building a solid reputation not only through her work in Britain but also internationally, travelling to France, Germany, Italy, Austria, the Netherlands, Hungary, the United States, India and Spain.Howard Rye
"Southern Syncopated Orchestra: The Roster"
''Black Music Research Journal'', Volume 30, Number 1, Spring 2010. She was featured as a Google Doodle on what would have been her 117th birthday in 2019.

Family background

Evelyn Mary Dove was born at the Lying-in Hospital, Endell Street, London, the daughter of leading Sierra Leonean barrister Francis (Frans) Dove (1869–1949) and his English first wife Augusta, ''née'' Winchester, from whom he was later divorced. Evelyn's older brother Frank Dove, who studied law at Oxford University, was called up by the British army in 1915 and fought at the Battle of Cambrai, being awarded the Military Medal.

Early years

Evelyn Dove studied singing, piano, and elocution at the Royal Academy of Music from 1917 until 1919, when she graduated, and on 27 September that year married Milton Alphonso Luke in London. Howard Rye records that she was using the name "Norma Winchester" when she became a member of the Southern Syncopated Orchestra (SSO), a band composed of British West Indian and West African and American musicians who were popularising black music on the UK club scene. On 9 October 1921, eight or nine members of the SSO and around 27 other passengers drowned when the SS ''Rowan'' sailing from Glasgow to Dublin collided with another ship and sank."The Southern Syncopated Orchestra remembered"
Jazz Age Follies, 6 July 2013. Dove and other SSO survivors such as Cyril Blake took part on 14 October in the "Survivors Sacred Concert".

When in 1925 the all-Black revue ''Chocolate Kiddies'' toured Europe from New York, she joined the cast, replacing Lottie Gee, who had to return to the US, and the show toured western Europe for a year, before going to the USSR to play in Leningrad and Moscow, where the audience included Stalin, according to Stephen Bourne, who has researched and written about Dove for the ''Dictionary of National Biography'' and elsewhere.

Dove's career burgeoned internationally in the 1920s and '30s. She was performing at London's Mile End Empire in June 1926, then five months later Evelyn Dove and Her Plantation Creoles – "the only singing and dancing act of its kind in Europe" – appeared at Wintergarten in Berlin, and her revue appeared in the Netherlands in February 1927. She was very popular in Italy, where she lived for some years, before in 1932 going to France to replace Josephine Baker starring in a revue at the Casino de Paris.Stephen Bourne
"The Untold Story Of Britain’s First Black Female Superstar"
''The Voice'', 30 March 2017. She subsequently went to the US, where in 1936 she was the headline cabaret act at the famous Harlem nightclub Connie's Inn. In New York she was photographed by the celebrated photographer Carl Van Vechten.

Her travels also took her to Bombay, India, where on 7 October 1937 ''The Evening News of India'' reviewed her opening-night performance at the Harbour Bar:

1939–49

The decade from 1939 to 1949 marked the height of Dove's career in Britain, when she did much notable radio work broadcasting with the BBC
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