Harry Roy

Harry Roy (12 January 1900 – 1 February 1971) was a British dance band leader and clarinet player from the 1920s to the 1960s. He performed several songs with suggestive lyrics, including " My Girl's Pussy" (1931), and "She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor" (1939).

Life and career

Roy was born Harry Lipman in Stamford Hill, London, England, and began to study clarinet and alto saxophone at the age of 16. He and his brother Sidney formed a band which they called the Darnswells, with Harry on saxophone and clarinet and Sidney on piano. During the 1920s, they performed in several prestige venues, such as the Alhambra and the London Coliseum, under names such as the Original Lyrical Five and the Original Crichton Lyricals. They spent three years at the Café de Paris, and toured South Africa, Australia and Germany.

By the early 1930s, Harry Roy was fronting the band under his own name, and broadcasting from the Café Anglais and the Mayfair Hotel. In 1931, he wrote (along with Anthony Fanzo) and sang " My Girl's Pussy", which has since been the subject of many cover versions and remakes. In 1935, he married Elizabeth Brooke (stage name: Princess Pearl), daughter of the White Rajah of Sarawak, with whom he appeared in two musical films, ''Everything Is Rhythm'' (1936) and ''Rhythm Racketeer'' (1937). Appearing in the former film were Roy's two pianists, Ivor Moreton and Dave Kaye. They had originally been part of Harry Roy's Tiger Ragamuffins, a smaller outfit composed of members of the main band, which also included drummer Joe Daniels. Moreton and Kaye left Roy's band in early 1936, going on to a successful career as piano duettists in their own right.

During the Second World War, Roy toured with the Tiger Ragamuffins. He was at the Embassy Club in 1942, and a little later, toured the Middle East, entertaining troops with singer Mary Lee.

In 1948, Roy travelled to the United States, but was refused a work permit. Returning to Britain, he reformed his band and scored a hit with his recording of "Leicester Square Rag".

By the early 1950s, the big band era had come to an end. Roy's band split up, but he still drifted in and out of the music scene. In the 1950s, he ran his own restaurant, the Diners' Club, but it was destroyed by fire. In 1969 Roy returned to music, leading a quartet in London's Lyric Theatre's show ''Oh Clarence'' and his own Dixieland Jazz Band resident during the summer at the newly-refurbished Sherry's Dixieland Showbar in Brighton, but he was by then in failing health. He died in London in February 1971.

References

External links

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Fundación Joaquín Díaz: Collection of recordings on 78s

{{DEFAULTSORT:Roy, Harry
British bandleaders
British clarinetists
Dance band bandleaders
Dirty blues musicians
Dixieland jazz musicians
Parlophone artists
1900 births
1971 deaths
20th-century British musicians