Harry Roy
b. Harry Lipman, 12 January 1900, London, England, d. 1 February 1971. Influenced by a visit to the UK by the Original Dixieland Jazz Band in 1919, Roy and his brother Sidney formed a dance band, the Darnswells, with Harry on saxophone and clarinet and Sidney on piano. During the '20s, under various names such as the Original Lyrical Five and the Original Crichton Lyricals, the combination played prestige venues including the Alhambra, the London Coliseum, and spent three years at the Café de Paris. They also toured South Africa, Australia and Germany and had a four-month spell in Paris. By the early '30s Roy was fronting the band under his own name, broadcasting successfully from the Café Anglais and the Mayfair Hotel and working the variety circuit. In 1935 he married Miss Elizabeth Brooke, daughter of the white Rajah of Sarawak, nicknamed Princess Pearl, and appeared to good effect with her in two film-musicals, RHYTHM RACKETEER (1937) and EVERYTHING IS RHYTHM (1940). In 1938, Harry Roy and his band toured South America, and during World War II played for the troops in the Middle East with ENSA. After the War he went to the USA, but was refused a work permit, so he re-formed his UK band and in 1949 had a big hit with his own composition, Leicester Square Rag. During the '50s he recorded and appeared only spasmodically, and by 1960 was running a restaurant, the Diners’ Club which was ultimately destroyed by fire. In 1969, he led the orchestra for the successful musical OH, CLARENCE at London's Lyric theatre, but his health was deteriorating and he died in London in 1971. The Harry Roy band did not appeal to the purists although musicians of the calibre of Joe Daniels, Nat Temple, Stanley Black and Ray Ellington passed through the ranks. However, the public appreciated the novelty numbers, the pseudo rags, and Roy's exuberant vocals, all of which made it one of the most popular and entertaining bands of its time.