Carroll Richard Gibbons (January 4, 1903 – May 10, 1954) was an American-born pianist, bandleader and popular composer who made his career primarily in England during the British dance band era. [1]
He was born and raised in Clinton, Massachusetts, United States, [1] one of three children of Peter and Mary Gibbons. In his late teens he travelled to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1924 he returned to London as a relief pianist with the Boston Orchestra for an engagement at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. [2] He liked Britain so much that he settled there, and later became the co-leader (with Howie Jacobs) of the Savoy Orpheans and the bandleader of the New MayFair Orchestra, which recorded for the Gramophone Company on the HMV label. [1] In 1929, Gibbons appeared in the British film Splinters as "Carroll Gibbons and His Masters Voice Orchestra". Ray Noble led the New Mayfair [sic] Orchestra starting in 1929. [3]
Gibbons made occasional return trips to the United States but settled permanently in England, though he did spend a couple of years (1930–1931) in Hollywood, where he worked as a staff composer for MGM films. [1] He took exclusive leadership of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans, which recorded hundreds of popular songs (many of which were sung by Anne Lenner) between June 1932 and his death in 1954, all featuring Gibbons on piano. Starting in about 1931, he also recorded many sophisticated records featuring a piano-led small group playing pop tunes and medleys under the name of Carroll Gibbons and his Boy Friends, of which some contained tracks by singer Hildegarde. [1]
As a composer, Gibbons's most popular songs included "A Garden in the Rain" (1928) and "On the Air" (1932). The latter was covered by Rudy Vallée in 1933 and by Lud Gluskin in 1936. Gibbons' instrumental numbers "Bubbling Over" and "Moonbeam Dance" were also quite successful in the United Kingdom. Gibbons and his orchestra had a weekly show on Radio Luxembourg in the 1930s, sponsored by Hartley's Jam. [3]
Gibbons married Joan Muriel (née Lidstone) in 1951. [4] He died at the London Clinic in 1954 at the age of 51, of a coronary thrombosis. [5] He is one of several famous musicians buried in Brookwood Cemetery in Surrey, England. [6]
Specialist dance band radio stations, such as Swing Street Radio and Radio Dismuke, continue to play his records. Gibbons also features regularly on the weekly Manx Radio programme Sweet & Swing , presented by Jim and Howard Caine. The UK 1940s Radio Station, a dedicated Internet radio station, also regularly plays Gibbons's records. [7]
Swing music is a style of jazz that developed in the United States during the late 1920s and early 1930s. It became nationally popular from the mid-1930s. The name derived from its emphasis on the off-beat, or nominally weaker beat. Swing bands usually featured soloists who would improvise on the melody over the arrangement. The danceable swing style of big bands and bandleaders such as Benny Goodman was the dominant form of American popular music from 1935 to 1946, known as the swing era. The verb "to swing" is also used as a term of praise for playing that has a strong groove or drive. Musicians of the swing era include Duke Ellington, Benny Goodman, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Dorsey, Tommy Dorsey, Woody Herman, Harry James, Lionel Hampton, Glenn Miller, Artie Shaw and Django Reinhardt.
Jack Hylton was an English pianist, composer, band leader and impresario.
Raymond Stanley Noble was an English jazz and big band musician, who was a bandleader, composer and arranger, as well as a radio host, television and film comedian and actor; he also performed in the United States.
Benjamin Frankel was a British composer. His best known pieces include a cycle of five string quartets, eight symphonies, and concertos for violin and viola. He was also notable for writing over 100 film scores and working as a big band arranger in the 1930s. During the last 15 years of his life, Frankel also developed his own style of 12-note composition which retained contact with tonality.
Beatrice "Binnie" Mary Hale-Monro was an English actress, singer and dancer. She was one of the most successful musical theatre stars in London in the 1920s and 1930s, able to sing leading roles in operetta as well as musicals, and she was popular as a principal boy in pantomime. Her best-remembered roles were in the musicals No, No, Nanette (1925) and Mr. Cinders (1929), in which she sang "Spread a Little Happiness".
A palm court is a large atrium with palm trees, usually in a prestigious hotel, where functions are staged, notably tea dances. Examples include the Langham Hotel (1865), Alexandra Palace (1873), the Carlton Hotel (1899), and the Ritz Hotel (1906), all in London; and the Alexandria Hotel in Los Angeles, Palace Hotel, San Francisco and the Plaza Hotel in New York City. Capitalizing on their popularity, some ocean liners also had palm courts, notably the RMS Titanic (1912).
"The Way You Look To-night" is a song from the film Swing Time that was performed by Fred Astaire and composed by Jerome Kern with lyrics written by Dorothy Fields. It won the Academy Award for Best Original Song in 1936. Fields remarked, "The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful."
Louis Stone known professionally as Lew Stone was a British bandleader and arranger of the British dance band era, and was well known in Britain during the 1930s. He was known as a skillful, innovative and imaginative musical arranger.
James Hal Kemp was an American jazz alto saxophonist, clarinetist, bandleader, composer, and arranger.
The Three X Sisters were an American all-girl harmony singing trio initially known as The Hamilton Sisters and Fordyce. They were on stage singing together in New York City, on Broadway, as early as 1922 and formed their trio in 1924, which was composed of Pearl Santos and Violet Hamilton from Cumberland, Maryland, and Jessie Fordyce from Brooklyn, New York. They were known on NBC radio as "radio's foremost harmony trio."
Gerald Walcan Bright, better known as Geraldo, was an English bandleader. He adopted the name "Geraldo" in 1930, and became one of the most popular British dance band leaders of the 1930s with his "sweet music" and his "Gaucho Tango Orchestra". During the 1940s, he modernised his style and continued to enjoy great success.
"Top Hat, White Tie and Tails" is a popular song written by Irving Berlin for the 1935 film Top Hat, where it was introduced by Fred Astaire.
Federico "Fred" Díaz Elizalde was a Spanish Filipino classical and jazz pianist, composer, conductor, and bandleader, influential in the British dance band era.
Anne Lenner was a popular English female vocalist, who sang with the British dance bands of the 1930s and 1940s. She is most closely associated with Carroll Gibbons and the Savoy Orpheans, a band who regularly played at the Savoy Hotel in London, with whom she made many studio recordings. The British bands played a softer version of the swing jazz popular in the USA during the 1930s and 1940s.
The Savoy Orpheans is a British dance band currently led by Alex Mendham. They were resident at the Savoy Hotel, London.
Charles Remue was a Belgian clarinetist, alto saxophone player and bandleader of early jazz, who, while leading a band called Chas. Remue & His New Stompers, recorded what are widely considered to be the first jazz discs by a Belgian band.
"Elmer's Tune" is a 1941 big band and jazz standard written by Elmer Albrecht, Dick Jurgens and Sammy Gallop. Glenn Miller and his Orchestra and Dick Jurgens and his Orchestra both charted with recordings of the composition.
Debroy Somers was a British twentieth-century big band bandleader.
Julie Dawn was an English singer, singing with leading dance bands in the 1940s and 1950s, and making recordings and radio broadcasts. In later years she presented radio programmes.
Norman MacPhail Blair, who most often used the pseudonym Maurice Elwin in his professional work, was a British dance band singer and songwriter who was popular between the First and Second World Wars. He used over 60 different pseudonyms, both as a singer and composer, including John Curtis, Maurice Kelvin, Donald O'Keefe, Guy Victor, and Max Wynn, as well as sometimes using the name Norman Blair.
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