(01 03 06 10 12)
Sid Buckman - trumpet
Les Lambert - trumpet
George Rowe - trombone
Freddie Welsh - trombone
Art Christmas - saxophone
Hughie Tripp - saxophone
Harry Gold - saxophone
Rex Owen - saxophone
Jack Nathan - piano
Ivor Mairants - guitar
George Gibbs - bass
Maurice Burman - drums
Denny Dennis - vocal (03 10)
(02 04 14)
Sid Buckman - trumpet
Les Lambert - trumpet
Andy Hodgkiss - trumpet
Art Christmas - saxophone
Hughie Tripp - saxophone
Harry Gold - saxophone
Rex Owen - saxophone
Jack Nathan - piano
Ivor Mairants - guitar
George Gibbs - bass
Maurice Burman - drums
Denny Dennis - vocal
(05 07-09)
Sid Buckman - trumpet
Nat Gonella - trumpet, vocal (09)
Joe Ferrie - trombone
Ernest Ritte - saxophone
Jim Easton - saxophone
Harry Berly - saxophone, viola
Lew Stone - piano
Al Bowlly - guitar, vocal (05 07 08)
Tiny Winters - bass
Bill Harty - drums
(11 13)
Sid Buckman - trumpet
Les Lambert - trumpet
Andy Hodgkiss - trumpet, accordion
Joe Ferrie - trombone
Eric Tann - trombone
Art Christmas - saxophone
Hughie Tripp - saxophone
Harry Gold - saxophone
Rex Owen - saxophone
Jack Nathan - piano
Ivor Mairants - guitar
George Gibbs - bass
Maurice Burman - drums
Denny Dennis - vocal (11)
The Cubs - vocals (13)
01 Londonola ISigler, Goodhart, Hoffman) (2:53)
02 Build A Little Home (Dubin, Warren) (2:48)
03 June In January (Robin, Rainger) (2:48)
04 May I? (Gordon, Revel) (3:03)
05 Lovable (Woods, Kahn) (2:54)
06 Jungle Drums (Alarraga, Lecuona) (3:15)
07 Goodnight Vienna (Posford) (3:00)
08 Living In Clover (Posford) (2:19)
09 Corrine Corrina (McCoy, Chatman) (1:58)
10 Japanese Sandman (Egan, Whiting) (4:08)
11 Everything I Have Is Yours (Adamson, Lane) (2:51)
12 Drowsy Blues (Templeton) (3:09)
13 What A Perfect Combination (Kalmar, Ruby, Caesar, Akst) (2:28)
14 Goodnight Lovely Little Lady (Gordon, Revel) (2:58)
Decca Eclipse ECM 2045
Recorded 1932- 1935
Contributed by moxnix.
Roy Clifton Fox (1901–1982), trumpeter and bandleader, was born on 25 October 1901 in Denver, Colorado, USA, the son of Joseph Wilbur Fox (d. in or before 1953), a carpenter. His parents, who were both musical, were members of the Salvation Army and were moved to a mission in Los Angeles, California, while Roy and his sister Vera were still very young. At the age of three he first sang a Salvation Army hymn, and at the age of eleven he bought his first cornet. His parents left the Salvation Army in 1908, his father resuming his career as carpenter and painter and his mother working in a bakery, while Roy did his bit to boost the family income by selling papers. His only musical education came from a shoemaker friend who taught him the rudiments of the cornet, and he was soon playing in a small orchestra that sometimes provided background music for silent films. He joined the Los Angeles Examiner Newsboys' Band and had his first professional experience playing for a Cecil B. de Mille film. Soon afterwards he changed to the trumpet and played in a number of local bands.
In 1918 Fox was asked to join a newly formed outfit led by the drummer and bandleader Abe Lyman at The Sunset inn in Santa Monica; the band also included Gus Arnheim, Miff Mole, and Ray Lopez. It was during this period that he developed a distinctive soft style of playing, firstly using the song ‘Whispering’, a title that provided him with a trademark and subsequently a signature tune. He became a well-employed musician playing with bands in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Baltimore, Miami, New York, and elsewhere, occasionally leading groups of his own, the first at the Club Royale in Culver in 1920, and he married about 1927 Dorothea, a dress designer, who sadly turned out to be an alcoholic. The marriage somehow survived for a few years in the USA and London until the 1930s, but it never brought him much happiness. At this time he was leading a band at the Montmartre Café on Sunset Boulevard in Hollywood, which played for many pictures made by MGM, Paramount, and other studios. He became musical supervisor for the Fox film studios, lived in Beverly Hills, and became a well-known figure in the Hollywood scene, which gave him plenty of good names (he had a brief affair with the film star Jean Harlow) to sprinkle around in his autobiography Hollywood, Mayfair and All that Jazz (1975).
Roy Fox's reputation had clearly spread, for in 1930 he was cabled from London and asked to form a seven-piece American band for an eight-week engagement at the Café de Paris. The band opened there on 29 September 1930. Although this first band was fairly average, relying on Fox's reputation as the ‘whispering cornetist’, it was good enough to be taken up by E. R. Lewis of the burgeoning Decca Record Company, and its recordings, the first one made in January 1931, were successful enough to create a steady demand for more. He was now asked to form a British band, and he became musical director for Decca.
Fox relinquished his Hollywood job, sent his American musicians home, and formed a recording band which had Lew Stone as its pianist, Bill Harty as its drummer, and Al Bowlly as vocalist. The records the band made became very popular, one of the first hits being ‘Peanut Vendor’, recorded in February 1931, which helped to start Al Bowlly on his successful career. Fox himself played the trumpet less frequently over the years and was rarely heard on the recordings of the band.
Fox was next asked to take his band into the newly opened Monseigneur club in Piccadilly. The personnel now included Nat Gonella (trumpet) and Joe Ferrie (trombone). It was an outstanding band, and the recordings made by the Monseigneur group have always been considered classics of British dance band music. At the height of the band's popularity Roy Fox became seriously ill with pleurisy, and the pianist Lew Stone temporarily took over the leadership. When the time came to renew the contract, the management were disinclined to improve the terms offered, even though the Roy Fox band had now become a top attraction through its regular BBC broadcasts on Wednesday nights from 10.30 to 12 and also through Fox's stage shows at the Palladium and elsewhere. The result of the disagreement was that Roy Fox left and Lew Stone took over the Monseigneur contract, with most of the musicians staying with him. Roy Fox went, loyally supported by Syd Buckman, to the Café Anglais in Leicester Square. Some predicted a fall in his popularity, but his new band, built round a group of musicians from the Spider's Web Club, was as good as ever, and the Roy Fox nights on the BBC continued without a break. Roy Fox made nearly 600 recordings in his time, a lot of them sophisticated and bland, but a number in good swinging jazz mode, particularly when featuring one of his star players and singers.
On 16 January 1933 the band moved to the Kit Kat Club, owned by Gaumont-British Pictures, who were able to give it generous publicity. Among several vocalists a newcomer, Denny Dennis, made a considerable reputation for himself during this period, and the band appeared at the royal command performance at the Palladium in 1933 and accompanied Evelyn Laye. The relief band at the Kit Kat was led by Joe Loss.
In 1934 Roy Fox was back at a greatly refurbished Café Anglais. He stayed for three months, then began a period of touring the British variety halls. The band was broken up in 1938. He had regularly suffered from ill health, and his band work became more intermittent after this. He led a band in Australia during 1938, then, barred from working in Britain during the war, led small groups in New York before returning to London in 1946. During this time he had married a girl called Kay, but this marriage too was dissolved as she was unhappy living in London. On 7 February 1953 he married Eileen (formerly Helen; b. 1928/9) , a model, daughter of William O'Donnell, a farmer, and this time marriage gave him much happiness and a son, Gary. In the same year he disbanded his final orchestra. He led a life of mixed fortunes after retiring from the band world: always hoping that a chance might come to revive his 1930s kind of music, but never having the vitality to pursue the matter when it did; giving interviews; introducing a series of programmes called Roy Fox Remembers; mainly running an entertainment agency and acting as personal manager to various film and television actors; and latterly surviving on memories and a few royalties. He lived for a while in Kings Road, Chelsea, but spent his last years at Brinsworth House, 72 Staines Road, Twickenham, where he died, aged eighty, on 20 March 1982.
Peter Gammond
FLAC from Mono LP with cover scans
