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| Al Bowlly |
Written on 16th of May, 2014
I started to listen to the recordings and immediately fell in love with those songs.
While day-dreaming about being a flapper girl who dances to that music I discovered inside the cover of the CD a small note written by hand....
"Find out who was Al Bowlly!"
I looked at the photo of the singer and thought: he was a hunk from the 30s, looking kind of Mediterranean, most probably Irish...Celtic dark look...but not exactly ...
So who was Al Bowlly?
He was the greatest pop singer of 1930s, his career had spread on four continents: Africa, Asia, Europe, and America, he was a singer who had "a voice out of this world" and who invented crooning, a very special way of singing, which is more a soft, delicate murmuring....
It became a canon of singing in the 1930s. Al Bowlly was also....a Greek man.
His story began on the boat to Australia. Al's father, a Greek from the island of Rhodes, met during his trip to Australia a Greek girl from Lebanon, fell madly in love with her, and the first thing he did after landing in Perth, Australia - he had married the girl. Australia wasn't the land of opportunities for Bowlly's parents, they moved to Africa. Al was born in Mozambique, and brought up in Johannesburg, in South Africa. There, his beautiful voice of extraordinary range and musical talent became well known. He was performing in the luxury hotels in South Africa and India, and soon was invited to London, to record a few songs. England became his new home, and his career was flourishing. He was singing with Ray Noble Orchestra and Lew Stone Band. Very pleasant personality, good looks, and a charisma helped Al to reach huge popularity in England. Ray Noble is often quoted as saying that Al often stepped away from the microphone with tears in his eyes; "never mind him making you cry, he could make himself cry!"
In 1934 Al Bowlly had visited America and sung with Glen Miller Orchestra. Songs: "Blue Moon", "Easy to Love", "I've Got You Under My Skin" made him famous in the United States. He had returned to England just before the war. In 1941 Bowlly was killed by a German parachute mine that detonated outside his apartment. He was only 43 years old.
Al Bowlly loved many girls, but never found his Greek girl to love... and as we know, a Greek soul needs another Greek soul to survive...
One day, in July, I have to dress like a flapper girl and go for a dancing rendez-vous with the man I love. We would pretend strangers who met while dancing....The only thing I have to do is to tell him about this idea....
