Harry Roy born 12 January 1900

Harry Roy (12 January 1900 – 1 February 1971) was a British dance band leader and clarinet player from the 1920s to the 1960s. 

Roy was born Harry Lipman in Stamford Hill, London, England, and as a teenager he worked in his father's carton manufactory 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. 

The now Anglicized "Roys" waxed a test pressing for Columbia in 1922 and made their first issued recordings for Vocalion in 1927 as the Crichton Lyricals. The Lyricals played all of the best halls and clubs in London, visited Paris, then toured Australia, Tasmania, and South Africa in 1928. They cut two sides for the Broadcast label in 1929 and visited Berlin in 1930, providing live entertainment and making a few more phonograph records. Harry was a born showman, comedian, and vocalist who specialized in songs like "I Wonder How I Look When I'm Asleep?" 

                             

Over the next few years their music became available to the public on the Guardsman, Coliseum, Aco, Scala, Crown, Beltona, Imperial, and Crystalate record labels. 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 "Pussy", which has since been the subject of many cover versions and remakes. 

Harry became the leader of a new enlarged version of the band in 1931, with Syd assuming managerial duties. The Harry Roy Orchestra spent half a year serenading patrons before and betwixt motion picture screenings at RKO's Leicester Square Theatre, opened at the London Pavillion in 1932, and broadcast over BBC radio from the Café Anglais in 1933. Their theme song was now established as the "Bugle Call Rag." Roy's band distinguished itself at the Mayfair Hotel in 1934 and remained there until 1936. 

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. 

Harry Roy's Orchestra enjoyed a successful tour of South America in 1938 and toured consistently throughout England and the Middle East during the Second World War with the Tiger Ragamuffins.  During 1940 another risqué piece of dance band hilarity was recorded by Rot. The song “She Had to Go and Lose It at the Astor.” Both the BBC and the American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers banned it from being recorded or published. In 1942 he was at the Embassy Club 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 2 February 1971. 

 (Edited from Wikipedia & AllMusic)