[Dixielandjazz] Beryl Davis

[Stephen G Barbone]

The NY Times finally got around to Beryl Davis's Obit.

Cheers,
Steve barbone
www.myspace.com/barbonestreetjazzband

Beryl Davis, British Singer With Big Bands, Dies at 87

By PAUL VITELLO - November 2, 1011 - NY TIMES


Beryl Davis, a British singer who was beloved in England for carrying  
on with her cabaret performances during the bombing of London in World  
War II, and who later performed with Frank Sinatra and the big bands  
of Benny Goodman and Glenn Miller, died on Friday in Los Angeles. She  
was 87.

The cause was complications of Alzheimer’s disease, said a family  
spokesman, Greg Purdy.

Ms. Davis, the daughter of the British bandleader Harry Davis, began  
her professional career early. She performed with her father’s band at  
8 and sang with the jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt and his Quintet of  
the Hot Club of France at 12, traveling with a chaperon. (In between,  
when she was 9, she won the 1934 All Britain Tap Dancing Championship.)

When the German air force began its blitz in 1940, Ms. Davis’s clear,  
pure singing style at the front of a jazz group that included the  
pianist George Shearing and the violinist Stéphane Grappelli, was  
already familiar to BBC listeners, and to London clubgoers.

She later said leaving the city had never occurred to her. “We just  
learned to handle the pressure,” she told Richard Grudens for “Jukebox  
Saturday Night,” his 1999 book about the big-band era. “I would have  
to be down at the BBC, who had me under contract, at odd hours of the  
night. Bombs would be dropping, and you just did your best to dodge  
them.”

She added, “If you didn’t dodge them, well, that was that, you know.”

Ms. Davis was a national star by the time she began singing with some  
of the American big bands passing through London on tours and  
performing for the troops. A booking on Dec. 12, 1944, with the Glenn  
Miller Army Air Force Band at the Queensbury Club, came to haunt her.  
She sang the Bing Crosby wartime hit “I’ll Be Seeing You.”

After the show, she recalled, as Miller left, “he patted me on the  
shoulder, and he said, ‘Good show, kid. I’ll be seeing yuh.’ ” A small  
plane carrying Miller to Paris took off from the outskirts of London  
three days later, and was never seen again.

Ms. Davis made “I’ll Be Seeing You” her signature song, and often  
dedicated it to Miller’s memory.

Beryl Davis was born on March 16, 1924, in Plymouth, Devon, in  
southwestern England, to Harry and Queenie Davis. Her sister, Lisa,  
became an American television and film actress.

As a singer, she told interviewers, she modeled herself on Ella  
Fitzgerald, and, partly because of the American accent and swing  
phrasing she picked up imitating Fitzgerald’s style, Bob Hope invited  
her to Hollywood in 1947 to be a regular on his radio show. She later  
sang with Benny Goodman and Vaughn Monroe, and became a familiar voice  
on the radio shows of Milton Berle, Ed Sullivan, Red Skelton, Abbott  
and Costello, and others.

Her recording career in the United States never took off, but in 1954  
she formed a gospel quartet with three friends from church: her fellow  
big-band singer Connie Haines and the actresses Jane Russell and  
Rhonda Fleming. Calling themselves the Four Girls, they had a hit in  
1954 with their version of “Do, Lord, Remember Me.”

Ms. Davis continued to sing in nightclubs throughout her life. In the  
1970s she became a regular performer on Princess Line cruise ships.

Ms. Davis’s marriage to Peter Potter, a radio personality whose family  
name was Moore, ended in divorce. In addition to her sister, she is  
survived by three children, Bill Moore, Merry Moore and Melinda Moore  
Garber, and two grandchildren.