Ray Noble
| Ray Noble | |
|---|---|
| Birth name | Raymond Stanley Noble |
| Born | December 17, 1903 Brighton, England, UK |
| Died | April 3, 1978 (aged 74) London, England, UK |
| Genres | Jazz |
| Occupations | Bandleader, Composer, Arranger, Actor |
| Associated acts | Al Bowlly |
Ray Noble (17 December 1903 – 3 April 1978) was an English bandleader, composer, arranger, radio comedian, and actor. Noble is known for composing such hits as "Cherokee", "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" and "The Very Thought Of You", as well as playing a radio comedian oppisite Charlie McCarthy and Mortimer Snerd (Edgar Bergen) and also Burns & Allen, and transferring that from radio to popular films.
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[edit] Career
Raymond Stanley Noble was born at 1 Montpelier Terrace in the Montpelier area of Brighton. A blue plaque on the house commemorates him.[1]
Noble studied music at the Royal Academy of Music and became leader of the HMV Records studio band in 1929. The band, known as the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, featured members of many of the top hotel orchestras of the day. The most popular vocalist with Noble's studio band was Al Bowlly.
The Bowlly/Noble recordings with the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra on HMV achieved popularity in the United States, and he moved to New York City in 1933. Union bans prevented Noble from taking British musicians to America so he arranged for Glenn Miller to recruit American musicians. Glenn Miller played the trombone in the Ray Noble orchestra which performed Glenn Miller's composition "Dese Dem Dose" as part of the medley "Dese Dem Dose/An Hour Ago This Minute/Solitude" during a performance at the Rainbow Room in 1935. The American Ray Noble band had a successful run at the Rainbow Room in New York City with Bowlly as principal vocalist. The act included ventriloquist Edgar Bergen.
Bowlly returned to England but Noble continued to lead bands in America, moving into an acting career portraying a stereotypical upper-class English idiot. His last major successes as a bandleader came with Buddy Clark in the late 1940s.
Ray Noble wrote both lyrics and music for many songs that became popular, contributing "Love Is The Sweetest Thing", "Cherokee", "The Touch of Your Lips", "I Hadn't Anyone Till You" and "The Very Thought Of You" to popular culture. He co-wrote "Goodnight, Sweetheart" (a number one hit for Guy Lombardo on U.S. charts), "Turkish Delight" and "By the Fireside". The Ray Noble composition "You're So Desirable" was recorded by Billie Holiday and Teddy Wilson, and by Robert Palmer in 1990.
Ray Noble was also an arranger who scored many record hits in the 1930s: "Easy to Love" (1936), "Mad About the Boy" (1932), "Paris in the Spring" (1935).
Noble and Bowlly's 1934 recording of "Midnight, the Stars and You" was prominently featured on the soundtrack of Stanley Kubrick's film The Shining in 1980. Another example of a Noble/Bowlly classic, the 1931 song "Guilty", can be found on the Amélie film soundtrack.
Noble played the piano but seldom did so with his orchestra. In a movie short from the 1940s featuring Ray Noble and Buddy Clark (one of his most popular band singers), Ray Noble is asked by the announcer to play one of his most popular hits. He sits down at the piano and plays "Goodnight, Sweetheart" ("Goodnight sweetheart, 'til we meet tomorrow. Goodnight sweetheart, parting is such sorrow"). This is the song that once seemed to be played at the end of every high school and college prom, the end of every party featuring live music, and the last song played by a dance band to signal the end of the evening.
Although Noble was no singer, he did appear twice as an upper crust Englishmen on two of his more popular New York records, 1935's Top Hat and 1937's Slumming on Park Avenue.
Noble provided music for many radio shows like The Chase and Sanborn Hour, The Charlie McCarthy Show and Burns and Allen and also guest appeared in some of their films. He worked with Bergen for nearly fifteen years, playing the foil to McCarthy and the slow-witted Mortimer Snerd, and his orchestra appeared with Edgar Bergen in the 1942 film Here We Go Again and in 1937's A Damsel in Distress with Burns and Allen. Noble played a somewhat "dense" character who was in love with Gracie Allen. His catchphrase was "Gracie, this is the first time we've ever been alone together." He also did the orchestration for the Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees staring Gary Cooper.
He retired to Santa Barbara, California, where he lived in the 1970s. In March 1978 he flew to London for treatment of cancer. Noble died at a London hospital of cancer.[2][3]
[edit] "Number One" hits
Ray Noble had several number one hits in the 1930s on the U.S. pop singles charts:
- "Love is the Sweetest Thing", 1933, no.1 for 5 weeks;
- "Old Spinning Wheel", 1934, no.1 for 3 weeks;
- "The Very Thought of You", 1934, no.1 for 5 weeks;
- "Isle of Capri", 1935, no.1 for 7 weeks;
- "Let's Swing It", 1935, no.1 for 2 weeks; and,
- "Paris in the Spring", 1935, no.1 for 1 week.
[edit] Honors
"The Very Thought of You", recorded by Ray Noble and His Orchestra on Victor in 1934, was inducted into the Grammy Hall of Fame.
Ray Noble was inducted into the Songwriters Hall of Fame.
In 1987, Ray Noble was inducted into the Big Band and Jazz Hall of Fame.
[edit] Sources
- ^ Collis, Rose (2010). The New Encyclopaedia of Brighton. (based on the original by Tim Carder) (1st ed.). Brighton: Brighton & Hove Libraries. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-9564664-0-2.
- ^ "Ray Noble, Composer Of Goodnight Sweetheart'", St. Petersburg Times: 11B, April 5, 1978
- ^ Wilson, John S. (April 4, 1978), "Ray Noble, 71, Dies; Popular Composer", The New York Times: 36
- Peter Gammond, "Noble, Raymond Stanley (1903–1978)", Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Oxford University Press, Sept 2004; online edn, May 2006 accessed 7 July 2007
[edit] External links
- Ray Noble at Find a Grave
- Ray Noble: Biography. - Songwriters Hall of Fame.
- Wright, John. - Al Bowlly's time with the Ray Noble Orchestra.
