16 April 2024

Ray Noble – English and U.S Dance Band Leader – Phantom Dancer

Greg Poppleton's Phantom Dancer swing jazz radio show

Raymond Stanley ‘Ray’ Noble was a swing band leader, composer, arranger, radio host, television and film comedian and actor in both this native England and the United States. He is your Phantom Dancer feature artist this week.

The Phantom Dancer is your weekly non-stop mix of swing and jazz from live 1920s-60s radio and TV every week.

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ENGLAND

Ray Noble wrote lyrics and music for many popular songs during the Golden Age of British Dance Bands, notably for his longtime friend and singer, Al Bowlly, including “Love Is the Sweetest Thing”, “Cherokee”, “The Touch of Your Lips”, “I Hadn’t Anyone Till You”.

Noble studied at the Royal Academy of Music.

In 1927 he won a competition for the best British dance band orchestrator.

In 1929, he became leader of the New Mayfair Dance Orchestra, an HMV Records studio band that featured members of many of the top hotel orchestras of the day.

Ray Noble recorded prolifically during this time and US Victor released several of his HMV recordings, including “Butterflies in the Rain”, “Mademoiselle”, “My Hat’s on the Side of My Head” and “The Very Thought of You”.

The most popular vocalist with Noble’s studio band was Al Bowlly, who joined in 1930.

During this time, Noble co-wrote “Turkish Delight”, “By the Fireside” and “Goodnight, Sweetheart”. The latter song was a number one hit for Guy Lombardo in the American charts. It was also used (with vocals by Al Bowlly) on the original Star Trek television series episode “The City on the Edge of Forever”.

US CAREER

Ray Noble moved to New York City in 1934 on the success of his New Mayfair Dance Orchestra records.

Noble took Al Bowlly and his drummer Bill Harty to the US and asked trombonist Glenn Miller to recruit American musicians to complete the band.

Miller played trombone in the Ray Noble orchestra. The American Ray Noble band had a successful run at the Rainbow Room in New York City with Bowlly as principal vocalist.

Although Noble was not a singer, he did appear twice as an upper-class Englishman on two of his more popular New York records, 1935’s “Top Hat” and 1937’s “Slumming on Park Avenue”.

Noble was also an arranger who scored many record hits in the 1930s: “Mad About the Boy” (1932), “Paris in the Spring” (1935) and “Easy to Love” (1936),

Noble and his orchestra appeared in the 1937 film A Damsel in Distress with Fred Astaire, Joan Fontaine, George Burns and Gracie Allen.

Noble played a somewhat “dense” character who was in love with Gracie Allen. Bowlly returned to England in 1938, but Noble continued to lead bands in America, moving into an acting career portraying a stereotypical upper-class English idiot.

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”.

Ray Noble provided music for many radio shows such as The Chase and Sanborn Hour, The Charlie McCarthy Show, Burns and Allen and On Stage with Cathy and Elliott Lewis 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.

He also provided the orchestration for the 1942 Lou Gehrig biopic The Pride of the Yankees starring Gary Cooper. Noble’s last major successes as a bandleader came with Buddy Clark in the late 1940s.