Ray Noble (musician)
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Ray Noble was a British bandleader, composer, arranger and actor. Noble was born in Brighton, England on December 17, 1903 and died in London on April 3, 1978. Noble studied music at Cambridge and became leader of the EMI 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 achieved popularity in the United States. Union bans prevented Noble from taking British musicians to America so he arranged for Glenn Miller to recruit American musicians. The American Ray Noble band had a successful run at the Rainbow Room in New York City with Bowlly as principal vocalist.
Bowlly returned to England but Noble continued to lead bands in America, moving onto 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.
Noble wrote both lyrics and music and contributed "Love Is The Sweetest Thing" and "Cherokee" to the rollcall of great popular music. His song "The Very Thought Of You" is among the greatest of all popular songs and the recording by Al Bowlly with Noble's studio orchestra is incomparable.
Ray Noble was also a singer who scored a lot of hits in the '30's
ie easy to love (1937) Mad about the boy (1935) and Paris in the spring (1935)