Carroll Gibbons & Marjorie Stedeford - Black Coffee, 1935

Marjorie Stedeford attracted immediate attention when she first appeared in London in 1935. She was a fine singer with an unusual voice—deeper than usual. One reviewer described her as ’an Australian girl with a unique baritone voice ... of soft quality and great charm’. During her few years in London, she found herself at the centre of an international ’hot spot’ in the entertainment world, recording with many of the top names in popular music. The bands she sang with sound like a Who’s Who of Thirties entertainment - she recorded with The Six Swingers, Jack Jackson and His Orchestra, Mario Lorenzi and His Rhythmics, Brian Lawrence and His Lansdowne House Sextet, Billy Thorburn and His Music and Carol Gibbons and His Boy Friends. Marjorie became a very successful artist and soon had a regular slot in Arthur Askey’s show on Radio Luxemburg, described in publicity material as “The voice you love to hear“. Unfortunately, the onset of WWII broke her career. Marjorie went home to Australia. She married, had a son and occassionally performed as a radio singer. She died, aged only 50, in 1959. Carroll Gibbons (1903 - 1954) was a British (but American-born) musician, bandleader and composer. He was born and raised in Clinton, Massachusetts. In his late teens he travelled to London to study at the Royal Academy of Music. In 1924 he returned to London with the brassless Boston Orchestra for an engagement at the Savoy Hotel in the Strand. He liked Britain so much that he settled there and later became the co-leader (with Howie Jacobs) of the Savoy Orpheans and the bandleader of the New Mayfair Orchestra, which recorded for the Gramophone Company on the HMV label. In 1929 Gibbons appeared in the British film Splinters (as Carroll Gibbons and His Masters Voice Orchestra). Gibbons made occasional return trips to the United States but settled permanently in England, though he did spend a couple of years (1930-1931) in Hollywood, where he worked as a staff composer for MGM films. He took exclusive leadership of the Savoy Hotel Orpheans, which recorded hundreds of popular songs between June 1932 and his death in London at the early age of 51. As a composer, Gibbons’ most popular songs included “A Garden in the Rain“ (1928) and “On The Air“ (1932). The later was covered by Rudy Vallée in 1933 and by Lud Gluskin in 1936. Gibbons’ instrumental numbers “Bubbling Over“ and “Moonbeam Dance“ were also quite successful in the United Kingdom.