Ivy Benson

Ivy Benson (born November 11, 1913 in Holbeck , Yorkshire , † May 6, 1993 in Clacton-on-Sea ) was a British bandleader, best known for founding a women's big band in the swing era ( Ivy Benson and her All Girl Band ). She played the piano , electric organ , clarinet , saxophone and other instruments.

Life

Benson was the daughter of a musician and learned the piano at an early age. Already at the age of eight she appeared in clubs as Baby Benson and at nine in the Children's Hour on the BBC radio station . After listening to Benny Goodman on vinyl, she wanted to be a jazz musician and left school at fourteen. She learned the clarinet and saxophone, where she earned her first own saxophone with work in a factory in Leeds and engagements in dance bands. From 1929 to 1935 she played with Edna Croudson's Rhythm Girls and then with Teddy Joyce and the Girlfriends , among others , before she moved to London in the late 1930s and founded her own band in 1939 (first as Ivy Benson and her Rhythm Girls ). She played in revues and in the Convent Garden . In 1943 her band was brokered by Jack Hylton the house band at the BBC; as Ivy Benson's All Ladies Orchestra , she was featured in The Dummy Talks with Jack Warner and Claude Hulbert . In 1944 they played for six months in the London Palladium and in 1945 at the Allied victory celebrations in Berlin and then in the troop distribution in Europe and the Middle East. Although she was denied membership in the British Bandleaders Association as a woman , she led the band until the early 1980s, each with a repertoire adapted to the taste of the time. In 1950 she was involved in the musical film A Ray of Sunshine , she appeared twice in 1957 in the television series The Music Box . In 1963 a beat band, The Beat Chics , was formed from the tribe of their musicians. From 1975 they were called Ivy Benson and her Showband after new laws banned all-women bands . In 1982 they broke up with a final performance at the Savoy Hotel .

Your band initially had a strong fluctuation, partly due to the fact that many of their musicians ran away with soldiers.

Benson was married twice, first to the theater agent Caryll Stafford Clark (1949 to 1951) and 1957 to 1964 with a sergeant of the US Air Force, whom she met on her summer engagements on the Isle of Man. She often played there in the Villa Marine Gardens in front of an audience of up to 6,000. Even in retirement, she continued to entertain the holidaymakers on the coast with music.

literature

• Sheila Tracy Talking Swing: The British Big Bands London: Random House 2011

Web links

• Your dedicated website
• The 1940s bandleader who braved virulent sexism (2014) on BBC
• IMDB