I’d Rather Be a Beggar with You

LP Ace of Clubs 1162

I have a weakness for sentimental songs, under the condition that they are delivered with a reasonably high grade of honesty. Fortunately, there were a handful of singers that could do that in the 1920s and 30s, and Al Bowlly (1898–1941) was one of them.

This song belongs to the category with a message that money isn’t all there is, which was especially comforting in 1931 during the Great Depression.

Bowlly’s career can shortly be outlined as this: He was born by a Greek father, and the mother was Lebanese (British father and Greek mother according to the record sleeve). He grew up in South Africa, where he started to play the guitar and banjo. The group that he was playing with happened to be observed by an English band leader that noticed and liked his singing, and after touring with this outfit to Germany, he then found himself in London at the end of the 1920s as a member of Fred Elizalde´s fine orchestra. As the saying goes, he was singing in the London streets during the winter season when work was scarce, and it was this way that he was discovered and eventually employed by other successful band leaders in town, mainly Roy Fox and Ray Noble. His singing career grew steadily, but ten years after this recording it came to a sudden end. People in London still needed and still had a nightlife to some extent during the terror bombing by Germany, and it was during one of the worst of these attacks in 1941 that Bowlly fell victim to the blitz.